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I definitely see an issue with this. Fortunately, at least GitHub is readable without running non-free code and is searchable. I guess you can also participate with one of those alternative clients. You are still not in control of your community, and I'd like this monopoly to vanish.
Discord is readable from a web browser just like GitHub is.
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On the desktop, it also hijacks standard browser shortcuts such as Ctrl+F.
It needs to so that it can search on the backend and show you all instances of that search rather than just what the currently loaded DOM elements contain.
A forum is great for getting technical support, and is ok-ish for technical discussion and planning, but I don't think it's a good replacement for real-time chat, which is great for developing more nuanced, personal relationships (for distributed developers and users that aren't going to do things like regular video chats). Certainly real-time chat isn't going to give you as rich an experience as a video or in-person chat, but it's much better than the asynchronous back-and-forth of a forum (or email).
So I would say "Use IRC/Matrix rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community" would be a better position to take (and set up a bot to automatically archive conversations to somewhere searchable on the web), as well as "Supplement your real-time chat with a forum or email list" (which can also be searchable). On top of that, know where to capture information for the longer term: for example, if discussion on IRC or the forum leads to an understanding that the project's documentation is confusing in some areas, write up a ticket on GH Issues or Jira or whatever you're using. That way you (or someone else) will remember it needs to be done.
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I constantly run into this problem, I've used my google voice number for everything for years (yeah it's not a great move but very hard to migrate away from) and a frustrating number of services recently have been rejecting it for verification. I end up having to take the sim out of my laptop and put it in my PinePhone. It's such a hassle. This whole "you're not a human unless you have a phone number" thing sucks. Sa…
Just a couple of days ago, I signed in to a gmail account using the correct username and password. Gmail intercepted me and claimed to be worried that they couldn't recognize the device I was using. According to the flow, they wanted me to verify my identity in one of three ways: (1) I could verify the backup email address associated with the account; (2) if unable to do that, I could provide the 2FA code sent to tha…
I will patiently wait for the real internet to return. RSS/Blogs/Forums. This is the only way for archiving and communicating sustainable information repos which will serve people without a middleman. Creating federated silos with "modern" UX is serving only the owners of this SaaS hell. It is logical for those type of businesses to optimize for "engagement" and profit.
Oh please do. This seems like the perfect time to bring this up: I had a piece of software that used Discord for support. They required that users be verified, which requires you to give you phone number to Discord. I gave them my Google Voice number, which is the only number I have, and they rejected it because they don't support VOIP numbers. I asked them if there was any other way to verify my identity. They told…
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I've yet to see a forum software that works as well as vBulletin and the clones of that did in the early to mid 2000s. Everything today is this weird "conversation" view and comments/threads constantly move around based on the whims of a voting audience.
vBulletin is still available, isn't it?
If you want to gamify your community engagement, StackOverflow/Reddit is better. But if you just want answers to questions, a mailing list is the simplest thing in the world. If you have a lot of questions, you need to make a FAQ, and StackOverflow basically does that by sorting.
Please don't ask people to run non-free software to participate in your open source community. Many open source / free software enthusiasts are reluctant to use them, or flat out boycott them. What's more, you are putting your worthy community somewhere out of your control if you do this. Slack and Discord are not cool and do not make your project cool. They make your project unreachable , now and in the future (arch…
>They make your project unreachable, now and in the future (archives). You won't be able to trace the history of your project when you will want to do it. That has nothing to do with the software being open source or not, it's a question of whether you have a robust archival system in place. I use open source software for plenty of things but most of it will at some point be lost to the ether because nobody's backing…
With Slack, your only option is to pay per user in order to have access to older messages, which is almost certainly going to be cost-prohibitive for most projects. I don't have a source for this, but I believe using a bot that automatically archives conversations elsewhere is against Slack's free-tier ToS.
I agree that this doesn't inherently have anything to do with closed vs. open source, but these sorts of shenanigans just aren't possible if you're self-hosting an open source discussion platform.
I find googling for existing answers on forums, StackOverflow and Reddit to be great resources when I need to solve a problem, but I really dislike asking questions myself on those kind of platforms. I hate having to write a formal post and then hope someone responds, and then if anyone responds the conversation slowly crawls along post by post. When I need help, I greatly prefer more casual, real time environments l…
If you ask your question in a messaging system, it will help you but then be lost to the wider audience.