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Discord missed a chance to build a community. That might sound absurd, but what separates Discord from HN (among many other things) is that we have consistent i

Discord missed a chance to build a community. That might sound absurd, but what separates Discord from HN (among many other things) is that we have consistent identities here. You can go and see what I’ve been up to. Ditto for me being curious about you. That curiosity is an important factor, and Discord’s naming system didn’t foster it at all. I’m theshawwn on Twitter. shawwn on GitHub. sillysaurusx on HN. I was once on discord for years, till I left — and when I left, I felt no loss. There was nothing attaching me to discord. If I abandoned any of those others, it would feel awful; my entire ML history is codified in twitter, and anyone can go read it. Whereas I can’t even remember what my discord username was. You might be thinking that you’d lose the servers. If you leave discord, you have to rejoin everywhere if you make a new account. But rejoining is easy; it’s the point of discord to join servers. So that’s not really “a thing” the way that my HN comments are a thing, or my GitHub repos, or tweets. This change is the first step in letting users feel attached to discord. If they play their cards right, you’ll start to feel like “this is me” the way that those other services feel like a part of you. Being able to link someone to discord.gg/shawwn (or whatever) is no small thing — it’s a reason to care about staying on discord at all. I don’t know if this change will matter at this point, but it’s nice to see them still pivoting and trying to fix their fundamentals. Making big changes to community software is such a tricky thing (how many times have we seen a mass exodus? I can think of at least 7, with digg being the limit case of what not to do) so I respect that they’re willing to take a risk at this point in their growth stage.

datpuz 4y ago
> You can go and see what I’ve been up to. Not everyone wants this. I'm in Discords with friends, I'm in game hacking Discords, I'm in Overemployed Discords, etc. I don't want everyone knowing what Discords I'm active in.
- samtheprogram 4y ago
  In my opinion this is one reason why Discord is so successful and the place I feel most free to communicate. Everything you do on the platform doesn’t follow you everywhere. If any person could see everything I’m doing in B, C, and D community automatically (or even what communities I’m apart of to then track down everything I’ve ever said), I would be way less inclined to be myself and participate at all. Lack of chilling effects. It’s a feature, not a bug.
  - tysam_and 4y ago
    But it does. Discord tells other people what mutual communities you are in together, which has personally been a source of discomfort when I don't want one region of my life to cross over into another, but some curious and chatty person brings it up in a public chat to talk about. I'd like pseudotrue pseudonymity please.
    - waboremo 4y ago
      Then make separate accounts?
      - tysam_and 4y ago
        I mean, this sort reads to me like the software development "It's not too hard, all you have to do is..." morass that I'm sure we've both encountered at one point or another. Then comes account switching, which you manually have to do as it's not natively supported by any of the clients. This is especially a pain. What I'm looking for as a user is a way to optionally obscure what my base profile name is, since the server name is what people interact with anyways, and to not list mutual servers by default in the profile (or at least, be able to turn it off). It's not even really for a nefarious purpose, I just like having nice and clean compartments for different areas of interaction. It's predictable and keeps the world a lot smaller in a nice an structured kind of manner.
        waboremo 4y ago
        Account switching is natively supported by Discord for a while now. On all platforms. Unless you're using a third party app in which case, time to switch! I feel you're overthinking the problem. Discord encourages multiple accounts, make them and separate your identities. Bonus: you don't have to fiddle around with keeping servers in certain folders to keep track of which identity you're using where.
        tysam_and 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sBqQu3U0wH 4y ago
>You can go and see what I’ve been up to. Ditto for me being curious about you. I think this is probably one of the worst features (alongside downvotes / upvotes) about HN, Reddit and similar sites. If you are anonymous your opinion can be taken for what it is without any bias and ad hominem due to your previous comments. We can argue in one thread about something, and agree in another without even recognizing each other. It makes one focus on the content of the post and not on the personality of the author.
- krapp 4y ago
  Social pressure and consequence is necessary to maintain a civil community. Common identities create common bonds. Your comment history is there specifically so others can judge you as a person and decide whether interaction with you is worth the effort. That's better than the tendentious mess of only finding out you're dealing with a psychopath or serial troll after the rafters have caught fire. Anonymity tends to lead to the most vile comments being made behind green alt accounts. This isn't 4chan, we don't want that here.
  - Pet_Ant 4y ago
    > Anonymity tends to lead to the most vile comments being made behind green alt accounts. This isn't 4chan, we don't want that here And publicity leads to bottling up comments that go against the grain or might provoke controversy leading to groupthink. We don't want that here either.
    - _xivi 4y ago
      > And publicity leads to bottling up comments that go against the grain or might provoke controversy leading to groupthink. That's much easier to moderate than anonymous vile comments. It may not be exactly a civil discussion but you're still learning something about these people and their views. I'm happy that there are websites with different cultures, so people can choose the best outlet to express their view instead of mudding the water here and turning it to flame wars or whatever.
    - 4y ago
odessacubbage 4y ago
disposability is like, the main appeal of discord.
Gigachad 4y ago
This is exactly what I don’t want. I’m so sick of people stalking through my comments on reddit piecing things together from multiple communities. I very much like that when I join a discord server. It’s pretty much a blank slate.

datpuz 4y ago

> You can go and see what I’ve been up to. Not everyone wants this. I'm in Discords with friends, I'm in game hacking Discords, I'm in Overemployed Discords, etc. I don't want everyone knowing what Discords I'm active in.

samtheprogram 4y ago
In my opinion this is one reason why Discord is so successful and the place I feel most free to communicate. Everything you do on the platform doesn’t follow you everywhere. If any person could see everything I’m doing in B, C, and D community automatically (or even what communities I’m apart of to then track down everything I’ve ever said), I would be way less inclined to be myself and participate at all. Lack of chilling effects. It’s a feature, not a bug.
- tysam_and 4y ago
  But it does. Discord tells other people what mutual communities you are in together, which has personally been a source of discomfort when I don't want one region of my life to cross over into another, but some curious and chatty person brings it up in a public chat to talk about. I'd like pseudotrue pseudonymity please.
  - waboremo 4y ago
    Then make separate accounts?
    - tysam_and 4y ago
      I mean, this sort reads to me like the software development "It's not too hard, all you have to do is..." morass that I'm sure we've both encountered at one point or another. Then comes account switching, which you manually have to do as it's not natively supported by any of the clients. This is especially a pain. What I'm looking for as a user is a way to optionally obscure what my base profile name is, since the server name is what people interact with anyways, and to not list mutual servers by default in the profile (or at least, be able to turn it off). It's not even really for a nefarious purpose, I just like having nice and clean compartments for different areas of interaction. It's predictable and keeps the world a lot smaller in a nice an structured kind of manner.
      - waboremo 4y ago
        Account switching is natively supported by Discord for a while now. On all platforms. Unless you're using a third party app in which case, time to switch! I feel you're overthinking the problem. Discord encourages multiple accounts, make them and separate your identities. Bonus: you don't have to fiddle around with keeping servers in certain folders to keep track of which identity you're using where.
        tysam_and 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sBqQu3U0wH 4y ago

>You can go and see what I’ve been up to. Ditto for me being curious about you. I think this is probably one of the worst features (alongside downvotes / upvotes) about HN, Reddit and similar sites. If you are anonymous your opinion can be taken for what it is without any bias and ad hominem due to your previous comments. We can argue in one thread about something, and agree in another without even recognizing each other. It makes one focus on the content of the post and not on the personality of the author.

krapp 4y ago
Social pressure and consequence is necessary to maintain a civil community. Common identities create common bonds. Your comment history is there specifically so others can judge you as a person and decide whether interaction with you is worth the effort. That's better than the tendentious mess of only finding out you're dealing with a psychopath or serial troll after the rafters have caught fire. Anonymity tends to lead to the most vile comments being made behind green alt accounts. This isn't 4chan, we don't want that here.
- Pet_Ant 4y ago
  > Anonymity tends to lead to the most vile comments being made behind green alt accounts. This isn't 4chan, we don't want that here And publicity leads to bottling up comments that go against the grain or might provoke controversy leading to groupthink. We don't want that here either.
  - _xivi 4y ago
    > And publicity leads to bottling up comments that go against the grain or might provoke controversy leading to groupthink. That's much easier to moderate than anonymous vile comments. It may not be exactly a civil discussion but you're still learning something about these people and their views. I'm happy that there are websites with different cultures, so people can choose the best outlet to express their view instead of mudding the water here and turning it to flame wars or whatever.
  - 4y ago

odessacubbage 4y ago

disposability is like, the main appeal of discord.

Gigachad 4y ago

This is exactly what I don’t want. I’m so sick of people stalking through my comments on reddit piecing things together from multiple communities. I very much like that when I join a discord server. It’s pretty much a blank slate.