4 ms·

Even IRC was better for data archiving and searching. We usually had local logs we could grep and web-indexed/searchable logs from bots. It's really insane how

by Brybry 2y ago

Even IRC was better for data archiving and searching. We usually had local logs we could grep and web-indexed/searchable logs from bots. It's really insane how much information is on Discord that is both impossible to discover and will silently disappear at some point.

Mashimo 2y ago
> We usually had local logs we could grep and web-indexed/searchable logs from bots. But only IF you are good at regex. On discord you can easily filter by date or date range, if it has media, if it contains an URL or what user/roll got mentioned.
- Brybry 2y ago
  Only if it's in the discord search index, which sometimes doesn't include all history, and it does some fuzzy elasticsearch query that works ok for most cases and awful for anything that isn't most cases. The metadata filters are nice but they're also what keep it usable at all.
- short_sells_poo 2y ago
  Discord search still sucks a lot because by nature discussions are largely unstructured. It's not really suitable for discussing specific topics - only perhaps types of topics. Discord threads could ostensibly fulfil the forum topic role, but their implementations is so utterly incompetent that it is genuinely puzzling. You can't search specific Discord threads, they often disappear from the left hand nav bar even if you subscribed to the thread. Whoever implemented the Threads in Discord should be kept away from computer systems because they are a danger to any application. But even if Discord search was good, it still doesn't matter because it is not only a walled garden, it is a hermetically sealed chamber from which no information can escape.
- opan 2y ago
  I still use IRC, irssi in particular. My go-to for searching local logs is `less` rather than grep. I have the date on every line in the log file. I can jump to a specific date easily, then search a different term up/down from that spot, and I see context of surrounding lines easily. No regex needed.
  - Mashimo 2y ago
    How would you search for a messaged that contains an image that mentioned you?
    - opan 2y ago
      I guess this is like a dunk and I shouldn't even respond, but I'd probably (from less) do /nick.*http and then hit n or N a bunch to jump around. Yeah, it's technically a regex, I guess, but I think it's probably the easiest/most common form. You don't really need to remember much of anything or understand how it works. You could be used to wildcards from a shell and just think "I gotta put a . in front of it sometimes for it to work". I would not get more advanced than that, personally. Sure you'll have matches that aren't exactly what you're looking for, like that'd match both lines I said and lines mentioning me, and URLs that aren't images (better than trying to account for all types of image URLs, IMO) but I'll probably find what I'm looking for fast enough for it to not be worth looking up more complicated regex. Often I'll remember who posted something, too, so then maybe I'll throw their nick in the search as well, before mine. Or at least I could narrow down who posted it to a few people and just try a few searches pretty quickly back to back. I would also say this particular search you're talking about would be fairly uncommon. I might even remember something like "oh, Bernie said that image was the funniest thing he'd seen all day, I'll search the word 'funniest' starting from the end of the file since it was under a month ago and should end up near the URL".
      - Mashimo 2y ago
        You would then also need to search for /http.*nick, as he might mention you after the link. IRC had so much potential, but somehow we fumbled it. A simple search based on local logs and for the user hidden reg-ex could have been implemented 10+ years ago.
- windward 2y ago
  Discord search thinks it knows better than you and won't let you search verbatim.
- tredre3 2y ago
  Discord search won't even surface partial word matches or typos or matches in URLs (eg you share a facebook.com link then later on you search for "facebook", it won't show you that post). Maybe there are some secret incantations I don't know about, but Discord search is positively useless most of the time and I have to manually scroll up until I find what I want (or give up).

by Brybry 2y ago

Mashimo 2y ago

> We usually had local logs we could grep and web-indexed/searchable logs from bots. But only IF you are good at regex. On discord you can easily filter by date or date range, if it has media, if it contains an URL or what user/roll got mentioned.

Brybry 2y ago
Only if it's in the discord search index, which sometimes doesn't include all history, and it does some fuzzy elasticsearch query that works ok for most cases and awful for anything that isn't most cases. The metadata filters are nice but they're also what keep it usable at all.
short_sells_poo 2y ago
Discord search still sucks a lot because by nature discussions are largely unstructured. It's not really suitable for discussing specific topics - only perhaps types of topics. Discord threads could ostensibly fulfil the forum topic role, but their implementations is so utterly incompetent that it is genuinely puzzling. You can't search specific Discord threads, they often disappear from the left hand nav bar even if you subscribed to the thread. Whoever implemented the Threads in Discord should be kept away from computer systems because they are a danger to any application. But even if Discord search was good, it still doesn't matter because it is not only a walled garden, it is a hermetically sealed chamber from which no information can escape.
opan 2y ago
I still use IRC, irssi in particular. My go-to for searching local logs is `less` rather than grep. I have the date on every line in the log file. I can jump to a specific date easily, then search a different term up/down from that spot, and I see context of surrounding lines easily. No regex needed.
- Mashimo 2y ago
  How would you search for a messaged that contains an image that mentioned you?
  - opan 2y ago
    I guess this is like a dunk and I shouldn't even respond, but I'd probably (from less) do /nick.*http and then hit n or N a bunch to jump around. Yeah, it's technically a regex, I guess, but I think it's probably the easiest/most common form. You don't really need to remember much of anything or understand how it works. You could be used to wildcards from a shell and just think "I gotta put a . in front of it sometimes for it to work". I would not get more advanced than that, personally. Sure you'll have matches that aren't exactly what you're looking for, like that'd match both lines I said and lines mentioning me, and URLs that aren't images (better than trying to account for all types of image URLs, IMO) but I'll probably find what I'm looking for fast enough for it to not be worth looking up more complicated regex. Often I'll remember who posted something, too, so then maybe I'll throw their nick in the search as well, before mine. Or at least I could narrow down who posted it to a few people and just try a few searches pretty quickly back to back. I would also say this particular search you're talking about would be fairly uncommon. I might even remember something like "oh, Bernie said that image was the funniest thing he'd seen all day, I'll search the word 'funniest' starting from the end of the file since it was under a month ago and should end up near the URL".
    - Mashimo 2y ago
      You would then also need to search for /http.*nick, as he might mention you after the link. IRC had so much potential, but somehow we fumbled it. A simple search based on local logs and for the user hidden reg-ex could have been implemented 10+ years ago.
windward 2y ago
Discord search thinks it knows better than you and won't let you search verbatim.
tredre3 2y ago
Discord search won't even surface partial word matches or typos or matches in URLs (eg you share a facebook.com link then later on you search for "facebook", it won't show you that post). Maybe there are some secret incantations I don't know about, but Discord search is positively useless most of the time and I have to manually scroll up until I find what I want (or give up).