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I'm not the first to say this, but Discord is essentially IRC. It's great for ephemeral chatting and arguably the best platform for that currently. The content

I'm not the first to say this, but Discord is essentially IRC. It's great for ephemeral chatting and arguably the best platform for that currently. The content on it is not indexed and not discoverable with web search engines. I have been wondering: is it even possible for a platform to fulfill both needs? For searchable, "forum style" discussions, we already have a large accessible platform: Reddit! I genuinely ask myself: why is "Join our Discord" much more popular than "Join our Reddit"? I personally prefer "forum style" discussion over "IRC style" discussions, but the polularity of Discord even in technical circles proves to me that a lot of people like the IRC style of communication.

ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
You can have both. The forum I use also have a irc-like chat section.
- cl3misch 2y ago
  Do you care to share what forum that is? And is its irc-like chat section searchable? Otherwise it is just forum and chat available under the same domain. But information in the IRC section is still ephemeral.
  - ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
    rdrama .net. We have a cute orange cat as our mascot.
    - jmprspret 2y ago
      This is quite an oddity in the internet space I feel (not in a bad way - but not necessarily a good way either - i just find it odd). Reading through the rules it's such an interesting mix of.. ideals?
- foreverobama 2y ago
  [dead]
michaelt 2y ago
> I genuinely ask myself: why is "Join our Discord" much more popular than "Join our Reddit"? Let's say the maintainers of Foo and the Debian Foo package disagree on which plugins should be in the default install. If they have that discussion on a public forum, maybe unhappy people get directed to the conversation, or someone decides to parade a comment around twitter and link it from HN so everyone can see what an asshole you are. Quite possibly with your real name attached. But if you have the same discussion on Discord? Much harder for people to link to, once it's scrolled off the screen it's practically forgotten, and almost nobody uses their real name. And you don't see people screenshotting Discord posts anywhere near as often as they screenshot Twitter posts (although it is possible, of course). I can see how an open source maintainer using their free time to provide unpaid support might find the latter more pleasant.
aaravchen 2y ago
Reddit has become almost defunct in my experience, onky useful as a historical reference since virtually no new content is getting added to it for anything I follow, use, or have interest in. The alternatives mostly aren't, they either segment across servers (federating identity but not topics), or are a little-promoted-and-used forum with the standard 90s interface that scares away newcommers. I'm _still_ looking for a Reddit replacement that has sufficient community to make it at all useful, since Reddit died.

ThrowawayTestr 2y ago

You can have both. The forum I use also have a irc-like chat section.

cl3misch 2y ago
Do you care to share what forum that is? And is its irc-like chat section searchable? Otherwise it is just forum and chat available under the same domain. But information in the IRC section is still ephemeral.
- ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
  rdrama .net. We have a cute orange cat as our mascot.
  - jmprspret 2y ago
    This is quite an oddity in the internet space I feel (not in a bad way - but not necessarily a good way either - i just find it odd). Reading through the rules it's such an interesting mix of.. ideals?
foreverobama 2y ago
[dead]

michaelt 2y ago

> I genuinely ask myself: why is "Join our Discord" much more popular than "Join our Reddit"? Let's say the maintainers of Foo and the Debian Foo package disagree on which plugins should be in the default install. If they have that discussion on a public forum, maybe unhappy people get directed to the conversation, or someone decides to parade a comment around twitter and link it from HN so everyone can see what an asshole you are. Quite possibly with your real name attached. But if you have the same discussion on Discord? Much harder for people to link to, once it's scrolled off the screen it's practically forgotten, and almost nobody uses their real name. And you don't see people screenshotting Discord posts anywhere near as often as they screenshot Twitter posts (although it is possible, of course). I can see how an open source maintainer using their free time to provide unpaid support might find the latter more pleasant.

aaravchen 2y ago

Reddit has become almost defunct in my experience, onky useful as a historical reference since virtually no new content is getting added to it for anything I follow, use, or have interest in. The alternatives mostly aren't, they either segment across servers (federating identity but not topics), or are a little-promoted-and-used forum with the standard 90s interface that scares away newcommers. I'm _still_ looking for a Reddit replacement that has sufficient community to make it at all useful, since Reddit died.