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Disregarding closed source issue I find Discord, any chat, unsuitable as a public user-developer interface. Why? 1. Asynchrony. User needs time to collect dat

Disregarding closed source issue I find Discord, any chat, unsuitable as a public user-developer interface. Why? 1. Asynchrony. User needs time to collect data, write a bug report and so on. Developer needs time to reproduce the issue, work on it. Finally there are a lot of timezones - people ask/answer at different points of time. 2. Long lasting. Communication can take days, weeks and even months as new details emerge. Accessing a year old thread should be as easy as accessing a thread created yesterday. 3. Publicity. You want everything written to be as public as possible. Read access should be available to everyone without registration. Read access should be available via web browser. So that other users (who often experience the same issues) can easily find existing communication on the topic, and if they can't find it themselves you can at least send them a link which brings me to permanence. 4. Permanence. Each individual communication (message) should be accessible by a URI which never changes. Each individual communication page should have links to thread/parent/children/references. 5. Searchability. Follows from (3) and (4) but the easier it is for a user to find past discussions - the less noise you'll have. Chat systems such as Discord, Slack or Matrix are fundamentally incompatible with these requirements as they are focused on synchronous, ephemeral communication.

feanaro 5y ago
Permanence, long lasting messages and cross-server replication are one of the primary selling points of the Matrix protocol.
charcircuit 5y ago
>3 Discord servers can be configured to not require an account >4 Each message has a URL. You can easily copy a link to a message. >5 Discord allows you to search all messages in a server and use filters too.
- Macha 5y ago
  > Discord servers can be configured to not require an account But literally no one does this because of spam concerns > Discord allows you to search all messages in a server and use filters too. In Discord, while a forum or github issues or whatever will show up in your general internet search engine of choice.
- antifa 5y ago
  > Discord allows you to search all messages in a server and use filters too. Which is an absolutely terrible experience if you've ever actually needed to. > Discord servers can be configured to not require an account Still requires Javascript, no SEO, popups and nagging dialogs, overall bad experience.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
I think it’s a mistake to assume that developers can, or should, only talk to each other in one specific way. Every project I’m involved in has some mix of ephemeral chat and more permanent, long-lived communication. It could be as simple as a Discord and GitHub issues. Everyone understands that the chat is for quick conversations and GitHub issues is where things are documented for collaboration. In my experience, trying to force everyone into a single mode of communication becomes more of a problem. GitHub issues are impossible to follow when they have hundreds of side debates that should have been chats. IRC logs are impossible to consume when you have to search for vague keywords through endless months of backlogs to try to parse out specific topics. Let people discuss things where it fits best.
- williamstein 5y ago
  The Zig programming language approach to communications is a great example of what you advocate: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/wiki/Community https://github.com/ziglang/zig/wiki/Community
fghgg 5y ago
I disagree. Matrix has perma links to messages and can be indexed by Google. Asynchrony: threading should help here, perhaps also with long lasting
floatingatoll 5y ago
I disagree; of the requirements listed, only #1 is part of my needs from a publicly-accessible text chat group for a project. The remainder are familiar, but for various reasons and in certain combinations can end up promoting and enabling unsafe environments for healthy interpersonal discussion, so I no longer consider them as mandatory as I used to. To contrast our needs, my number one requirement from a chat system is that free-text searches of discussions cannot be performed without limit by non-members and non-participants. (I’m fine with bug trackers existing, of course.)
masklinn 5y ago
Others have already pointed out that pretty much all your point are wrong (1 is also wrong incidentally, discord is not a phone call, and wrt 2 nothing prevent moving discussion off of discord if it turns out to be a large undertaking, that doesn't remove the value of the simpler and more accessible channel as first step), but aside from that sometimes you want to ask a question about a question e.g. you've noticed something you find odd and have not seen whether it was normal or not, or you think that something is missing but don't know whether it's considered in scope for the project. Opening an issue is a huge signal, putting in little investment means the issue is likely to be closed with barely a look, and putting in a huge amount of investment is a waste of time when the issue gets closed as out of scope. Having a less formal channel with lower investment from all parties is useful.

feanaro 5y ago

Permanence, long lasting messages and cross-server replication are one of the primary selling points of the Matrix protocol.

charcircuit 5y ago

>3 Discord servers can be configured to not require an account >4 Each message has a URL. You can easily copy a link to a message. >5 Discord allows you to search all messages in a server and use filters too.

Macha 5y ago
> Discord servers can be configured to not require an account But literally no one does this because of spam concerns > Discord allows you to search all messages in a server and use filters too. In Discord, while a forum or github issues or whatever will show up in your general internet search engine of choice.
antifa 5y ago
> Discord allows you to search all messages in a server and use filters too. Which is an absolutely terrible experience if you've ever actually needed to. > Discord servers can be configured to not require an account Still requires Javascript, no SEO, popups and nagging dialogs, overall bad experience.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

I think it’s a mistake to assume that developers can, or should, only talk to each other in one specific way. Every project I’m involved in has some mix of ephemeral chat and more permanent, long-lived communication. It could be as simple as a Discord and GitHub issues. Everyone understands that the chat is for quick conversations and GitHub issues is where things are documented for collaboration. In my experience, trying to force everyone into a single mode of communication becomes more of a problem. GitHub issues are impossible to follow when they have hundreds of side debates that should have been chats. IRC logs are impossible to consume when you have to search for vague keywords through endless months of backlogs to try to parse out specific topics. Let people discuss things where it fits best.

williamstein 5y ago
The Zig programming language approach to communications is a great example of what you advocate: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/wiki/Community https://github.com/ziglang/zig/wiki/Community

fghgg 5y ago

I disagree. Matrix has perma links to messages and can be indexed by Google. Asynchrony: threading should help here, perhaps also with long lasting

floatingatoll 5y ago

I disagree; of the requirements listed, only #1 is part of my needs from a publicly-accessible text chat group for a project. The remainder are familiar, but for various reasons and in certain combinations can end up promoting and enabling unsafe environments for healthy interpersonal discussion, so I no longer consider them as mandatory as I used to. To contrast our needs, my number one requirement from a chat system is that free-text searches of discussions cannot be performed without limit by non-members and non-participants. (I’m fine with bug trackers existing, of course.)

masklinn 5y ago

Others have already pointed out that pretty much all your point are wrong (1 is also wrong incidentally, discord is not a phone call, and wrt 2 nothing prevent moving discussion off of discord if it turns out to be a large undertaking, that doesn't remove the value of the simpler and more accessible channel as first step), but aside from that sometimes you want to ask a question about a question e.g. you've noticed something you find odd and have not seen whether it was normal or not, or you think that something is missing but don't know whether it's considered in scope for the project. Opening an issue is a huge signal, putting in little investment means the issue is likely to be closed with barely a look, and putting in a huge amount of investment is a waste of time when the issue gets closed as out of scope. Having a less formal channel with lower investment from all parties is useful.