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Meta comment: HN's knee jerk reaction when it comes to certain topics is becoming quite exhausting. Obviously a lot of the current commenters didn't even read w

Meta comment: HN's knee jerk reaction when it comes to certain topics is becoming quite exhausting. Obviously a lot of the current commenters didn't even read what the article was about and just wanted to vent about the good old days of mailing lists and half-assed docs that at best had a code sample, but on average were just a "table of contents" for the source code that you'd ultimately have to read. I for one wish these projects had BBS-es in addition to Discord, but man I love just chatting with people working on the thing I am also interested in and making friends along the way. Actual comment: When it comes to Watchy, I found the docs to be a good starting point - https://watchy.sqfmi.com/docs/getting-started https://watchy.sqfmi.com/docs/getting-started . They give you the architectural diagrams, have a few code examples for some of the more common use cases, and do a pretty good job at letting you know that this is very much going to be an "adventure" type project with a lot of surface to cover. They could expand one day and add links to articles/projects other people have made, but I am not sure many of those exist. It is sort of a niche product.

tchock23 3y ago
Chatting with the creators and making friends is a great reason to create a Discord. But maybe don’t push everyone there for everything?
- handwarmers 3y ago
  I agree in principle - Discord can only scale that much - imagine having a discord channel instead of docs for Pandas . Obviously it would be best if there were great docs for everything, a lot of easily searchable Q&As + sample projects, and a forum and some form of live chat for the community to discuss ideas. But those take a ton of time to create, and a ton of skill to write well, and I feel like up and coming niche projects that need to build a community naturally would emphasize Discord over docs.
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    The greatest communities in technology all have good documentation. There’s no reason to play fast and loose when you can just do the job right and document your tools.
    - spongebobstoes 3y ago
      Maybe Discord can be a starting point, and documentation can be written later. One way to think about documentation is that it is useful to help scale up support. But if there is no scale, it is less important.
      - kjkjadksj 3y ago
        That doesn’t seem very unix philosophy to me
        handwarmers 3y ago
        The Unix philosophy has nothing to do with documentation lol. It is actually the exact opposite of your know it all hypothetical "no reason to play fast and loose when you can just do the job right" fantasy : "Design and build software, even operating systems, to be tried early, ideally within weeks. Don't hesitate to throw away the clumsy parts and rebuild them." If anything, it is a lot closer to move fast and break things.
- susam 3y ago
  I use a Matrix channel (which is bridged to an IRC channel) for this purpose. I host computing book club meetups in the weekends. While the meetup main page and notes are hosted on a website, I have Matrix and IRC channels where the meetup participants can hang out together, follow schedule updates, make friends, etc. All our communication is in text format, so these open protocols and platforms serve our needs pretty well. The group members have the freedom to use any free and open source client or one of the popular web interfaces to join the channel and talk to each other. Should something go wrong with the Matrix or IRC network (say, the network becomes user-hostile for some reason), it is a simple matter of moving the channel to another benign network. The group members only need to point their clients to the new address. In fact, such a thing did happen once in 2021 when Freenode went through major staff changes due to disagreements with how the network was being run. All channel operators (myself included) moved their channels to Libera in a matter of days. It took me only about 5 minutes to complete the migration and hand out the new channel address to the channel members.
anthk 3y ago
Discord sucks. It's propietary and using a CHANNEL (no, they aren't "servers", educate yourselves, FFS) as a documentation source/tool it's the worst thing ever the gen-z had made. Period.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  Channels and servers are different things, and both terms are used for discord. A channel is just a single text or voice space where discussions can happen. Many projects will have multiple channels each specialized to a single topic. The whole collection of these is called a "server". The docs also use the term "guild" for the same concept, as the API docs explain [0]. [0] https://discord.com/developers/docs/resources/guild https://discord.com/developers/docs/resources/guild
  - xigoi 3y ago
    Doesn't change the point that a Discord “server” is not a server.
    - trolan 3y ago
      > a computer or computer program which manages access to a centralized resource or service in a network. I think by definition you're wrong. By layman's terms you're wrong too. A server serves things, either content, chat text or your meal. Discord servers serve a collection of text channels located on a centralized resource. Now, for the real lesson: take yourself and everyone else less seriously.
      - xigoi 3y ago
        A Discord “server” is neither a computer nor a computer program. All “servers” are serviced by a single program distributed across many actual servers, presumably without any direct mapping.
        AlotOfReading 3y ago
ecf 3y ago
Discord doesn’t have threading for messages. It deserves every ounce of hate it receives.
- kaycebasques 3y ago
  The Discord instances I've used do have threading. Maybe it's a configurable setting or maybe it's only available in paid versions of Discord. I have heard lots of complaints that the design makes it easy for people to miss that feature. More broadly, it seems to be a common problem in chat UIs, regardless of what particular product you're on. I think there is a segment of internet users who have been online for a while now and are used to web 1.0 chat rooms where there was only one way to send messages. They do not have the muscle memory of using threads. That's why you see so many dangling responses that should not be standalone messages but rather should have been part of the thread.
  - Forricide 3y ago
    You're correct, it's a configurable feature (not paid, it's been openly available for 1-2 years). Discord also supports forums, but most server owners disable one or both as they can take more effort to moderate/maintain.
    - ecf 3y ago
      > disable one or both as they can take more effort to moderate/maintain. This is why I don’t consider Discord’s version of threading as true threading. They are temporary channels with all the same admin/moderation requirements that regular channels necessitate. I have yet to come across a Discord server that lets anyone create threads from posts in their general channels.
- Zetice 3y ago
  Yes it does?
  - ecf 3y ago
    They are temporary channels, not the simple and low friction version that Slack uses.
haunter 3y ago
>HN's knee jerk reaction when it comes to certain topics is becoming quite exhausting Yep you can guess comments all the time just by the title alone. There are certain topics that triggeres a lot of people here and no matter what the actual submission is about (they won't read the article either way) they just post their preoccupied comment. I mean when someone makes a throwaway "discordsucks" to comment that says it all.
- discordsucks 3y ago
  Honestly, my comment was pretty balanced imho. Discord does provide great UX for what it is good at. That is gaming communities and day to day chatter and such. I even think it has a huge lead in that regard other than maybe being a bit slow on weaker hardware - probably cause electron. It just has inacceptable entry barriers for documentation purposes by collecting your data and severe limits on how much content can be accessed and more importantly retained. I spare you to repeat myself on why I think so. Especially open source projects shouldnt make it a requierement to hand over your data to a entity which has recently been fined for GDPR violations in order to use them.

tchock23 3y ago

Chatting with the creators and making friends is a great reason to create a Discord. But maybe don’t push everyone there for everything?

handwarmers 3y ago
I agree in principle - Discord can only scale that much - imagine having a discord channel instead of docs for Pandas . Obviously it would be best if there were great docs for everything, a lot of easily searchable Q&As + sample projects, and a forum and some form of live chat for the community to discuss ideas. But those take a ton of time to create, and a ton of skill to write well, and I feel like up and coming niche projects that need to build a community naturally would emphasize Discord over docs.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  The greatest communities in technology all have good documentation. There’s no reason to play fast and loose when you can just do the job right and document your tools.
  - spongebobstoes 3y ago
    Maybe Discord can be a starting point, and documentation can be written later. One way to think about documentation is that it is useful to help scale up support. But if there is no scale, it is less important.
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      That doesn’t seem very unix philosophy to me
      - handwarmers 3y ago
        The Unix philosophy has nothing to do with documentation lol. It is actually the exact opposite of your know it all hypothetical "no reason to play fast and loose when you can just do the job right" fantasy : "Design and build software, even operating systems, to be tried early, ideally within weeks. Don't hesitate to throw away the clumsy parts and rebuild them." If anything, it is a lot closer to move fast and break things.
susam 3y ago
I use a Matrix channel (which is bridged to an IRC channel) for this purpose. I host computing book club meetups in the weekends. While the meetup main page and notes are hosted on a website, I have Matrix and IRC channels where the meetup participants can hang out together, follow schedule updates, make friends, etc. All our communication is in text format, so these open protocols and platforms serve our needs pretty well. The group members have the freedom to use any free and open source client or one of the popular web interfaces to join the channel and talk to each other. Should something go wrong with the Matrix or IRC network (say, the network becomes user-hostile for some reason), it is a simple matter of moving the channel to another benign network. The group members only need to point their clients to the new address. In fact, such a thing did happen once in 2021 when Freenode went through major staff changes due to disagreements with how the network was being run. All channel operators (myself included) moved their channels to Libera in a matter of days. It took me only about 5 minutes to complete the migration and hand out the new channel address to the channel members.

anthk 3y ago

Discord sucks. It's propietary and using a CHANNEL (no, they aren't "servers", educate yourselves, FFS) as a documentation source/tool it's the worst thing ever the gen-z had made. Period.

AlotOfReading 3y ago
Channels and servers are different things, and both terms are used for discord. A channel is just a single text or voice space where discussions can happen. Many projects will have multiple channels each specialized to a single topic. The whole collection of these is called a "server". The docs also use the term "guild" for the same concept, as the API docs explain [0]. [0] https://discord.com/developers/docs/resources/guild https://discord.com/developers/docs/resources/guild
- xigoi 3y ago
  Doesn't change the point that a Discord “server” is not a server.
  - trolan 3y ago
    > a computer or computer program which manages access to a centralized resource or service in a network. I think by definition you're wrong. By layman's terms you're wrong too. A server serves things, either content, chat text or your meal. Discord servers serve a collection of text channels located on a centralized resource. Now, for the real lesson: take yourself and everyone else less seriously.
    - xigoi 3y ago
      A Discord “server” is neither a computer nor a computer program. All “servers” are serviced by a single program distributed across many actual servers, presumably without any direct mapping.
      - AlotOfReading 3y ago

ecf 3y ago

Discord doesn’t have threading for messages. It deserves every ounce of hate it receives.

kaycebasques 3y ago
The Discord instances I've used do have threading. Maybe it's a configurable setting or maybe it's only available in paid versions of Discord. I have heard lots of complaints that the design makes it easy for people to miss that feature. More broadly, it seems to be a common problem in chat UIs, regardless of what particular product you're on. I think there is a segment of internet users who have been online for a while now and are used to web 1.0 chat rooms where there was only one way to send messages. They do not have the muscle memory of using threads. That's why you see so many dangling responses that should not be standalone messages but rather should have been part of the thread.
- Forricide 3y ago
  You're correct, it's a configurable feature (not paid, it's been openly available for 1-2 years). Discord also supports forums, but most server owners disable one or both as they can take more effort to moderate/maintain.
  - ecf 3y ago
    > disable one or both as they can take more effort to moderate/maintain. This is why I don’t consider Discord’s version of threading as true threading. They are temporary channels with all the same admin/moderation requirements that regular channels necessitate. I have yet to come across a Discord server that lets anyone create threads from posts in their general channels.
Zetice 3y ago
Yes it does?
- ecf 3y ago
  They are temporary channels, not the simple and low friction version that Slack uses.

haunter 3y ago

>HN's knee jerk reaction when it comes to certain topics is becoming quite exhausting Yep you can guess comments all the time just by the title alone. There are certain topics that triggeres a lot of people here and no matter what the actual submission is about (they won't read the article either way) they just post their preoccupied comment. I mean when someone makes a throwaway "discordsucks" to comment that says it all.

discordsucks 3y ago
Honestly, my comment was pretty balanced imho. Discord does provide great UX for what it is good at. That is gaming communities and day to day chatter and such. I even think it has a huge lead in that regard other than maybe being a bit slow on weaker hardware - probably cause electron. It just has inacceptable entry barriers for documentation purposes by collecting your data and severe limits on how much content can be accessed and more importantly retained. I spare you to repeat myself on why I think so. Especially open source projects shouldnt make it a requierement to hand over your data to a entity which has recently been fined for GDPR violations in order to use them.