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Indeed, the React community moved from Slack to Discord. Slack has made it clear they are a tool for small teams. I don't necessarily see this announcement as a

Indeed, the React community moved from Slack to Discord. Slack has made it clear they are a tool for small teams. I don't necessarily see this announcement as a change from that.

madeofpalk 11y ago
Rather, Slack isn't a tool for a 8000-person community.
- tinco 11y ago
  8000 people? Is it like a forum with many threads and topics going on or is it really like an IRC chat room with 8000 people in it? Is this the biggest react community? Is being on Discord something they prefer to being on reddit or perhaps a forum?
  - madeofpalk 11y ago
    I exaggerated a bit - they have 7656 at the moment (after being 'shut down'). It was the mostly-official place to discuss react, flux, webpack, other tech and libraries in the react ecosystem etc. In it's peak, there were lots of channels for all the different parts and facets, including geo-oriented channels as well. Now, its mostly just the dancing shark gif http://i.imgur.com/I2CBRBZ.png http://i.imgur.com/I2CBRBZ.png
  - pbowyer 11y ago
    > 8000 people? Is it like a forum with many threads and topics going on or is it really like an IRC chat room with 8000 people in it? I'm a member of the UX Slack (https://www.designerhangout.co/ https://www.designerhangout.co/) who have ~6k members, and it's pretty active. It's a cross between a forum and IRC, and (from a user perspective) fails pretty badly because of it :) A major reason is Slack's limit of 10000 messages per free Slack. So conversations get lost within 2-3 days, there's no way to find them unless you've starred them. With no threading discussions don't happen well - there's a lot of noise (like IRC) which can't be filtered out. Summary: No way to organise/archive knowledge (same q's again and again); noise of IRC interspersed w discussions, Slack's hard limit of visible messages.
    - jhgg 11y ago
      Ever consider moving to Discord? No chat history limit there.
      - pbowyer 11y ago
        Not my call :) But I think the network effect of Slack has got too big for a move - it's become the GitHub of chat systems.
        Kiro 11y ago
        I wouldn't be so sure about that. Discord is exploding right now.
- kruhft 11y ago
  Well, we'll be finding out at my work if it is, where we just adopted it company wide for about that many people.
  - madeofpalk 11y ago
    If you're not paying they won't be too keen. Slack just doesn't work very well with that many people and channels - the app just grind to a halt on my Mac. If you're paying 35k/year however, it would be interesting to see how they react to that...
    - kruhft 11y ago
      Yeah, we're paying as a company, not sure of the amount though.
jhgg 11y ago
Oddly enough, Discord started out as a chat/voip tool for smaller gaming groups too, but as a side-effect of awesome engineering we've been able to handle large communities really well. Over the winter break, one community sprung up, going from no users, to about 2400 concurrents at peak, with about 600 of them in voice chat at the same time. Also, our tech stack for the native/web client is React & our iOS app is React Native, so it was pretty awesome to see Reactiflux migrate to Discord.
- mahyarm 11y ago
  Thats pretty exciting. My work tried slack and it started dying around the 2500 user mark, and hipchat, what we use currently, is pretty horrible. Do you guys have retention policy settings and are able to handle something like 7000 member rooms for announcements?
  - jhgg 11y ago
    We do not have any retention policy settings right now. Messages are kept until you delete the channel they're in. Our product focus is on making VOIP the best it can for gamers/gaming communities. Definitely not huge enterprises! However, 7000 member rooms for announcements? No sweat. We've had @everyone notifications targeted at upwards of 20,000+ users at once in a single server. I actually wrote the code that handles that. Lots of streamers, game developers and stuff actually use discord for announcements. One of the bigger ones in my recent memory was the Star Citizen PTU server, the devs used it for chat + announcements.
    - mahyarm 11y ago
      You could make a good amount of money if you focus on the few and relatively easy enterprise features of retention policies, sso & message export. Many large corps are sticking with hip chat but hating it because it's the only thing that kind of works.
- codexon 11y ago
  I would say Discord is missing 2 crucial features that prevent it from replacing old software like IRC for large chat communities. 1) offline mode 2) different names for each server

Indeed, the React community moved from Slack to Discord. Slack has made it clear they are a tool for small teams. I don't necessarily see this announcement as a change from that.

madeofpalk 11y ago

Rather, Slack isn't a tool for a 8000-person community.

tinco 11y ago
8000 people? Is it like a forum with many threads and topics going on or is it really like an IRC chat room with 8000 people in it? Is this the biggest react community? Is being on Discord something they prefer to being on reddit or perhaps a forum?
- madeofpalk 11y ago
  I exaggerated a bit - they have 7656 at the moment (after being 'shut down'). It was the mostly-official place to discuss react, flux, webpack, other tech and libraries in the react ecosystem etc. In it's peak, there were lots of channels for all the different parts and facets, including geo-oriented channels as well. Now, its mostly just the dancing shark gif http://i.imgur.com/I2CBRBZ.png http://i.imgur.com/I2CBRBZ.png
- pbowyer 11y ago
  > 8000 people? Is it like a forum with many threads and topics going on or is it really like an IRC chat room with 8000 people in it? I'm a member of the UX Slack (https://www.designerhangout.co/ https://www.designerhangout.co/) who have ~6k members, and it's pretty active. It's a cross between a forum and IRC, and (from a user perspective) fails pretty badly because of it :) A major reason is Slack's limit of 10000 messages per free Slack. So conversations get lost within 2-3 days, there's no way to find them unless you've starred them. With no threading discussions don't happen well - there's a lot of noise (like IRC) which can't be filtered out. Summary: No way to organise/archive knowledge (same q's again and again); noise of IRC interspersed w discussions, Slack's hard limit of visible messages.
  - jhgg 11y ago
    Ever consider moving to Discord? No chat history limit there.
    - pbowyer 11y ago
      Not my call :) But I think the network effect of Slack has got too big for a move - it's become the GitHub of chat systems.
      - Kiro 11y ago
        I wouldn't be so sure about that. Discord is exploding right now.
kruhft 11y ago
Well, we'll be finding out at my work if it is, where we just adopted it company wide for about that many people.
- madeofpalk 11y ago
  If you're not paying they won't be too keen. Slack just doesn't work very well with that many people and channels - the app just grind to a halt on my Mac. If you're paying 35k/year however, it would be interesting to see how they react to that...
  - kruhft 11y ago
    Yeah, we're paying as a company, not sure of the amount though.

jhgg 11y ago

Oddly enough, Discord started out as a chat/voip tool for smaller gaming groups too, but as a side-effect of awesome engineering we've been able to handle large communities really well. Over the winter break, one community sprung up, going from no users, to about 2400 concurrents at peak, with about 600 of them in voice chat at the same time. Also, our tech stack for the native/web client is React & our iOS app is React Native, so it was pretty awesome to see Reactiflux migrate to Discord.

mahyarm 11y ago
Thats pretty exciting. My work tried slack and it started dying around the 2500 user mark, and hipchat, what we use currently, is pretty horrible. Do you guys have retention policy settings and are able to handle something like 7000 member rooms for announcements?
- jhgg 11y ago
  We do not have any retention policy settings right now. Messages are kept until you delete the channel they're in. Our product focus is on making VOIP the best it can for gamers/gaming communities. Definitely not huge enterprises! However, 7000 member rooms for announcements? No sweat. We've had @everyone notifications targeted at upwards of 20,000+ users at once in a single server. I actually wrote the code that handles that. Lots of streamers, game developers and stuff actually use discord for announcements. One of the bigger ones in my recent memory was the Star Citizen PTU server, the devs used it for chat + announcements.
  - mahyarm 11y ago
    You could make a good amount of money if you focus on the few and relatively easy enterprise features of retention policies, sso & message export. Many large corps are sticking with hip chat but hating it because it's the only thing that kind of works.
codexon 11y ago
I would say Discord is missing 2 crucial features that prevent it from replacing old software like IRC for large chat communities. 1) offline mode 2) different names for each server