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Nitpick: > Discord appears to inflate its participation numbers compared to other services. It shows all users who have ever joined the server, rather than all

Nitpick: > Discord appears to inflate its participation numbers compared to other services. It shows all users who have ever joined the server, rather than all users who are actively using the server. There are plenty of popular IRC channels full of sessions whose only activity is rejoining on disconnection. I mention this because the recent forced move from Freenode to Libera made me notice how many IRC names simply kept on joining Freenode during the period when all other activity on the channels has otherwise died and the topics were updated to point towards Libera.

smarx007 5y ago
To be fair, I rejoined most of the channels on Libera AND stayed in the Freenode channels to keep an eye on them (until they wiped all accounts overnight, didn’t re-register).
- phoe-krk 5y ago
  Yes, that's one other point that inflated the statistics a little bit - still, on the channels I was a part of, I kind of knew which names belonged to people who were active lurkers and which ones were names that I hadn't ever seen say a word.
mst 5y ago
This is absolutely true but "all users who could be bothered keeping a client running w/autoreconnect to that specific channel" is still less inflationary than "all users who bothered joining this channel cluster ever". So ... you're absolutely correct, and it was kinda fascinating to get a clearer handle on those numbers as I helped what felt like half the world migrate to libera, but I don't think your being right about that makes your point a particularly good nitpick of the article itself.
- phoe-krk 5y ago
  Yep, I agree. I simply wanted to notice that user inflation is also a problem on IRC, even though it's a smaller one - now even more so after Freenode is gone.
moffkalast 5y ago
Another nitpick: > with one side that’s willing to use the proprietary Discord client, and one side that isn’t. By choosing Discord, you also lock out users with accessibility needs, for whom the proprietary Discord client is often a nightmare to use.1 Users who cannot afford new enough hardware to make the resource-intensive client pleasant to use are also left by the wayside Discord runs fine in the browser, I've been using it for years any never installed anything. So there's nothing more proprietary than other websites, and you can probably use chrome accessibility features. I have this slight feeling this guy has a grudge and is writing this in bad faith. Matrix, Zulip and Rocket Chat are good alternatives, but I can't believe he's suggesting to use IRC in 2021. Way to drive people away from your project that way when nobody knows how to use your limited team chat haha.

smarx007 5y ago

To be fair, I rejoined most of the channels on Libera AND stayed in the Freenode channels to keep an eye on them (until they wiped all accounts overnight, didn’t re-register).

phoe-krk 5y ago
Yes, that's one other point that inflated the statistics a little bit - still, on the channels I was a part of, I kind of knew which names belonged to people who were active lurkers and which ones were names that I hadn't ever seen say a word.

mst 5y ago

This is absolutely true but "all users who could be bothered keeping a client running w/autoreconnect to that specific channel" is still less inflationary than "all users who bothered joining this channel cluster ever". So ... you're absolutely correct, and it was kinda fascinating to get a clearer handle on those numbers as I helped what felt like half the world migrate to libera, but I don't think your being right about that makes your point a particularly good nitpick of the article itself.

phoe-krk 5y ago
Yep, I agree. I simply wanted to notice that user inflation is also a problem on IRC, even though it's a smaller one - now even more so after Freenode is gone.

moffkalast 5y ago

Another nitpick: > with one side that’s willing to use the proprietary Discord client, and one side that isn’t. By choosing Discord, you also lock out users with accessibility needs, for whom the proprietary Discord client is often a nightmare to use.1 Users who cannot afford new enough hardware to make the resource-intensive client pleasant to use are also left by the wayside Discord runs fine in the browser, I've been using it for years any never installed anything. So there's nothing more proprietary than other websites, and you can probably use chrome accessibility features. I have this slight feeling this guy has a grudge and is writing this in bad faith. Matrix, Zulip and Rocket Chat are good alternatives, but I can't believe he's suggesting to use IRC in 2021. Way to drive people away from your project that way when nobody knows how to use your limited team chat haha.