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After I used Discord in different contexts for months now (and Slack for years), I can't understand why someone willingly chooses Slack. It's the Atlassian of
by k__ 6y ago
After I used Discord in different contexts for months now (and Slack for years), I can't understand why someone willingly chooses Slack.
It's the Atlassian of chat tools. Horrible performance and bad usabillity.
- jrockway 6y agoAs someone who uses Discord, I can tell you it goes down too. My favorite part is looking at their status page, seeing that API response time is exceedingly high, and getting no updates from the team about whether or not they're fixing it.
- k__ 6y agoI'm not saying Discord is perfect or "always up", it's just that their client UI is better structured and more responsive in most cases. I am on multiple OSS Discord servers with thousands of users, and it works just fine most of the time. I am on multiple Slack servers with just 10-20 users and it is unbearably slow.
- rpdillon 6y agoI admined a multi-hundred user Slack org and now am part of a multi-thousand user slack org and I've never experienced (or heard about) the slowness that you're describing. Do you have a feel for whether it was client-side or server-side?
- k__ 6y agoMore client-side. Server-side scaling was only an issue with OSS communities and for hackathons, where >50k people were online.
- pier25 6y agoYeah the performance of Discord is much better but it looks and feels like a product for gamers. Slack has a more mainstream look and feel which is probably one of the reasons it's preferred by companies.
- bobobob420 6y agoWhat are some open source discord servers you are a part of? I would like to know about some open source communities if you do not mind.
- k__ 6y agoI'm on the React and Rust servers.
- carterklein13 6y agoI think Discord's Achilles' heel for enterprise is its UI unfortunately. There's no way that my company would adopt a platform so "fun" in the way Discord tries to be. Animated characters, a logo which looks like a gamepad, etc... It sucks, because I use Slack for work and mostly Discord for personal use (mostly dev communities for different companies), and Discord is far and away a better experience. If Discord provided a "cleaned-up" offering for orgs like mine (finance), I think it would be an instant hit.
- buzzert 6y agoI log on to Slack at work and see pages of emoji, animated gifs, and animated reactions. What’s the difference?
- bhahn 6y agoDiscord is actually actively trying to become less gamer-focused, but it's unclear if this will make them as enterprise as Slack or Teams is. https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/30/discord-now-has-a-3-5b-valuation-and-100m-for-a-sales-pitch-lighter-on-the-gaming/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/30/discord-now-has-a-3-5b-val...
- StavrosK 6y agoI use Zulip for the day to day (it's amazing, I can't recommend it enough), but sometimes use Slack because some open source communities use it, and I'm always amazed at how damn slow it is. I can consistently out-type it, it's terrible. I guess it was great when it started out, but they're slowly boiling the frog, who is us.
- scaryclam 6y agoThat's one thing that makes me quite sad, to see open source communities adopt a closed chat tool. I know that it's easy and zero-maintenance for them, but I can't help but feel there are better options.
- StavrosK 6y agoThere certainly are, Zulip is OSS and so is Matrix.
- mikecoles 6y agoZulip won my last bake-off for chat systems. Integration was easy and the topic method of providing threads was amazing. The only feature it was missing was federation. In the XMPP world, you could communicate with users on other XMPP instances. With Zulip, you can only communicate with local users. Do you know if this is still the case?
- StavrosK 6y agoYes, I doubt federation will ever be added.
- twizzerlora 6y agoZulip has a cross server bridge using a bot that you might be interested in: https://github.com/zulip/python-zulip-api/tree/f47559e68dfcc497d78485f3f3c85616c6e511d8/zulip/integrations/bridge_between_zulips https://github.com/zulip/python-zulip-api/tree/f47559e68dfcc...
- tabbott 6y ago
- Tyr42 6y agoOh no poor HipChat. (Atlassian's chat tool)
- taormina 6y agoWell, Hipchat would be the literal Atlassian of chat tools.
- rkrzr 6y agoWe have been using self-hosted Mattermost for years and I can highly recommend it. It never crashes, performance is great, and upgrading it is very easy to do.
- xtracto 6y agoThreaded comments. I tried using Discord with a group of 4 people for real job and we missed threaded comments. Also the ability to draw on screen while screen sharing. So simple yet so useful.
- k__ 6y agoInteresting. I personally didn't like threads and this is the first time someone mentions them favorably.
- anderspitman 6y agoI missed them in discord just yesterday
- snazz 6y agoNow that even iMessage supports threaded discussions (in iOS 14), I think it would be great if Discord added this too. They’re very nice when there are multiple overlapping conversations and you don’t want to break off into two separate channels.
- phumbe 6y agoSince you’re a skeptic, I’d love to hear your thoughts on my reply to xtracto!
- xtracto 6y agoFunny that I found it easy to see your comment in HackerNews because it was separated in ... a thread! Imagine how HackerNews, Reddit or any other discussion board would be without threading. Now, if you see a #general Slack room of a 100 person company, you'll quickly see that it would be a mess without threading. That's what happens in Discord.
- phumbe 6y agoShameless plug for my side project: XpanXn.com The central value proposition is its reimagined UI, making threaded replies more visible and more interactive by separating conversation topics (threads) into different columns. It’s currently just an MVP, but I expect to at least improve the UI and maybe rearchitect the system in the near future. Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
- luisehk 6y agoBecause Discord is very gaming oriented. But yes, Discord is great.
- applecrazy 6y agoActually, they’re pivoting to be a social platform for non-gamers, too. Just yesterday I got a notification that they’re pushing for more non-gamers to create their communities on Discord.
- whatsmyusername 6y agoBecause it's the Atlassian of chat tools. It's the lowest common denominator. Discord also doesn't let you set message retention that I'm aware of which is an immediate nonstarter. End up in one lawsuit where the other party demands a fishing expedition and you'll be real happy that you've got retention limited to 90 days by policy and in practice.
- jessaustin 6y agoIf it's legal to set this to 90 days, why can't a firm set it to one or zero days?
- whatsmyusername 6y agoYou could, and I'm sure some places have a business case for this. Most need stuff going back at least a little bit. If I was talking to you about something on Friday and wanted to reference the conversation Monday I'd be real mad if the convo was already deleted.
- jessaustin 6y agoI think I'm confused... there are complaints above that Discord doesn't save transcripts. That seems equivalent to zero-day retention? I haven't used Discord so I'm probably misunderstanding something.
- whatsmyusername 6y agoIf I scroll back in discord I can go back to the first message I ever sent to the servers I hang out on. In slack you can configure a retention period for files, messages, or both. Anything older than that gets wiped.
- qppo 6y agoSaved chat history is the big one. Discord is not suitable for business comms without it. Other than that: - shared channels between workspaces - threads - private messages within a workspace, instead of globally - decoupled accounts from workspaces, so I can use my personal email and work email associated slack workspaces at the same time - much tighter integration with third party tools eg zoom, webex, etc Discord is great for casual chats with friends or open source communities. Insufficient for business.
- k__ 6y agoHow come? Me phoning or talking with a customer/co-worker directly is also "suitable for business".
- qppo 6y agoChat history is pretty important for your HR and general counsel if there's instances of misconduct or abuse. Discord doesn't support the same level of chat history/logging that businesses (of all sizes) care about.
- k__ 6y agoI know. I just don't understand why it's important for text based communication, but not voice.
- jessaustin 6y agoI think this is why we often get that "this call may be recorded for training purposes" message while waiting in the call center queue? Even if they're not actually keeping all those recordings, they can pass the legal test by saying that they do.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ponker 6y agoThe big requirements for enterprise use are: single-sign on, compliance with regulations (e.g. a multinational company needs to know that you are in compliance with the laws around data retention, data locale, etc. for their own data, in every country that it operates in), and API support for eDiscovery.