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>This is just my personal opinion, but I think email lists the most accessible decentralized substitute. Yeah, and IRC is the best web chat. We kept hearing th

>This is just my personal opinion, but I think email lists the most accessible decentralized substitute. Yeah, and IRC is the best web chat. We kept hearing that myopic old-school-dev-centered view on things for ages. What did it result in? People now beg FOSS projects not to use Discord (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29712098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29712098). New generations of people, even software developers, aren't accustomed to old featureless technologies; and they consider them crappy. No, they aren't going to tinker with setting up an FTP server, they will just install Dropbox contrary to what HN users were commenting on that thread when Dropbox was announced (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224). After all of that happening can we at least agree that email is not a good substitute for Reddit?

Shared404 5y ago
> New generations of people, even software developers, aren't accustomed to old featureless technologies; and they consider them crappy. 20 year old who uses SFTP/FTP and IRC, and has never touched Dropbox + barely touched Discord checking in. While there is some truth to what you say, it's not the full story. Even people from my generation can look around at the state of tech and see what does and doesn't make sense.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hvidgaard 5y ago
I think one of the things that "old school" people completely miss, is convenience. Your examples of Discord and Dropbox are two very good examples of that. They just work. They work on workstation and mobile devices alike. I totally get why people choose that. I think the sad thing is that the free tools could be close to that and with careful open standard planning, it could even have for-profit companies participating. Email is one such example. Chat and screen sharing should have been another.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  > it could even have for-profit companies participating Why would they? edit: "Old school people" don't "miss" convenience, they would love convenience. Instead they have standards and platforms that are sabotaged or abandoned when convenient by companied building lock-in. What we get was built by people in their spare time, or chiseled out of academic funding, and though it often sucks we should be thankful for it. I think the chance that anything on Discord will exist in 10 years is probably about 2%. If Discord exists (25%?), they'll have blanket deleted old data multiple times by then. Not that it matters much, because finding anything old on Discord is impossible anyway.
  - hvidgaard 5y ago
    If tech heads valued convenience enough we would see some solutions in the space. Instead they spend their free spare time on a million other things - and that is okay. But they really shouldn't be surprised when non tech people use Discord over IRC, or even when young techies do to work on other things they find more interesting.
  - phicoh 5y ago
    I don't understand this. Older protocols don't keep any state. Many people were quite upset when old Usenet archives came online. IRC, XMPP, by default, servers don't keep any state. So why is that Discord would be required to keep state? And then the freenode story shows, even if you effectively lock up all meta data. People still think IRC is great and move to the next network.
- rglullis 5y ago
  You know what also "just worked" on Windows, Linux, MacOS and mobile? Skype.
  - hvidgaard 5y ago
    The old version yes - but it has gotten worse and worse over the years unfortunately.
quadrifoliate 5y ago
I think you are combining a few things in order to say (essentially) "You're antiquated" – which is fair, but let's tease those apart for a bit: > Yeah, and IRC is the best web chat. We kept hearing that myopic old-school-dev-centered view on things for ages. What did it result in? People now beg FOSS projects not to use Discord (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29712098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29712098) I...don't see how this negates my worldview exactly. Yes, Discord is cool-looking and easy to get started with; and IRC has quite a few problems since time immemorial. This does not negate the fact that Discord is a proprietary platform that can eat your data and show you the door at any second, which is precisely why people are begging FOSS projects to not use it. > No, they aren't going to tinker with setting up an FTP server...<link to curlftps comment> I think you might have overlooked the part of my comment where I select email precisely because it uses boring old technology that is already available as native applications. No one has to install FTP servers to use email, they simply have to use their existing email setup. Guess what you also have to use to reset your Discord password -- that's right, email. > After all of that happening can we at least agree that email is not a good substitute for Reddit? Overall, you appear to be replying to a comment I didn't make -- something like "Just set up an email list and an IRC server, it's real easy!". On the contrary, I don't think any of these things are easy, I recognize that Discord and other proprietary platforms have significant UX advantages. But I am suggesting we make an effort to highlight their risks as well, and focus on improving the UX of open platforms if we don't want our data to be easily locked up in walled gardens.
- jasode 5y ago
  >, but I think email lists the most accessible decentralized substitute. [...] my comment where I select email precisely because it uses boring old technology that is already available as native applications. No one has to install FTP servers to use email, they simply have to use their existing email setup. If you're talking about pure email-clients-to-email-clients (p2p) as an implementation of a "mailing list", then yes, no extra software or host server has to be installed. However, this type of p2p setup is not scalable for adding new contributors. (E.g., many users would not want 1000s of email addresses of people they don't know in their personal address book just to facilitate FOSS discussions or bug reports.) Instead, the typical mailing list requires a server to host the messages for people to subscribe to. Most programmers (e.g. leaders of a FOSS project) would only have "existing email setup" like Thunderbird/MSOutlook _clients_ and therefore missing the mail _server_ architecture. This means your assumption of "already available native apps" doesn't apply. If a FOSS project wants to use a mail server, they need to figure out which software/service to use and how to pay for hosting. Compare the decision tree, effort, and costs for email server -vs- Discord "server": - https://huridocs.org/2016/06/setting-up-an-email-discussion-list-for-a-security-conscious-community/ https://huridocs.org/2016/06/setting-up-an-email-discussion-... ... vs ... - https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/204849977-How-do-I-create-a-server- https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/204849977-How-... > Guess what you also have to use to reset your Discord password -- that's right, email. Right but an existing email account (on somebody else's mail server) -- is a different beast than an email server to host mailing lists.
dTal 5y ago
>New generations of people, even software developers, aren't accustomed to old featureless technologies; and they consider them crappy Right, so an underlying problem here is the optimization of our tools for "fun" and stimulation and little dopamine hits, instead of actual work. Remember Clippy? That's all tools now. Bright colors and blinkenlights, flashing popups, offers to "help". How can a boring utility tool like a text editor or an IRC client compete? The trend is undeniable, but I don't think it's one that should be embraced. Let FOSS be the "serious" software.
- masklinn 5y ago
  > Right, so an underlying problem here is the optimization of our tools for "fun" and stimulation and little dopamine hits, instead of actual work. It’s really not a question of fun, but of flexibility and convenience. Of being able to send message and have them not look like garbage, of being able to send a file and not need to open ports on your router, of sending a graph and it actually showing up. That’s why tools like notebooks are valued. Or even godbolt: your way is that I tell you to install gigabytes worth of compilers (half of which you might not even be able to get let alone know how to use) and provide a program listing you can’t even paste properly.
  - hedgewitch 5y ago
    I think there's an even more understated value here: being able to send a file and the server never running out of space and you, the user, never having to worry about it and wonder "should I have just uploaded this somewhere else and linked it?"
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Reaction icons on Slack/Discord posts are actually useful. Adding a "+1", "agreed" or "done" react on a message is far less intrusive than a reply message to that effect, especially if you don't have threading (like IRC). You could even use them as an additional input/output signalling channel for automation or bots, if you were so inclined. That aside, communication tools facilitate human to human communication first and foremost. In natural person to person communication, there are many additional information channels than just the content of your speech. There is your tone of voice, body language (however overrated that might seem), gesturing, scribbling a quick diagram on a napkin, laughter, winking, and whatever else. A good communication medium will strive to let you communicate as many of these things as possible, by analogy if needed. A reaction GIF can communicate a great deal about the non-tangibles of the other person's state of mind, and help you both understand their intent better, and know them better as a person. If you want to keep your communication serious, establish channel rules that forbid certain types of expression to change the tone of discussion, or use a client that doesn't implement such features/lets you disable them. Don't limit it at the technology or protocol level.
zozbot234 5y ago
> People now beg FOSS projects not to use Discord And quite rightly so. There's zero reason to use Discord when Matrix exists and has an almost identical UX.
rglullis 5y ago
Nice! Evidence #835 that ageism is still socially acceptable in tech... To your point, though. Nobody is asking you to use IRC. The "older" people are only giving a warning: don't build your house on someone else's land. Sooner or later, the land owner will take notice of all the nice things that are built there and will find a way to extract rent and/or take it from you. It has happened before and it will keep happening until all the coming generations (i.e, the young know-it-alls who think have everything under control) learn the lesson. IRC is "old"? Fine. Go help build a better alternative, in any small way you can. But please don't continue to build your house on someone else's land.
- 323 5y ago
  I'm old and I don't like IRC. It's so annoying to use. It's almost as bad today as it was in the 90s. > Go help build a better alternative Yeah, people did that. It's called Discord.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    No, it's not. "People" didn't build Discord. A company built it, then sold it to Microsoft for more than $10 billion. There is nothing guaranteeing that it's still going to be around in the next 5 years, let alone the next 10 or 50 or 100. Remember the last "better alternative" that was also very good, worked on all major platforms, also got sold to MS for multiple billions? To go back to the OP's point and the article. If you are a neophyte who cares about nothing but the immediate convenience, sure, stick with whatever Big Tech is pushing you. But if you want longevity and stability, DO NOT BUILD YOUR HOUSE ON SOMEONE ELSE'S LAND.
    - bikingbismuth 5y ago
      Discord didn’t end up selling to Microsoft.
    - a2128 5y ago
      > A company built it, then sold it to Microsoft for more than $10 billion. Didn't Discord end up ending talks with Microsoft and staying independent? I don't think this deal ever actually went through.
pinephoneguy 5y ago
>After all of that happening can we at least agree that email is not a good substitute for Reddit? Absolutely not, I have Reddit blocked in /etc/hosts as there appears to be nothing of value there at all these days. Sorting threads by vote count is brain damaged and brain damaging. Also everyone has email and it works fairly well. Viacom can’t just come in and “buy email” so they can kick people off for having certain opinions like they did Reddit. Despite new people asking the same questions on mailing lists, new discussions are often the norm unlike Reddit where the same mediocre garbage is always pushed to the top and the same uninformed comments fill the comment sections. Not to mention, every day the Reddit UI gets more and more awful and they seem intent on destroying the site over it.
thefz 5y ago
> New generations of people, even software developers, aren't accustomed to old featureless technologies; For the sake of retaining information, an old fashioned forum is feature rich, while Discord's offerings are... animated GIFs? Emojis? > No, they aren't going to tinker with setting up an FTP server Their loss then.

Shared404 5y ago

> New generations of people, even software developers, aren't accustomed to old featureless technologies; and they consider them crappy. 20 year old who uses SFTP/FTP and IRC, and has never touched Dropbox + barely touched Discord checking in. While there is some truth to what you say, it's not the full story. Even people from my generation can look around at the state of tech and see what does and doesn't make sense.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

hvidgaard 5y ago

I think one of the things that "old school" people completely miss, is convenience. Your examples of Discord and Dropbox are two very good examples of that. They just work. They work on workstation and mobile devices alike. I totally get why people choose that. I think the sad thing is that the free tools could be close to that and with careful open standard planning, it could even have for-profit companies participating. Email is one such example. Chat and screen sharing should have been another.

pessimizer 5y ago
> it could even have for-profit companies participating Why would they? edit: "Old school people" don't "miss" convenience, they would love convenience. Instead they have standards and platforms that are sabotaged or abandoned when convenient by companied building lock-in. What we get was built by people in their spare time, or chiseled out of academic funding, and though it often sucks we should be thankful for it. I think the chance that anything on Discord will exist in 10 years is probably about 2%. If Discord exists (25%?), they'll have blanket deleted old data multiple times by then. Not that it matters much, because finding anything old on Discord is impossible anyway.
- hvidgaard 5y ago
  If tech heads valued convenience enough we would see some solutions in the space. Instead they spend their free spare time on a million other things - and that is okay. But they really shouldn't be surprised when non tech people use Discord over IRC, or even when young techies do to work on other things they find more interesting.
- phicoh 5y ago
  I don't understand this. Older protocols don't keep any state. Many people were quite upset when old Usenet archives came online. IRC, XMPP, by default, servers don't keep any state. So why is that Discord would be required to keep state? And then the freenode story shows, even if you effectively lock up all meta data. People still think IRC is great and move to the next network.
rglullis 5y ago
You know what also "just worked" on Windows, Linux, MacOS and mobile? Skype.
- hvidgaard 5y ago
  The old version yes - but it has gotten worse and worse over the years unfortunately.

quadrifoliate 5y ago

I think you are combining a few things in order to say (essentially) "You're antiquated" – which is fair, but let's tease those apart for a bit: > Yeah, and IRC is the best web chat. We kept hearing that myopic old-school-dev-centered view on things for ages. What did it result in? People now beg FOSS projects not to use Discord (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29712098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29712098) I...don't see how this negates my worldview exactly. Yes, Discord is cool-looking and easy to get started with; and IRC has quite a few problems since time immemorial. This does not negate the fact that Discord is a proprietary platform that can eat your data and show you the door at any second, which is precisely why people are begging FOSS projects to not use it. > No, they aren't going to tinker with setting up an FTP server...<link to curlftps comment> I think you might have overlooked the part of my comment where I select email precisely because it uses boring old technology that is already available as native applications. No one has to install FTP servers to use email, they simply have to use their existing email setup. Guess what you also have to use to reset your Discord password -- that's right, email. > After all of that happening can we at least agree that email is not a good substitute for Reddit? Overall, you appear to be replying to a comment I didn't make -- something like "Just set up an email list and an IRC server, it's real easy!". On the contrary, I don't think any of these things are easy, I recognize that Discord and other proprietary platforms have significant UX advantages. But I am suggesting we make an effort to highlight their risks as well, and focus on improving the UX of open platforms if we don't want our data to be easily locked up in walled gardens.

jasode 5y ago
>, but I think email lists the most accessible decentralized substitute. [...] my comment where I select email precisely because it uses boring old technology that is already available as native applications. No one has to install FTP servers to use email, they simply have to use their existing email setup. If you're talking about pure email-clients-to-email-clients (p2p) as an implementation of a "mailing list", then yes, no extra software or host server has to be installed. However, this type of p2p setup is not scalable for adding new contributors. (E.g., many users would not want 1000s of email addresses of people they don't know in their personal address book just to facilitate FOSS discussions or bug reports.) Instead, the typical mailing list requires a server to host the messages for people to subscribe to. Most programmers (e.g. leaders of a FOSS project) would only have "existing email setup" like Thunderbird/MSOutlook _clients_ and therefore missing the mail _server_ architecture. This means your assumption of "already available native apps" doesn't apply. If a FOSS project wants to use a mail server, they need to figure out which software/service to use and how to pay for hosting. Compare the decision tree, effort, and costs for email server -vs- Discord "server": - https://huridocs.org/2016/06/setting-up-an-email-discussion-list-for-a-security-conscious-community/ https://huridocs.org/2016/06/setting-up-an-email-discussion-... ... vs ... - https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/204849977-How-do-I-create-a-server- https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/204849977-How-... > Guess what you also have to use to reset your Discord password -- that's right, email. Right but an existing email account (on somebody else's mail server) -- is a different beast than an email server to host mailing lists.

dTal 5y ago

>New generations of people, even software developers, aren't accustomed to old featureless technologies; and they consider them crappy Right, so an underlying problem here is the optimization of our tools for "fun" and stimulation and little dopamine hits, instead of actual work. Remember Clippy? That's all tools now. Bright colors and blinkenlights, flashing popups, offers to "help". How can a boring utility tool like a text editor or an IRC client compete? The trend is undeniable, but I don't think it's one that should be embraced. Let FOSS be the "serious" software.

masklinn 5y ago
> Right, so an underlying problem here is the optimization of our tools for "fun" and stimulation and little dopamine hits, instead of actual work. It’s really not a question of fun, but of flexibility and convenience. Of being able to send message and have them not look like garbage, of being able to send a file and not need to open ports on your router, of sending a graph and it actually showing up. That’s why tools like notebooks are valued. Or even godbolt: your way is that I tell you to install gigabytes worth of compilers (half of which you might not even be able to get let alone know how to use) and provide a program listing you can’t even paste properly.
- hedgewitch 5y ago
  I think there's an even more understated value here: being able to send a file and the server never running out of space and you, the user, never having to worry about it and wonder "should I have just uploaded this somewhere else and linked it?"
selfhoster11 5y ago
Reaction icons on Slack/Discord posts are actually useful. Adding a "+1", "agreed" or "done" react on a message is far less intrusive than a reply message to that effect, especially if you don't have threading (like IRC). You could even use them as an additional input/output signalling channel for automation or bots, if you were so inclined. That aside, communication tools facilitate human to human communication first and foremost. In natural person to person communication, there are many additional information channels than just the content of your speech. There is your tone of voice, body language (however overrated that might seem), gesturing, scribbling a quick diagram on a napkin, laughter, winking, and whatever else. A good communication medium will strive to let you communicate as many of these things as possible, by analogy if needed. A reaction GIF can communicate a great deal about the non-tangibles of the other person's state of mind, and help you both understand their intent better, and know them better as a person. If you want to keep your communication serious, establish channel rules that forbid certain types of expression to change the tone of discussion, or use a client that doesn't implement such features/lets you disable them. Don't limit it at the technology or protocol level.

zozbot234 5y ago

> People now beg FOSS projects not to use Discord And quite rightly so. There's zero reason to use Discord when Matrix exists and has an almost identical UX.

rglullis 5y ago

Nice! Evidence #835 that ageism is still socially acceptable in tech... To your point, though. Nobody is asking you to use IRC. The "older" people are only giving a warning: don't build your house on someone else's land. Sooner or later, the land owner will take notice of all the nice things that are built there and will find a way to extract rent and/or take it from you. It has happened before and it will keep happening until all the coming generations (i.e, the young know-it-alls who think have everything under control) learn the lesson. IRC is "old"? Fine. Go help build a better alternative, in any small way you can. But please don't continue to build your house on someone else's land.

323 5y ago
I'm old and I don't like IRC. It's so annoying to use. It's almost as bad today as it was in the 90s. > Go help build a better alternative Yeah, people did that. It's called Discord.
- rglullis 5y ago
  No, it's not. "People" didn't build Discord. A company built it, then sold it to Microsoft for more than $10 billion. There is nothing guaranteeing that it's still going to be around in the next 5 years, let alone the next 10 or 50 or 100. Remember the last "better alternative" that was also very good, worked on all major platforms, also got sold to MS for multiple billions? To go back to the OP's point and the article. If you are a neophyte who cares about nothing but the immediate convenience, sure, stick with whatever Big Tech is pushing you. But if you want longevity and stability, DO NOT BUILD YOUR HOUSE ON SOMEONE ELSE'S LAND.
  - bikingbismuth 5y ago
    Discord didn’t end up selling to Microsoft.
  - a2128 5y ago
    > A company built it, then sold it to Microsoft for more than $10 billion. Didn't Discord end up ending talks with Microsoft and staying independent? I don't think this deal ever actually went through.

pinephoneguy 5y ago

>After all of that happening can we at least agree that email is not a good substitute for Reddit? Absolutely not, I have Reddit blocked in /etc/hosts as there appears to be nothing of value there at all these days. Sorting threads by vote count is brain damaged and brain damaging. Also everyone has email and it works fairly well. Viacom can’t just come in and “buy email” so they can kick people off for having certain opinions like they did Reddit. Despite new people asking the same questions on mailing lists, new discussions are often the norm unlike Reddit where the same mediocre garbage is always pushed to the top and the same uninformed comments fill the comment sections. Not to mention, every day the Reddit UI gets more and more awful and they seem intent on destroying the site over it.

thefz 5y ago

> New generations of people, even software developers, aren't accustomed to old featureless technologies; For the sake of retaining information, an old fashioned forum is feature rich, while Discord's offerings are... animated GIFs? Emojis? > No, they aren't going to tinker with setting up an FTP server Their loss then.