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Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

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Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#91

Post by ejj28 »

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 like Discord. To me, asking on forums feels like posting a newspaper ad for help and hoping someone mails me a letter, compared to asking on Discord feeling like walking into a room of knowledgeable people and discussing my question face to face.

Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#92

Post by jimkleiber »

badwolf wrote: post #34

This recurring discussion is very "This is the year for Linux on the desktop" Nobody wants to register on some random weird site, and figure that sites navigation, let alone their privacy/data policies. Discord/Reddit/Slack/etc... are easy to use. People are comfortable using them. They provide a more uniform experience across different servers/subreddits/etc...

I agree and I've been wondering, why doesn't someone make something like a Discord/Discourse hybrid? Guilded has forum channels and yet it misses so many of the bells and whistles for moderation and discoverability that Discourse has.

Basically, I want a Discord-type app, with it's UI and one login, and then blended with the Discourse forum power.

Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#93

Post by NikolaeVarius »

Oddskar wrote: post #52
jcelerier wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah discourse feels like such a regression when compared to the phpbb and vBulletin of yore

In what way? As a lurking user I think it's miles better.

I know of roughly 0 ways discourse is better. Its slower and has vastly less information density

Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#94

Post by simias »

Oddskar wrote: post #52
jcelerier wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah discourse feels like such a regression when compared to the phpbb and vBulletin of yore

In what way? As a lurking user I think it's miles better.

I concur. I somehow skipped PHPBB and VBulletin (I was more of a newsgroup/IRC kinda guy) and always found them super clunky and a step backwards compared to newsgroups, if only because of the lack of proper threading.

Discourse is comparatively very pleasant I thought.

Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#95

Post by majormajor »

danr4 wrote: post #28

As discussed in a recent comment I made [0], I think the problem is that a good modern forum software simply does not exist yet. imo discourse doesn't cut it, feels almost as ephemeral as in slack/discord. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29016033

The SBNation article commenting system, introduced like ten years ago now, had a nice take on this. Nested conversations like HN, but with live updating as new comments came in, and tracking of read-vs-unread, and keyboard shortcuts to navigate posts.

That interface + "topic threads" like an old school forum front page instead of "comment just on today's article" would be nice, I think. Let's you chat in real-time when folks are also online, but search and minimize/expand subthreads and such for when viewing later.

Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#96

Post by Zababa »

Oddskar wrote: post #52
jcelerier wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah discourse feels like such a regression when compared to the phpbb and vBulletin of yore

In what way? As a lurking user I think it's miles better.

Infinite scrolling on the threads combined with a very slow loading. A thread of 30 replies will not load everything, even though 30 replies is probably less than 1Mb of data.

Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#98

Post by majormajor »

badwolf wrote: post #34

This recurring discussion is very "This is the year for Linux on the desktop" Nobody wants to register on some random weird site, and figure that sites navigation, let alone their privacy/data policies. Discord/Reddit/Slack/etc... are easy to use. People are comfortable using them. They provide a more uniform experience across different servers/subreddits/etc...

Do you think we should replace HN with discord or slack?

Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#99

Post by jedberg »

errantspark wrote: post #82
jedberg wrote: post #70

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…

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…

Yeah same. ETrade recently changed their phone verification system and can no longer send me a text message to verify my identity. I'm actually ok with that because it forces them to use the security token instead, which they should be doing anyway!

And often I'll run into problems with silently failed messages because they don't accept the number.

Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#100

Post by jetpackjoe »

jedberg wrote: post #70

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…

sounds like they are more interested in keeping bots out than verifying identity
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