Discord Is Not an Acceptable Choice for Free Software Projects (2020)(sneak.berlin)
sneak.berlin
Discord Is Not an Acceptable Choice for Free Software Projects (2020)
https://sneak.berlin/20200220/discord-is-not-an-acceptable-choice-for-free-software-projects/
25 comments
Few things will make me choose against using a tool/framework/software faster than seeing that I need to join a discord server to get necessary information to use or install it. If Discord is the primary method of user support I am greatly apprehensive but if documentation is locked inside a server, I'm out. There is no software or tool I have seen that's good enough to make me brave the headache that comes with that knowledge all being locked inside of a discord community.
Same, ‘join our discord server’ is an instant turnoff.
I barely tolerate it for people whom I actually know and like, a stranger asking it of me as a hoop to jump through is a complete nonstarter.
I barely tolerate it for people whom I actually know and like, a stranger asking it of me as a hoop to jump through is a complete nonstarter.
Agreed. Discord is an abjectly terrible tool for storing information, and yet time and again people absolutely insist on using it. It drives me up a wall.
One of the things that really confounds me about Discord is that so many groups will just keep coming back, even after they're booted, like they're in an abusive relationship.
I used to follow some of the console homebrew / piracy Discord servers from a distance. (For some reason, this was where you had to go to get some of the homebrew, even if it wasn't related to piracy.) They would always complain about servers getting shut down and people getting banned, but for some reason the idea of just moving to a different service was unacceptable. They need to be on Discord to get their 7th account banned and set the server back up for the 10th time. They could just host it on some service that won't shut them down (or self host), but they'd rather just keep getting banned on Discord. Why?
I used to follow some of the console homebrew / piracy Discord servers from a distance. (For some reason, this was where you had to go to get some of the homebrew, even if it wasn't related to piracy.) They would always complain about servers getting shut down and people getting banned, but for some reason the idea of just moving to a different service was unacceptable. They need to be on Discord to get their 7th account banned and set the server back up for the 10th time. They could just host it on some service that won't shut them down (or self host), but they'd rather just keep getting banned on Discord. Why?
In addition to the reasons described there (which are valid, and I agree that they are good reasons to avoid Discord), there are others, such as, you might not have a telephone number (or you do, but it cannot receive SMS), and you might not want to require everyone to register with someone else unrelated to your project. (Also, I have seen that apparently Discord will require face scan, so that is another reason to be avoided; if you do not have a camera (or if you do not want to send a face scan to them) then that will not work.) (And, you should also avoid needing Facebook, etc)
However, I think that IRC can be useful. IRC is not the same as Slack and Discord like they mention, but often the other things are not needed, and IRC also is not too complicated to use and does not require a large web app or other stuff like that, which is a significant advantage of IRC. Also, another thing they did not mention, which can be helpful, is NNTP, which can be used both for announcements and for discussion, like email can be. This way, no web apps are needed, and email subscriptions are not needed; however, it can also be bridged with email if needed.
However, I think that IRC can be useful. IRC is not the same as Slack and Discord like they mention, but often the other things are not needed, and IRC also is not too complicated to use and does not require a large web app or other stuff like that, which is a significant advantage of IRC. Also, another thing they did not mention, which can be helpful, is NNTP, which can be used both for announcements and for discussion, like email can be. This way, no web apps are needed, and email subscriptions are not needed; however, it can also be bridged with email if needed.
Normal people find discord to be more user friendly than irc
Good thing anyone is allowed to make a more user-friendly IRC client so that can be improved on, then. As long as we all follow protocols my choice of client doesnt concern you even as we chat in the same room. IRC does not proscribe any particular UI or UX.
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For vertically integrated propriatery closed Discord it's both forbidden and made difficult. There is one alternative and you take it or leave it. Hopefully the latter. There's a reason clients like ripcord never make it.
For vertically integrated propriatery closed Discord it's both forbidden and made difficult. There is one alternative and you take it or leave it. Hopefully the latter. There's a reason clients like ripcord never make it.
wasn't slack initially built on top of IRC? they had at least support for IRC clients, much like google message or however it was called at the time used to support jabber/XMPP clients.
well, there is another alternative, namely the EU laws forcing interoperability. i don't know if they have passed yet, or how likely it is that they will pass, but i seem to remember a recent announcement of one system going to be interoperable with whatsapp.
well, there is another alternative, namely the EU laws forcing interoperability. i don't know if they have passed yet, or how likely it is that they will pass, but i seem to remember a recent announcement of one system going to be interoperable with whatsapp.
Likewise, normal people do not find NNTP to be user friendly.
What I never understood is why product owners of any kind would want to hide the all the knowledge created in their product support forums.
Discord hides everything from Google, and now from LLMs. So, the end-user asking "how do I __ with __" with their most common search tools cannot find the answer.
Why?
Discord hides everything from Google, and now from LLMs. So, the end-user asking "how do I __ with __" with their most common search tools cannot find the answer.
Why?
There are proructs that "fix this". I don't want to advertise them, the solution is to stop using Discord.But there has been an increase in their uptake over the last years.
2020 and you got banned instantly off of Discord.. Last year I tried Windows 11 in a VM and I couldn't even get to the part where I create a local user. Turns out I needed a Microsoft account which I tried with a disposable email only to be told that I couldn't sign up because the 'email address has suspicious activity', despite only being created there and then. How funny
What zzo said though, IRC is simple and many free software projects already use it (eg Tor, gentoo) but I think there's a different barrier to entry since users may want old chat history (bouncers), IRC-specific spam and client choices (GUI, CLI, no mobile??) (& I'm pretty sure IRC networks used to be somewhat anti-Unicode? correct me if I'm wrong). Then again I should expect hackers to actually know how to use that, but probably less so of an enduser
What zzo said though, IRC is simple and many free software projects already use it (eg Tor, gentoo) but I think there's a different barrier to entry since users may want old chat history (bouncers), IRC-specific spam and client choices (GUI, CLI, no mobile??) (& I'm pretty sure IRC networks used to be somewhat anti-Unicode? correct me if I'm wrong). Then again I should expect hackers to actually know how to use that, but probably less so of an enduser
> I think there's a different barrier to entry since users may want old chat history (bouncers), IRC-specific spam and client choices (GUI, CLI, no mobile??)
I expect there are mobile choices, but if not, someone can write one; however, there is also possibility of having web chat (which seems to be common), etc. (However, I dislike the web chats that do not display the information for using IRC clients. They should be made to display such information even if JavaScript is disabled.)
For history, it is possible to have public logs for public channels, which can be either recorded by a dedicated client, or recorded by the server (although using a client is probably more common, it can be done on the server as well).
> I'm pretty sure IRC networks used to be somewhat anti-Unicode? correct me if I'm wrong
You can use multiple character sets on IRC, including Unicode. (If necessary, you might use ISO 2022 to switch between them, although this does not seem to be common.) (Also, some older IRC servers might not be 8-bit clean, and so might some newer ones that require Unicode (which are only partially 8-bit clean), unfortunately; however, any proper IRC server should be really 8-bit clean in order to avoid these problems.)
I expect there are mobile choices, but if not, someone can write one; however, there is also possibility of having web chat (which seems to be common), etc. (However, I dislike the web chats that do not display the information for using IRC clients. They should be made to display such information even if JavaScript is disabled.)
For history, it is possible to have public logs for public channels, which can be either recorded by a dedicated client, or recorded by the server (although using a client is probably more common, it can be done on the server as well).
> I'm pretty sure IRC networks used to be somewhat anti-Unicode? correct me if I'm wrong
You can use multiple character sets on IRC, including Unicode. (If necessary, you might use ISO 2022 to switch between them, although this does not seem to be common.) (Also, some older IRC servers might not be 8-bit clean, and so might some newer ones that require Unicode (which are only partially 8-bit clean), unfortunately; however, any proper IRC server should be really 8-bit clean in order to avoid these problems.)
For chat history, there are servers which provide that (IRCv3). I don't know why you would think there are no mobile clients. I don't know anything about anti-Unicode networks but mIRC (Windows-only) famously didn't support it until 2013 or so.
I see that Discord generally isn't good enough for open communities. It's designed primary for private communications and thus a person with no access to a particular server can't even read its contents (and sometimes one can't get access, like due a ban).
Good old forums are much better. They are readable without even creating an account and they are also indexable by search engines.
Good old forums are much better. They are readable without even creating an account and they are also indexable by search engines.
Some previous discussion:
2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22384356
2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22384356
Related:
Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46945663
Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46945663
There really needs to be a publicly searchable archive of public Discord server chat logs.
Why don't you build it then? Technically should be trivial.
Relevant conversations moving off Discord is what's really needed and where I think effort is better spent though.
Relevant conversations moving off Discord is what's really needed and where I think effort is better spent though.
I can't find the page now but iirc someone had attempted the same idea and got some serious backlash from the communities/servers scanned and eventually shut the project down. I agree, though, that discord really needs to be searchable; at least project pages and the like.
Project pages and the like don't belong on Discord.
An appropriate indexer would obviously distinguish between those and actual semi-private chats (where I assume backlash came from). And would probably get shut down after a while anyway either by being banned for ToS violation or the maintainer quitting because maintaining such project gets grating enough anyway at some point.
An appropriate indexer would obviously distinguish between those and actual semi-private chats (where I assume backlash came from). And would probably get shut down after a while anyway either by being banned for ToS violation or the maintainer quitting because maintaining such project gets grating enough anyway at some point.
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we need to differentiate two things here:
using discord as the only way to reach a project and find documentation about it. the author mentions sending private messages right after joining. i would not have joined discord to do that, i'd have searched for their emails. if they or other ways to reach the developers can't be found then that is where the problem lies. the author doesn't mention if he tried that, and he doesn't point out the difference exclusive and optional use of discord.
but beyond that, communities form where the people are. many FOSS projects are on discord because the people are already there. there are lively communities for fedora, debian, javascript, golang, to mention just a few. they are not the central space of those projects but they reach a number of people that probably would not participate in those communities otherwise.
one community that is important to me has the core developers on a forum that is gated to a mailinglist, while the wider user community used to hang out on IRC, but eventually switched to discord. there are a few communities that did that because participation on IRC was dwindling and not getting new people. getting new people is a lot easier on discord.
bridging to discord is at least possible, even though not ideal, it does allow participation from people that don't want to use discord. we could for example create a bridge to the old IRC channel.
for some communities the choice is discord or no chat at all. github would have to integrate messaging for that to become a more attractive option than discord. but then github is not ideal for FOSS projects either. unfortunately the current reality is that the more aligned a communication platform is with FOSS ideals, the less attractive it becomes for most users. sometimes it is a tough choice.
side note: i don't appreciate that swipe against RMS. i don't care about your opinion of him. keep that to yourself please. backbiting is a vice that hurts us all.
using discord as the only way to reach a project and find documentation about it. the author mentions sending private messages right after joining. i would not have joined discord to do that, i'd have searched for their emails. if they or other ways to reach the developers can't be found then that is where the problem lies. the author doesn't mention if he tried that, and he doesn't point out the difference exclusive and optional use of discord.
but beyond that, communities form where the people are. many FOSS projects are on discord because the people are already there. there are lively communities for fedora, debian, javascript, golang, to mention just a few. they are not the central space of those projects but they reach a number of people that probably would not participate in those communities otherwise.
one community that is important to me has the core developers on a forum that is gated to a mailinglist, while the wider user community used to hang out on IRC, but eventually switched to discord. there are a few communities that did that because participation on IRC was dwindling and not getting new people. getting new people is a lot easier on discord.
bridging to discord is at least possible, even though not ideal, it does allow participation from people that don't want to use discord. we could for example create a bridge to the old IRC channel.
for some communities the choice is discord or no chat at all. github would have to integrate messaging for that to become a more attractive option than discord. but then github is not ideal for FOSS projects either. unfortunately the current reality is that the more aligned a communication platform is with FOSS ideals, the less attractive it becomes for most users. sometimes it is a tough choice.
side note: i don't appreciate that swipe against RMS. i don't care about your opinion of him. keep that to yourself please. backbiting is a vice that hurts us all.