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The company was only really able to do this because it was a significantly better platform than what was there before. It was amazing to be able to open Discord

The company was only really able to do this because it was a significantly better platform than what was there before. It was amazing to be able to open Discord for the first time and everything just worked! After struggling with voice chat in Skype, ventrilo, teamspeak, and mumble for years prior, that was a huge breath of fresh air. And the easy way it handled invites and text chat was the cherry on top. It's easy to hate on Discord's practices but it's worth remembering that they're on top because their project is legitimately good.

Mirioron 7y ago
You struggle with audio settings in discord just like you do in Skype, ventrilo, and teamspeak. Most of the struggles with audio are not with individual programs, but rather your audio hardware, the OS, and its settings. (Windows updates love to screw those up.) When discord released it didn't even have a Ctrl+f function for a long time. It still doesn't have chat logs on the user end, the permissions system is bad and audio quality is mediocre. On top of all of that, because they don't allow self-hosting it means that discord ultimately controls your conversations. It caught on because it went viral. The service they offer is good, but the lack of privacy and no self-hosting make it disappointing.
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  And their stability is questionable. While it's not that bad, I experienced their server crash more than once. Never had server crash on my own hosted ventrillo server, not once in a 5 years.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    I use Discord every day. I would say that there are issues about once a week or few weeks where text messages are delayed by 10-30 seconds. Some of them don't arrive either. Using it for text communication at those times is challenging. I'm unsure what happens to voice chat at those times, but the text part is infuriating.
- rapind 7y ago
  From experience I can say Vent was (is?) pretty horrible. You had to run your own or pay for a server too, which was a huge deterrent to adoption. Skype is fine, but not focused around rooms / channels. Basically it was a ripe market with extremely bad products. I don't think Discord is anything amazing (seems fine for the most part), but they're clearly significantly better than what existed when they launched.
arminiusreturns 7y ago
I disagree on the ease of use of the other tools. I ran a mumble server for a guild for almost 10 years and it was quit easy and awesome to use... for voice. Then due to reasons I turned it off for a while and by the time I came back everyone was on discord... The main thing that discord did was combine voice with the chat side of things, and with per user chats and history. A lot of people don't know that mumble has a pretty decent html capable chat, but it's the history searching, dynamic rooms etc that set discord apart. Mumble still has the superior voice capabilities (simultaneous multiroom, easy permission, hierarchical, etc) I have put most of my hope in mattermost to do murmur integration to solve this problem. In the meantime I find myself considering trying to get everyone back on irc+mumble. edit: Also, just have to say I bet the gov loves having a single place to send all those NSL's... cough hint cough
- na85 7y ago
  Nobody's going to embrace IRC again until multi-device gets solved. But the default answer to the question "how do I have seamless transition between my desktop and my phone" for IRC remains "pay for a shell/bnc, run irssi in screen, etc" which is of course a UX nightmare. Discord has a buttery smooth onboarding process.
  - loulouxiv 7y ago
    Maybe The Lounge (https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/) could help ?
    - na85 7y ago
      What I'm describing can't be achieved without server-side changes. The lounge is great but from what I can see it relies on having a persistent connection from the user's desktop. Doesn't really solve the problem.
    - crooked-v 7y ago
      That still means running your own server, and having a machine running 24/7 to host that server. For many, many people nowadays a laptop is their primary and often only machine.
kazagistar 7y ago
What made it good was free server creation that didn't require a client download. Just send people a link, and they can join your raid even if they dont have the client. Any actual quality of the provided audio link past that point doesn't matter.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
- toastal 7y ago
  Two things: 1) paragraphs help organize ideas without looking like a giant wall of text, 2) don't joke about rape
  - ryanlol 7y ago
    > don't joke about rape Where do you draw the line? Are jokes involving death also out of the question? I’m not a big fan of rape jokes, but is there some specific list of things which are unacceptable to joke about in 2020?
    - jdormit 7y ago
      I think "don't be an asshole" is a pretty good rule of thumb.
      - ryanlol 7y ago
        It’s a tough world where “ear rape” strictly falls into the “being an asshole” category.
        toastal 7y ago
        Given that there are 470,000 words in the Webster's English dictionary, there are plenty of alternatives to show magnitude without using a word that invokes trauma in many. The 'git gud' is learning to be funny without relying on this sort of shock value. It's an asshole thing to say so, like, don't.
        ryanlol 7y ago
        I really doubt that there exist many people whose traumas are invoked by “ear rape”. I don’t doubt that there are heaps of virtue signalers who’ll pretend to be utterly shocked though, fuck those people. It’s okay to joke about death, even if the world is full of people who have had traumatic experiences with death. It’s okay to joke about traumatic experiences, that’s just a perfectly normal coping mechanism. (Although I have a hard time reading “ear rape” as a joke about rape)
tripzilch 7y ago
> It's easy to hate on Discord's practices but it's worth remembering that they're on top because their project is legitimately good. You mean it's easy to forget about Discord's practices because their product is good. Seriously, you're arguing that they get to do whatever because "their product is good"?? Do I have to spell out how egotistical this attitude is?
- Blackthorn 7y ago
  That's not what I said, but don't let that get in the way of a good rant.
- esyir 7y ago
  Yes. Because that's what matters if you actually want to win. There are a thousand Foss software packages or there that are philosophically superior and have better practices than their commercial brethren. But they lost, and in the end that's what matters.
  - tripzilch 7y ago
    But only because there are a hundred times more "commercial brethren", some of whom "won" and apparently get to do whatever. It's still a choice that people make, except it's a "tragedy of the commons" situation. Which is what I wanted to point out in my probably somewhat too harshly worded comment.

Mirioron 7y ago

You struggle with audio settings in discord just like you do in Skype, ventrilo, and teamspeak. Most of the struggles with audio are not with individual programs, but rather your audio hardware, the OS, and its settings. (Windows updates love to screw those up.) When discord released it didn't even have a Ctrl+f function for a long time. It still doesn't have chat logs on the user end, the permissions system is bad and audio quality is mediocre. On top of all of that, because they don't allow self-hosting it means that discord ultimately controls your conversations. It caught on because it went viral. The service they offer is good, but the lack of privacy and no self-hosting make it disappointing.

vbezhenar 7y ago
And their stability is questionable. While it's not that bad, I experienced their server crash more than once. Never had server crash on my own hosted ventrillo server, not once in a 5 years.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  I use Discord every day. I would say that there are issues about once a week or few weeks where text messages are delayed by 10-30 seconds. Some of them don't arrive either. Using it for text communication at those times is challenging. I'm unsure what happens to voice chat at those times, but the text part is infuriating.
rapind 7y ago
From experience I can say Vent was (is?) pretty horrible. You had to run your own or pay for a server too, which was a huge deterrent to adoption. Skype is fine, but not focused around rooms / channels. Basically it was a ripe market with extremely bad products. I don't think Discord is anything amazing (seems fine for the most part), but they're clearly significantly better than what existed when they launched.

arminiusreturns 7y ago

I disagree on the ease of use of the other tools. I ran a mumble server for a guild for almost 10 years and it was quit easy and awesome to use... for voice. Then due to reasons I turned it off for a while and by the time I came back everyone was on discord... The main thing that discord did was combine voice with the chat side of things, and with per user chats and history. A lot of people don't know that mumble has a pretty decent html capable chat, but it's the history searching, dynamic rooms etc that set discord apart. Mumble still has the superior voice capabilities (simultaneous multiroom, easy permission, hierarchical, etc) I have put most of my hope in mattermost to do murmur integration to solve this problem. In the meantime I find myself considering trying to get everyone back on irc+mumble. edit: Also, just have to say I bet the gov loves having a single place to send all those NSL's... cough hint cough

na85 7y ago
Nobody's going to embrace IRC again until multi-device gets solved. But the default answer to the question "how do I have seamless transition between my desktop and my phone" for IRC remains "pay for a shell/bnc, run irssi in screen, etc" which is of course a UX nightmare. Discord has a buttery smooth onboarding process.
- loulouxiv 7y ago
  Maybe The Lounge (https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/) could help ?
  - na85 7y ago
    What I'm describing can't be achieved without server-side changes. The lounge is great but from what I can see it relies on having a persistent connection from the user's desktop. Doesn't really solve the problem.
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    That still means running your own server, and having a machine running 24/7 to host that server. For many, many people nowadays a laptop is their primary and often only machine.

kazagistar 7y ago

What made it good was free server creation that didn't require a client download. Just send people a link, and they can join your raid even if they dont have the client. Any actual quality of the provided audio link past that point doesn't matter.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

toastal 7y ago
Two things: 1) paragraphs help organize ideas without looking like a giant wall of text, 2) don't joke about rape
- ryanlol 7y ago
  > don't joke about rape Where do you draw the line? Are jokes involving death also out of the question? I’m not a big fan of rape jokes, but is there some specific list of things which are unacceptable to joke about in 2020?
  - jdormit 7y ago
    I think "don't be an asshole" is a pretty good rule of thumb.
    - ryanlol 7y ago
      It’s a tough world where “ear rape” strictly falls into the “being an asshole” category.
      - toastal 7y ago
        Given that there are 470,000 words in the Webster's English dictionary, there are plenty of alternatives to show magnitude without using a word that invokes trauma in many. The 'git gud' is learning to be funny without relying on this sort of shock value. It's an asshole thing to say so, like, don't.
        ryanlol 7y ago
        I really doubt that there exist many people whose traumas are invoked by “ear rape”. I don’t doubt that there are heaps of virtue signalers who’ll pretend to be utterly shocked though, fuck those people. It’s okay to joke about death, even if the world is full of people who have had traumatic experiences with death. It’s okay to joke about traumatic experiences, that’s just a perfectly normal coping mechanism. (Although I have a hard time reading “ear rape” as a joke about rape)

tripzilch 7y ago

> It's easy to hate on Discord's practices but it's worth remembering that they're on top because their project is legitimately good. You mean it's easy to forget about Discord's practices because their product is good. Seriously, you're arguing that they get to do whatever because "their product is good"?? Do I have to spell out how egotistical this attitude is?

Blackthorn 7y ago
That's not what I said, but don't let that get in the way of a good rant.
esyir 7y ago
Yes. Because that's what matters if you actually want to win. There are a thousand Foss software packages or there that are philosophically superior and have better practices than their commercial brethren. But they lost, and in the end that's what matters.
- tripzilch 7y ago
  But only because there are a hundred times more "commercial brethren", some of whom "won" and apparently get to do whatever. It's still a choice that people make, except it's a "tragedy of the commons" situation. Which is what I wanted to point out in my probably somewhat too harshly worded comment.