7 ms·

Side question : why are people working on open source project communicating through discord a lot noawadays ? are discord conversations persisted and indexed o

by bsaul 3y ago

Side question : why are people working on open source project communicating through discord a lot noawadays ? are discord conversations persisted and indexed on search engines ?

ufo 3y ago
1.People like talking to each other on discord. 2. No. :/
cinntaile 3y ago
Because it's easy, free and it just works. Very few people actually care about indexing the conversations.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pmontra 3y ago
  So all knowledge is lost and questions have to be asked and answered again and again?
  - numpad0 3y ago
    No, questions don't have to be asked and answered again and again, because all the knowledge is lost, full stop. No one would know anything.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    That didn't stop IRC being popular in the 1990s. There has long been a place in the ecosystem for ephemeral chat. Often alongside non-ephemeral things like written documentation.
    - nixass 3y ago
      Also monks being the only ones who can read and write didn't stop religion to be popular in middle ages. /s C'mon
    - darkwater 3y ago
      > That didn't stop IRC being popular in the 1990s. IRC chats, especially in opensource projects channels, could and would be archived, published over the web and indexed by search engines.
      - paxys 3y ago
        So just like Discord then..
        scubbo 3y ago
        No
        pbmonster 3y ago
        I wasn't aware that was being done. Can you show me how to access the archives of the ask-for-help channel on the openllm Discord server? Right now they're discussing "loading models on CPU vs GPU". No matter how explicit I got, google did not find the discussion.
        paxys 3y ago
        It's up to the server owners/admins to configure archiving, same as IRC.
      - MatthiasPortzel 3y ago
        In my experience, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an IRC log in a search result. #haskell on Libra is publicly logged, but I couldn’t get Google to return a quoted phrase from a message a few weeks ago. Many people on IRC don’t enjoy being in logged channels. I’ve also heard that there are GDPR implications to publicly logging people’s messages without their consent. Discussion of the difficulty and downsides of IRC logging, from a coulple years ago: => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22892015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22892015 => https://web.archive.org/web/20200417001532/https://echelog.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200417001532/https://echelog.c... The HN blowback to developers choosing to use Discord is just wildly out of proportion.
    - sp332 3y ago
      People didn't put documentation in IRC channels because they didn't want to answer the same questions over and over. Info went into a wiki, and you would get flamed for asking a question on IRC that was answered on the wiki. Discord is not a good place to stash documentation.
      - yrro 3y ago
        It's ok you get scolded for asking an FAQ in many Discord "servers" as well.
  - mirekrusin 3y ago
    Maybe it doesn't matter because this type of knowledge is relevant for current week only?
  - falcor84 3y ago
    Isn't there something really nice about it though? It seems to me that most every community gradually evolves into one where every new message from a new-ish member is answered by something like "Duplicate, please search first!". And this in turn makes those newcomers either go away, become passive lurkers, or become part of the "hive-mind" (as only likeminded questions get answered). On the other hand, if people have to actually converse to get an answer to their questions (like back in the real world), newcomers can more rapidly become part of the community, and help make it more diverse.
    - Zak 3y ago
      I just recently saw a post where someone said something similar about Reddit versus traditional forums. There's a balance between engaging with new members and not turning it into a time sink for older members. This is probably a good use case for LLMs.
      - falcor84 3y ago
        LLMs could indeed address the first part, but not the second, of bringing the newcomers in via actual conversation with the older members. The only good solution I encountered to this is of having some (preferably not too experienced) member(s) actively take upon themselves the role of welcoming newcomers and answering their questions, whether that's in an official or unofficial capacity. This to me is the real way through this "Eternal September", where in every "cohort" of newcomers, one or more choose to stay close to the doorway to welcome and guide the next cohort.
        windyfly 3y ago
        Newcomers are also different. Some are actually experienced vs some are real newbies. I’m wondering how could learn from games, making the content also adaptive to user levels/experiences. It’s prob also the key agenda in education.
    - scubbo 3y ago
      The best of both worlds - a friendly community that welcomes newbies, with a searchable archive - is possible. Limiting to only chat-based support means that support is bottle-necked by the folks who are available and engaged at the time of the question, and that knowledge will "drop out" of the community as people forget it.
  - bredren 3y ago
    Not lost enough to use as a transient space for sharing secret intelligence reports.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  indexing conversations is secondary for gaming but primary for FOSS projects and Discord sucks at that. its like wiping your ass with a fork.
belugacat 3y ago
short answer: because it's one of the options with least friction to get running a lot of people who are into tech stuff already have a discord account making joining the community a one click process, the instant nature of it seems to appeal to younger users more than async forums, it's a fairly mature platform so it has a bunch of moderation/customization/integration features you might want, etc. > are discord conversations persisted and indexed on search engines ? nope (and that is a drawback many point out)
- decide1000 3y ago
  Isn't it a generation thing? If I had the choice everyone would be on IRC still.
  - simonw 3y ago
    Fue problem with IRC is that it's crucial to have really robust read state synchronization across desktop and mobile these days. Slack was the first to really get that right, and Discord effectively emulated them and made it available for free. IRC users could get there with bouncers, but those were always a lot harder to get going with.
  - chrisan 3y ago
    Practically all of my friends grew up with IRC, we are in our late 30s, 40s, early 50s. We might reminisce about irc but we all prefer discord. Even the searchability of indexed irc has been surpassed by other knowledge sites. It would have to be something extremely niche these days where the only source of info is in an irc chat log
  - hyperhopper 3y ago
    IRC doesn't even have history, one of the most basic requirements for a modern rudimentary chat app. It's ridiculous to suggest using it in 2023 when it doesn't have features a freshman homework assignment chat app has.
  - Zak 3y ago
    I've used IRC for a long time and still do, but I do think Discord has a nicer UX for most use cases. In particular, building communities around clusters of channels ("servers") and support for rich media (yes, some old people might call that a downside) increase the appeal for most people. It's also a lot more work to have a persistent connection on IRC (bouncers). My main problem with Discord is that it's someone else's centralized, for-profit company and has no apparent barriers to enshittification[0]. As Reddit recently demonstrated, it's probably a mistake to build communities on top of something like that. Matrix is a good candidate for a modern successor to IRC. It's not quite as slick a UX as Discord, but it addresses the main advantages Discord has over IRC. [0] https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
axismundi 3y ago
I find Discord quite versatile and a bit overwhelming at the same time. As to SEO, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36383773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36383773 AFAIK most of the gamers choose it for voice chat (Anyone remember TeamSpeak?)
- Hendrikto 3y ago
  In Europe, TeamSpeak is still very popular.
  - JLCarveth 3y ago
    I used to play EVE Online a fair bit, and always thought it interesting how some of the groups used Discord but only for text communications. Voice was still done over Teamspeak or Mumble.
    - wtf_is_up 3y ago
      When I played EVE, Mumble was the de facto voice comms since it supported 100s of pilots which happened many times during joint ops and xmpp for text chat and pings.
OkGoDoIt 3y ago
My understanding from asking several people, since I hate discord and want to know why people insist on using it, is that it’s a free alternative to Slack. Simple as that. But it’s crazy, people are aggressive about Discord for some reason. I maintain an OpenAI SDK package for .Net, and I had some random person decide they wanted it to be a Discord community, so they created a Discord claiming it was the official community discord for my library, and submitted a PR updating my readme to say that it’s my project’s official Discord. They also replied to several issues and pull requests telling people to discuss it on that discord. If Discord isn’t paying this person in some guerrilla marketing tactic, they should be...

by bsaul 3y ago

Side question : why are people working on open source project communicating through discord a lot noawadays ? are discord conversations persisted and indexed on search engines ?

ufo 3y ago

1.People like talking to each other on discord. 2. No. :/

cinntaile 3y ago

Because it's easy, free and it just works. Very few people actually care about indexing the conversations.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pmontra 3y ago
So all knowledge is lost and questions have to be asked and answered again and again?
- numpad0 3y ago
  No, questions don't have to be asked and answered again and again, because all the knowledge is lost, full stop. No one would know anything.
- michaelt 3y ago
  That didn't stop IRC being popular in the 1990s. There has long been a place in the ecosystem for ephemeral chat. Often alongside non-ephemeral things like written documentation.
  - nixass 3y ago
    Also monks being the only ones who can read and write didn't stop religion to be popular in middle ages. /s C'mon
  - darkwater 3y ago
    > That didn't stop IRC being popular in the 1990s. IRC chats, especially in opensource projects channels, could and would be archived, published over the web and indexed by search engines.
    - paxys 3y ago
      So just like Discord then..
      - scubbo 3y ago
        No
      - pbmonster 3y ago
        I wasn't aware that was being done. Can you show me how to access the archives of the ask-for-help channel on the openllm Discord server? Right now they're discussing "loading models on CPU vs GPU". No matter how explicit I got, google did not find the discussion.
        paxys 3y ago
        It's up to the server owners/admins to configure archiving, same as IRC.
    - MatthiasPortzel 3y ago
      In my experience, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an IRC log in a search result. #haskell on Libra is publicly logged, but I couldn’t get Google to return a quoted phrase from a message a few weeks ago. Many people on IRC don’t enjoy being in logged channels. I’ve also heard that there are GDPR implications to publicly logging people’s messages without their consent. Discussion of the difficulty and downsides of IRC logging, from a coulple years ago: => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22892015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22892015 => https://web.archive.org/web/20200417001532/https://echelog.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200417001532/https://echelog.c... The HN blowback to developers choosing to use Discord is just wildly out of proportion.
  - sp332 3y ago
    People didn't put documentation in IRC channels because they didn't want to answer the same questions over and over. Info went into a wiki, and you would get flamed for asking a question on IRC that was answered on the wiki. Discord is not a good place to stash documentation.
    - yrro 3y ago
      It's ok you get scolded for asking an FAQ in many Discord "servers" as well.
- mirekrusin 3y ago
  Maybe it doesn't matter because this type of knowledge is relevant for current week only?
- falcor84 3y ago
  Isn't there something really nice about it though? It seems to me that most every community gradually evolves into one where every new message from a new-ish member is answered by something like "Duplicate, please search first!". And this in turn makes those newcomers either go away, become passive lurkers, or become part of the "hive-mind" (as only likeminded questions get answered). On the other hand, if people have to actually converse to get an answer to their questions (like back in the real world), newcomers can more rapidly become part of the community, and help make it more diverse.
  - Zak 3y ago
    I just recently saw a post where someone said something similar about Reddit versus traditional forums. There's a balance between engaging with new members and not turning it into a time sink for older members. This is probably a good use case for LLMs.
    - falcor84 3y ago
      LLMs could indeed address the first part, but not the second, of bringing the newcomers in via actual conversation with the older members. The only good solution I encountered to this is of having some (preferably not too experienced) member(s) actively take upon themselves the role of welcoming newcomers and answering their questions, whether that's in an official or unofficial capacity. This to me is the real way through this "Eternal September", where in every "cohort" of newcomers, one or more choose to stay close to the doorway to welcome and guide the next cohort.
      - windyfly 3y ago
        Newcomers are also different. Some are actually experienced vs some are real newbies. I’m wondering how could learn from games, making the content also adaptive to user levels/experiences. It’s prob also the key agenda in education.
  - scubbo 3y ago
    The best of both worlds - a friendly community that welcomes newbies, with a searchable archive - is possible. Limiting to only chat-based support means that support is bottle-necked by the folks who are available and engaged at the time of the question, and that knowledge will "drop out" of the community as people forget it.
- bredren 3y ago
  Not lost enough to use as a transient space for sharing secret intelligence reports.
ekianjo 3y ago
indexing conversations is secondary for gaming but primary for FOSS projects and Discord sucks at that. its like wiping your ass with a fork.

belugacat 3y ago

short answer: because it's one of the options with least friction to get running a lot of people who are into tech stuff already have a discord account making joining the community a one click process, the instant nature of it seems to appeal to younger users more than async forums, it's a fairly mature platform so it has a bunch of moderation/customization/integration features you might want, etc. > are discord conversations persisted and indexed on search engines ? nope (and that is a drawback many point out)

decide1000 3y ago
Isn't it a generation thing? If I had the choice everyone would be on IRC still.
- simonw 3y ago
  Fue problem with IRC is that it's crucial to have really robust read state synchronization across desktop and mobile these days. Slack was the first to really get that right, and Discord effectively emulated them and made it available for free. IRC users could get there with bouncers, but those were always a lot harder to get going with.
- chrisan 3y ago
  Practically all of my friends grew up with IRC, we are in our late 30s, 40s, early 50s. We might reminisce about irc but we all prefer discord. Even the searchability of indexed irc has been surpassed by other knowledge sites. It would have to be something extremely niche these days where the only source of info is in an irc chat log
- hyperhopper 3y ago
  IRC doesn't even have history, one of the most basic requirements for a modern rudimentary chat app. It's ridiculous to suggest using it in 2023 when it doesn't have features a freshman homework assignment chat app has.
- Zak 3y ago
  I've used IRC for a long time and still do, but I do think Discord has a nicer UX for most use cases. In particular, building communities around clusters of channels ("servers") and support for rich media (yes, some old people might call that a downside) increase the appeal for most people. It's also a lot more work to have a persistent connection on IRC (bouncers). My main problem with Discord is that it's someone else's centralized, for-profit company and has no apparent barriers to enshittification[0]. As Reddit recently demonstrated, it's probably a mistake to build communities on top of something like that. Matrix is a good candidate for a modern successor to IRC. It's not quite as slick a UX as Discord, but it addresses the main advantages Discord has over IRC. [0] https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

axismundi 3y ago

I find Discord quite versatile and a bit overwhelming at the same time. As to SEO, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36383773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36383773 AFAIK most of the gamers choose it for voice chat (Anyone remember TeamSpeak?)

Hendrikto 3y ago
In Europe, TeamSpeak is still very popular.
- JLCarveth 3y ago
  I used to play EVE Online a fair bit, and always thought it interesting how some of the groups used Discord but only for text communications. Voice was still done over Teamspeak or Mumble.
  - wtf_is_up 3y ago
    When I played EVE, Mumble was the de facto voice comms since it supported 100s of pilots which happened many times during joint ops and xmpp for text chat and pings.

OkGoDoIt 3y ago

My understanding from asking several people, since I hate discord and want to know why people insist on using it, is that it’s a free alternative to Slack. Simple as that. But it’s crazy, people are aggressive about Discord for some reason. I maintain an OpenAI SDK package for .Net, and I had some random person decide they wanted it to be a Discord community, so they created a Discord claiming it was the official community discord for my library, and submitted a PR updating my readme to say that it’s my project’s official Discord. They also replied to several issues and pull requests telling people to discuss it on that discord. If Discord isn’t paying this person in some guerrilla marketing tactic, they should be...