8 ms·

Please stop making Discord servers for things that shouldn't be Discord servers

68 points by julianlam 4y ago

caseyf7 4y ago
I recently started seeing open source projects that respond to GitHub issues with “hop on the Discord” which means the resolution doesn’t get documented and everyone else with the same issue has to “hop on the discord”.
- monkeybutton 4y ago
  Why are all these noobs asking repetitive questions? Maybe it's because Discord isn't indexed by search engines...
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    StackOverflow is newbie hostile, Discord groups aren't. Guess what the result is. SEO code spam sites rank higher on Google than StackOverflow for the same issues, that isn't exactly helping.
    - dancemethis 4y ago
      Discord is downright user hostile, actively gathering massive amounts of sensitive user data and metadata.
      - cinntaile 4y ago
        We're talking about very different things. Most people don't really care about what you're talking about, it's only a tiny minority that concern themselves with what user data is being collected.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      I have been using stack overflow for 9 years and I still reread my post 5 times before submitting to see if anyone is going to freak out over it. And yet a lot of the time they still get closed or have someone comment “um technically you didn’t use the proper term for this so your question makes no sense.”
  - pjc50 4y ago
    Generally because they don't yet know what to ask. And half of what they're looking for is to be less lost: to have a human connection with someone making the struggle of learning less alone. That's why the most enthusiastic helpers of newbies are the recently-not-noobs. Who in turn enjoy having "their" space on discord to dispense wisdom from. See also: why do cryptocurrencies have discords?
Netcob 4y ago
Not having a #memes channel sounds like not having any trash bins in the house because you expect everyone to take their trash outside to the large bin / container. What actually happens is that the trash will litter the entire house.
- Fradow 4y ago
  Do you litter your entire house or allow others to do so? How you deal with it is make it explicit that memes (or at least off-topic memes) are not allowed (and even excessive usage of on-topic meme is frowned upon), heavily enforce that rule and invite people who want to meme to join a meme server. At least that's how it's done in a ~10K member server and it has worked well so far. Plus it avoids lowering the discussion level to meme-level.
  - franga2000 4y ago
    > heavily enforce that rule vs > make a meme channel and mute it There's an order of magnitude difference in work required here
navjack27 4y ago
Fuck discord
- 7357 4y ago
  why?
  - Akronymus 4y ago
    I would hazard a guess that it is about being proprietary along with the moderation/admins not being too well liked.
  - herbst 4y ago
    My list why discord sucks: - Their clients are fat and hungry - Third party clients get removed - The CEO was owner of a data collection and selling company before. - Tencient owns to much ownership - They don't even claim to provide any kind of Privacy - DM Spam is horrible - Sometimes enforcing a phone number but don't even support some major carriers. - Some scams are using the same URLs for years. discord doesn't care. - Personally I find the UI confusing and unproductive. I never understood why it even got relevant outside of gaming. It's basically just a closed source, Chinese owned, privacy disrespecting IRC on steroids.
    - franga2000 4y ago
      > I never understood why it even got relevant outside of gaming. It's basically just a closed source, Chinese owned, privacy disrespecting IRC on steroids. That last part is all that matters. It's not "just IRC", like many HNers claim. It is the most advanced evolution of IRC currently available. People use it because it can do anything they want and more, all in one very convenient package. Nobody cares about externalities like who owns it and what data it collects. It works - extremely well. And it's free!
      - herbst 4y ago
        It's just a slack clone. Like mattermost or many other free clones that are just as 'advanced' the only features discord has/had that other slack clones don't have is the gaming integration stuff.
adamnemecek 4y ago
Discord is amazing. Hands down best platform.
- schleck8 4y ago
  Sure, but it's not really the best solution for developement. A subreddit would be better for asking issues or reporting bugs imo since you have currently trending submissions on the frontpage (= many people have this problem or it's severe), flairs and rich markdown including images, code etc (i know that discord has basic markdown but I haven't seen anyone use it and the messages tend to be short). > Bug report channels are chaos: developers and modders get flooded with complaints about bugs, then discussions of the bug, and then 10 more people reporting the same bug. If you've ever been annoyed by duplicate issue threads on Reddit or a forum, know that Discord is far worse. And obviously you don't need to get a discord account and join the discord just to quickly check one thing
  - adamnemecek 4y ago
    Reddit is so much less engaging. Like infinitely.
- theWreckluse 4y ago
  /s I suppose?
  - adamnemecek 4y ago
    It's actually not. There are few other types of SW I enjoy using as much as discord.
    - sockpuppet_12 4y ago
      Care to share?
      - adamnemecek 4y ago
krageon 4y ago
Things that shouldn't be discord servers: Everything that isn't a game guild of some sort. Even that is debatable, but I'm willing to grant it as it quite simply has very good voice isolation that you can't get in another place (i.e. mumble is significantly worse, especially on mobile). For chat, storing knowledge, "community building", etc it is all strictly worse than the alternatives. Mostly because it's closed-source, the search is bad (as it is everywhere) and the format doesn't lend itself well to any kind of documentation.
- shusui 4y ago
  >For chat, storing knowledge, "community building", etc it is all strictly worse than the alternatives. What alternatives do you suggest?
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    Honestly a subreddit right now is a better choice. Mainly cause it gets indexed. Who knows if reddit is going to keep it that way though. Alternatively github discussions might also be a good tool here.
  - kovalevski 4y ago
    something like Discourse (old good forums?)
  - krageon 4y ago
    Chat: IRC was good, XMPP has all the modern things folks apparently want, Matrix is the hip new chat thing. Storing knowledge: Has a good system already (a wiki, take your pick of software). It is widely used, everyone agrees it is good. What holds wikis back is most folks insist on using really bad wiki hosts that are full of ads and javascript. Community building: Forums (bad choice because nobody writes longform anymore, so why even have this)? Mastodon (not an ideal choice for the format, but it aligns with how people interact)? Literally anything that can be indexed and searched in a non-cancerous way gives you an advantage over Discord. If you'd ask me to do it, I'd probably go for an indexed mailing list. It's accessible to literally everyone and folks have used it to talk since the dawn of computers.
nineteen999 4y ago
I think we should setup a Discord server to discuss this.
animal531 4y ago
I'm an indie developer and see a ton of other indies making their own channels. It really is a bad fit and forums would be so much better.
dancemethis 4y ago
Well, nothing should be a Discord "server" in the first place. It needs to be undone, like its father OpenFeint after the privacy lawsuit. It's cute (but tragic) that people will put way more value on immediate convenience over minimum safety, but the proportion is way overblown in it.
Hamcha 4y ago
I get some of the frustration (especially with the projects using Discord for bug reporting and worse yet, hosting builds), but I think most of the uses are legitimate. Yes Discord is far from the best in most cases, but you can't deny how easy it is to onboard someone by telling them "just join the Discord" vs any alternative out there. ANY. I use my Discord servers for doing events, knowledge store (thanks pinned messages and mostly-functional search) and even just knowing when my favorite streamers go live (since Twitch notifications NEVER worked for me). You wanna go back to forums? Get a nice free hosted forum service that can eliminate as much friction as possible from joining and contributing. People will use whatever they find comfortable, even when it means using GitHub issues for blog comments.
- foxes 4y ago
  The average HN commentor seems like they are extremely out of touch. Most normal people do not care about the alleged privacy violations. They don't care it uses electron. For most people it runs fine. Honestly I know more, and I don't care much either, I think of it as an open public space and act accordingly. Most people do not want to have to sign into 20 different forums or use some archaic chat program. Matrix is nice but it still sucks in comparison. Discord voice and screen sharing is great. To solve the knowledge transparency issue, why not just get a bot to export your discussions to an open wiki/log/github/etc if you reach a resolution. A bot could probably make it all pretty seamless. Reading this website sometimes feels like people are extremely upset they cant make everyone else use primordial 90s software, writing everything in c and php, and also forcing everyone to use websites consisting solely of plain text files.
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    I think there is a legitimate concern here though. Discord, slack, etc have made it IMPOSSIBLE to get asynchronous help. Discord and slack and the other tools can help with this by allowing search engine indexing for these large public chats. Heck even github has been fucking with crawlers indexing issues and PRs. We literally now have websites that go and make a copy of github issue and make themselves indexable so search engines can pick them up. I legitimately don't care about privacy issues with these platforms, my only issue is that they've made self learning so much more difficult.

68 points by julianlam 4y ago

I recently started seeing open source projects that respond to GitHub issues with “hop on the Discord” which means the resolution doesn’t get documented and everyone else with the same issue has to “hop on the discord”.

monkeybutton 4y ago
Why are all these noobs asking repetitive questions? Maybe it's because Discord isn't indexed by search engines...
- cinntaile 4y ago
  StackOverflow is newbie hostile, Discord groups aren't. Guess what the result is. SEO code spam sites rank higher on Google than StackOverflow for the same issues, that isn't exactly helping.
  - dancemethis 4y ago
    Discord is downright user hostile, actively gathering massive amounts of sensitive user data and metadata.
    - cinntaile 4y ago
      We're talking about very different things. Most people don't really care about what you're talking about, it's only a tiny minority that concern themselves with what user data is being collected.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    I have been using stack overflow for 9 years and I still reread my post 5 times before submitting to see if anyone is going to freak out over it. And yet a lot of the time they still get closed or have someone comment “um technically you didn’t use the proper term for this so your question makes no sense.”
- pjc50 4y ago
  Generally because they don't yet know what to ask. And half of what they're looking for is to be less lost: to have a human connection with someone making the struggle of learning less alone. That's why the most enthusiastic helpers of newbies are the recently-not-noobs. Who in turn enjoy having "their" space on discord to dispense wisdom from. See also: why do cryptocurrencies have discords?

Netcob 4y ago

Not having a #memes channel sounds like not having any trash bins in the house because you expect everyone to take their trash outside to the large bin / container. What actually happens is that the trash will litter the entire house.

Fradow 4y ago
Do you litter your entire house or allow others to do so? How you deal with it is make it explicit that memes (or at least off-topic memes) are not allowed (and even excessive usage of on-topic meme is frowned upon), heavily enforce that rule and invite people who want to meme to join a meme server. At least that's how it's done in a ~10K member server and it has worked well so far. Plus it avoids lowering the discussion level to meme-level.
- franga2000 4y ago
  > heavily enforce that rule vs > make a meme channel and mute it There's an order of magnitude difference in work required here

navjack27 4y ago

Fuck discord

7357 4y ago
why?
- Akronymus 4y ago
  I would hazard a guess that it is about being proprietary along with the moderation/admins not being too well liked.
- herbst 4y ago
  My list why discord sucks: - Their clients are fat and hungry - Third party clients get removed - The CEO was owner of a data collection and selling company before. - Tencient owns to much ownership - They don't even claim to provide any kind of Privacy - DM Spam is horrible - Sometimes enforcing a phone number but don't even support some major carriers. - Some scams are using the same URLs for years. discord doesn't care. - Personally I find the UI confusing and unproductive. I never understood why it even got relevant outside of gaming. It's basically just a closed source, Chinese owned, privacy disrespecting IRC on steroids.
  - franga2000 4y ago
    > I never understood why it even got relevant outside of gaming. It's basically just a closed source, Chinese owned, privacy disrespecting IRC on steroids. That last part is all that matters. It's not "just IRC", like many HNers claim. It is the most advanced evolution of IRC currently available. People use it because it can do anything they want and more, all in one very convenient package. Nobody cares about externalities like who owns it and what data it collects. It works - extremely well. And it's free!
    - herbst 4y ago
      It's just a slack clone. Like mattermost or many other free clones that are just as 'advanced' the only features discord has/had that other slack clones don't have is the gaming integration stuff.

adamnemecek 4y ago

Discord is amazing. Hands down best platform.

schleck8 4y ago
Sure, but it's not really the best solution for developement. A subreddit would be better for asking issues or reporting bugs imo since you have currently trending submissions on the frontpage (= many people have this problem or it's severe), flairs and rich markdown including images, code etc (i know that discord has basic markdown but I haven't seen anyone use it and the messages tend to be short). > Bug report channels are chaos: developers and modders get flooded with complaints about bugs, then discussions of the bug, and then 10 more people reporting the same bug. If you've ever been annoyed by duplicate issue threads on Reddit or a forum, know that Discord is far worse. And obviously you don't need to get a discord account and join the discord just to quickly check one thing
- adamnemecek 4y ago
  Reddit is so much less engaging. Like infinitely.
theWreckluse 4y ago
/s I suppose?
- adamnemecek 4y ago
  It's actually not. There are few other types of SW I enjoy using as much as discord.
  - sockpuppet_12 4y ago
    Care to share?
    - adamnemecek 4y ago

krageon 4y ago

Things that shouldn't be discord servers: Everything that isn't a game guild of some sort. Even that is debatable, but I'm willing to grant it as it quite simply has very good voice isolation that you can't get in another place (i.e. mumble is significantly worse, especially on mobile). For chat, storing knowledge, "community building", etc it is all strictly worse than the alternatives. Mostly because it's closed-source, the search is bad (as it is everywhere) and the format doesn't lend itself well to any kind of documentation.

shusui 4y ago
>For chat, storing knowledge, "community building", etc it is all strictly worse than the alternatives. What alternatives do you suggest?
- aaomidi 4y ago
  Honestly a subreddit right now is a better choice. Mainly cause it gets indexed. Who knows if reddit is going to keep it that way though. Alternatively github discussions might also be a good tool here.
- kovalevski 4y ago
  something like Discourse (old good forums?)
- krageon 4y ago
  Chat: IRC was good, XMPP has all the modern things folks apparently want, Matrix is the hip new chat thing. Storing knowledge: Has a good system already (a wiki, take your pick of software). It is widely used, everyone agrees it is good. What holds wikis back is most folks insist on using really bad wiki hosts that are full of ads and javascript. Community building: Forums (bad choice because nobody writes longform anymore, so why even have this)? Mastodon (not an ideal choice for the format, but it aligns with how people interact)? Literally anything that can be indexed and searched in a non-cancerous way gives you an advantage over Discord. If you'd ask me to do it, I'd probably go for an indexed mailing list. It's accessible to literally everyone and folks have used it to talk since the dawn of computers.

nineteen999 4y ago

I think we should setup a Discord server to discuss this.

animal531 4y ago

I'm an indie developer and see a ton of other indies making their own channels. It really is a bad fit and forums would be so much better.

dancemethis 4y ago

Well, nothing should be a Discord "server" in the first place. It needs to be undone, like its father OpenFeint after the privacy lawsuit. It's cute (but tragic) that people will put way more value on immediate convenience over minimum safety, but the proportion is way overblown in it.

Hamcha 4y ago

I get some of the frustration (especially with the projects using Discord for bug reporting and worse yet, hosting builds), but I think most of the uses are legitimate. Yes Discord is far from the best in most cases, but you can't deny how easy it is to onboard someone by telling them "just join the Discord" vs any alternative out there. ANY. I use my Discord servers for doing events, knowledge store (thanks pinned messages and mostly-functional search) and even just knowing when my favorite streamers go live (since Twitch notifications NEVER worked for me). You wanna go back to forums? Get a nice free hosted forum service that can eliminate as much friction as possible from joining and contributing. People will use whatever they find comfortable, even when it means using GitHub issues for blog comments.

foxes 4y ago
The average HN commentor seems like they are extremely out of touch. Most normal people do not care about the alleged privacy violations. They don't care it uses electron. For most people it runs fine. Honestly I know more, and I don't care much either, I think of it as an open public space and act accordingly. Most people do not want to have to sign into 20 different forums or use some archaic chat program. Matrix is nice but it still sucks in comparison. Discord voice and screen sharing is great. To solve the knowledge transparency issue, why not just get a bot to export your discussions to an open wiki/log/github/etc if you reach a resolution. A bot could probably make it all pretty seamless. Reading this website sometimes feels like people are extremely upset they cant make everyone else use primordial 90s software, writing everything in c and php, and also forcing everyone to use websites consisting solely of plain text files.
- aaomidi 4y ago
  I think there is a legitimate concern here though. Discord, slack, etc have made it IMPOSSIBLE to get asynchronous help. Discord and slack and the other tools can help with this by allowing search engine indexing for these large public chats. Heck even github has been fucking with crawlers indexing issues and PRs. We literally now have websites that go and make a copy of github issue and make themselves indexable so search engines can pick them up. I legitimately don't care about privacy issues with these platforms, my only issue is that they've made self learning so much more difficult.