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I'm finding the majority of activity that would have happened on email lists is now in Discord. Personally I dread opening it - my CPU fan spins up and I'm conf

I'm finding the majority of activity that would have happened on email lists is now in Discord. Personally I dread opening it - my CPU fan spins up and I'm confronted with a thousand new messages and a lot of distracting fluff. To fully keep up with a community I'd have to scroll hundreds of messages, clicking on each channel, as opposed to simply scanning the subject line in an email and reading the 1% of interest.

ajb 3y ago
This. Honestly the most effective tool I ever used to navigate a "conversational space" was trn, which, solely with the keyboard, you could follow threads (as a tree) and truncate uninteresting ones, block idiots, search, etc. All later ones have been slower and more irritating.
- willtemperley 3y ago
  As a vim user that would be lovely. A short lived dream of a keyboard-centric discord has been killed by their ToS - third party clients are not allowed. Email is clunky, but it's decentralised and I can choose my client!
- hollerith 3y ago
  I found trn a very bad tool. There was no way for example to do what the back button in a browser does without instituting a search through an unbounded number of messages and IIRC finicky use of the arrow keys during the search while consulting the "tree view" in the upper right corner of the screen. Doing the analog of the back button was easy only when the current message is a reply to the message you want to get back to. Trn was optimized for the speed at which the user could consume (textual) information, but worse than the web at allowing the user to hone in on the one or two pieces of information (text) that the user most wants to know (even assuming a hypothetical world in which search engines do not exist). Most people find learning new things and new points of view to be pleasurable (and the fast the new things and new points of view are consumed, the greater the pleasure), and I am no exception, but my experience has been that using the internet to chase that pleasure for its own sake does more harm than good. Trn was better at producing the pleasure than the web was because information could be kept coming at a higher rate than by using the web for the same amount of mental effort. For example, when a person is done reading a web page there is some mental effort in deciding which page to go to next, e.g., which link to click. Yes, trn has keystrokes that say, "I'm done with this message, show me the next one" and "I'm done with this subtree, show me the next one", but I found it tempting to keep hitting the space bar, which yielded an experience in me of being constantly presented with new information ("stimuli") without having to make any decision or do any significant mental work, much like watching TV yields. I am going to guess that unlike me, you do not worry about adverse effects from your spending time on the internet taking in a constant stream of information rapidly presented; am I correct about that?
  - saltcured 3y ago
    But that's because trn was a "threaded news reader" not a "USENET archive search console". It was a very good tool for its intended purpose which, as you mention, was to consume a flow of news. Compare it to an email client or to other real-time chat fora. Also, it was a medium meant for participation, not just passive consumption. The client helped you find current topics and reply. Generally, nobody expected a newsgroup message archive to exist much less for searching of stale messages to be a normal activity. The client tools and most servers were meant to buffer just a useful fringe of traffic to allow people to follow the flow while engaging and disengaging from the groups in async bursts. We would sit at the terminal and participate for a session, then walk away. Back in the heyday of trn and USENET in general, it would be considered odd for people to hoard old messages, necropost on old threads (other than if there was some running in-joke to perpetuate in a certain group), or to be constantly online and obsessively responding with low latency throughout the whole day. Reply chains would often have multi-hour to multi-day latency, and higher volume groups were usually from more concurrent users and threads rather than more rapid messaging in a single chain.
    - hollerith 3y ago
      OK, let me refine my statement: trn prove a poor tool for me compared to Slashdot, HN or Stack Overflow.
- layer8 3y ago
  Yes, same for slrn and (for mailing lists) mutt. It only went down from there in terms of effectiveness (PHP web forums, Reddit, Twitter, Discord, also HN).
morning-coffee 3y ago
Yeah, as an old-timer (started coding int he 80's), I find it more difficult to find the information I'm looking for in general, but especially on Discord, where the questions and replies come with much higher volume, and the signal/noise ratio seems lower. Trying to search past discussions to avoid asking something that's already been answered simply takes too long. Maybe I just feel the need to read each in the hopes I don't miss something? I generally liked mailing lists back in the day when people took the time to craft very specific questions and responded with succinct answers. The results seemed more easily searchable to find relevant threads, which I would feel good about reading in detail, or skipping entirely. I dunno... maybe there are just way more people asking questions or participating nowadays (regardless of whether it's in a forum, Discord, or Github), so the volume of information is naturally way up, or maybe it's our cultural shift to "more of everything in less time" (so people aren't averse to searching first and posting after not finding vs. asking something previously answered), but the end result for me is a feeling of trying to find the interesting conversations in a party held in a packed stadium vs. a party held in someone's living room.
- willtemperley 3y ago
  Yes on platforms like Discord there's a _lot_ of noise in the form of sometimes-relevant one line comments, not succinct technical writing. For those really at the coal-face, e.g. full time project members and people learning new stuff, instant messaging works well. For a mid-forties developer like me who's keenly aware of their limited time and resources, I need the overview. Some communities manage this well, e.g. OpenStreetMap provides a weekly summary. Participation and information are both _way_ up but I think the noise is really symptom of instant messaging.
remram 3y ago
I like Discord, but I now have a new problem, it crashes every time my computer goes to sleep. This has caused me to miss important messages, and catching up and use the app less and less overall. I basically only get messages when I reboot my laptop (rare), before the first sleep.
ddingus 3y ago
Sure wish all that was searchable and archived. The forums were not as interactive, but the value is off the charts higher.

ajb 3y ago

This. Honestly the most effective tool I ever used to navigate a "conversational space" was trn, which, solely with the keyboard, you could follow threads (as a tree) and truncate uninteresting ones, block idiots, search, etc. All later ones have been slower and more irritating.

willtemperley 3y ago
As a vim user that would be lovely. A short lived dream of a keyboard-centric discord has been killed by their ToS - third party clients are not allowed. Email is clunky, but it's decentralised and I can choose my client!
hollerith 3y ago
I found trn a very bad tool. There was no way for example to do what the back button in a browser does without instituting a search through an unbounded number of messages and IIRC finicky use of the arrow keys during the search while consulting the "tree view" in the upper right corner of the screen. Doing the analog of the back button was easy only when the current message is a reply to the message you want to get back to. Trn was optimized for the speed at which the user could consume (textual) information, but worse than the web at allowing the user to hone in on the one or two pieces of information (text) that the user most wants to know (even assuming a hypothetical world in which search engines do not exist). Most people find learning new things and new points of view to be pleasurable (and the fast the new things and new points of view are consumed, the greater the pleasure), and I am no exception, but my experience has been that using the internet to chase that pleasure for its own sake does more harm than good. Trn was better at producing the pleasure than the web was because information could be kept coming at a higher rate than by using the web for the same amount of mental effort. For example, when a person is done reading a web page there is some mental effort in deciding which page to go to next, e.g., which link to click. Yes, trn has keystrokes that say, "I'm done with this message, show me the next one" and "I'm done with this subtree, show me the next one", but I found it tempting to keep hitting the space bar, which yielded an experience in me of being constantly presented with new information ("stimuli") without having to make any decision or do any significant mental work, much like watching TV yields. I am going to guess that unlike me, you do not worry about adverse effects from your spending time on the internet taking in a constant stream of information rapidly presented; am I correct about that?
- saltcured 3y ago
  But that's because trn was a "threaded news reader" not a "USENET archive search console". It was a very good tool for its intended purpose which, as you mention, was to consume a flow of news. Compare it to an email client or to other real-time chat fora. Also, it was a medium meant for participation, not just passive consumption. The client helped you find current topics and reply. Generally, nobody expected a newsgroup message archive to exist much less for searching of stale messages to be a normal activity. The client tools and most servers were meant to buffer just a useful fringe of traffic to allow people to follow the flow while engaging and disengaging from the groups in async bursts. We would sit at the terminal and participate for a session, then walk away. Back in the heyday of trn and USENET in general, it would be considered odd for people to hoard old messages, necropost on old threads (other than if there was some running in-joke to perpetuate in a certain group), or to be constantly online and obsessively responding with low latency throughout the whole day. Reply chains would often have multi-hour to multi-day latency, and higher volume groups were usually from more concurrent users and threads rather than more rapid messaging in a single chain.
  - hollerith 3y ago
    OK, let me refine my statement: trn prove a poor tool for me compared to Slashdot, HN or Stack Overflow.
layer8 3y ago
Yes, same for slrn and (for mailing lists) mutt. It only went down from there in terms of effectiveness (PHP web forums, Reddit, Twitter, Discord, also HN).

morning-coffee 3y ago

Yeah, as an old-timer (started coding int he 80's), I find it more difficult to find the information I'm looking for in general, but especially on Discord, where the questions and replies come with much higher volume, and the signal/noise ratio seems lower. Trying to search past discussions to avoid asking something that's already been answered simply takes too long. Maybe I just feel the need to read each in the hopes I don't miss something? I generally liked mailing lists back in the day when people took the time to craft very specific questions and responded with succinct answers. The results seemed more easily searchable to find relevant threads, which I would feel good about reading in detail, or skipping entirely. I dunno... maybe there are just way more people asking questions or participating nowadays (regardless of whether it's in a forum, Discord, or Github), so the volume of information is naturally way up, or maybe it's our cultural shift to "more of everything in less time" (so people aren't averse to searching first and posting after not finding vs. asking something previously answered), but the end result for me is a feeling of trying to find the interesting conversations in a party held in a packed stadium vs. a party held in someone's living room.

willtemperley 3y ago
Yes on platforms like Discord there's a _lot_ of noise in the form of sometimes-relevant one line comments, not succinct technical writing. For those really at the coal-face, e.g. full time project members and people learning new stuff, instant messaging works well. For a mid-forties developer like me who's keenly aware of their limited time and resources, I need the overview. Some communities manage this well, e.g. OpenStreetMap provides a weekly summary. Participation and information are both _way_ up but I think the noise is really symptom of instant messaging.

remram 3y ago

I like Discord, but I now have a new problem, it crashes every time my computer goes to sleep. This has caused me to miss important messages, and catching up and use the app less and less overall. I basically only get messages when I reboot my laptop (rare), before the first sleep.

ddingus 3y ago

Sure wish all that was searchable and archived. The forums were not as interactive, but the value is off the charts higher.