this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
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Please don't use Discord for FOSS projects (drewdevault.com)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The biggest problem with Discord is that its an information black hole. Its not properly searchable and not indexed by search engines.

Discord is fine for casual chat, but horrible when used for forum-type discussions and even worse when used for documentation.

You see the same problems being discussed and solved again and again, but you cant just "link" someone the solution like you could with a forum thread cause its spread out over 3-10 chat messages that are interleaved in-between other topics being discussed in the same room

Anything of long-term value for the project (forum-type discussions, documentation etc) should not recide in Discord

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

There's going to be a lot of shocked Pikachus when the inevitable enshittification hits, and suddenly they charge to host all the documentation and wiki pages. All that barely maintained stuff will just vanish overnight.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

As someone deeply involved in Foss for many years and with multiple large Foss services running on my back, these constant requests for purity from outsiders will go nowhere until volunteers people step up to do the hard work of setting up and maintaining the infrastructure and management of such Foss solutions in the place of the core developers

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

? What's the difference between setting up a free forum (they're everywhere) versus setting up Discord channels? It's the exact same process.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

a free forum

"Oh great, I'll have to create another fucking account" - me, already having some 300 accounts in my key-vault...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make unless you're saying no one has to create a Discord account, or have to download an app, or have to find an invite to locate the server. My keys are auto-generated and auto-saved, simple 20 second process. Forums are also a lot easier to sign up for than Discord, if you're worried about making another account I don't know what to tell ya because every service requires it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You set up a discord account once. When you want to join a project discord all you have to do is click the invite link and hit „accept“. Bam. Done. No need to join a forum. No need to keep track of another website and check if you got a personal message from someone or something. The benefit is that it is all one location.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It’s undoubtedly nice during that step of the process, but afterwards you’re on a platform that may not be well suited to the purpose. It’d be better just to make the new account on an actual forum. Granted, I use Bitwarden now, so I don’t sweat making new accounts anymore.

This makes me wonder if there is a centralized system for forums. We have stackexchange already, but that’s really designed to be a question and answer site.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Discourse, NodeBB and Flarum are all currently working on ActivityPub federation support. The first two have some basic support already available.

Edit: I read "decentralized". The "centralized" system for forums is obviously Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I second this!

It's especially disappointing to see FOSS people on Fediverse promoting it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

my main problem is issue cannot be searched on search engine

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Chat and forum are different things and serve different purposes. Even matrix doesn't solve the search problem. Use a forum for this.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

i don't understand discord's popularity at all. it's so annoying to use

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It was my replacement of Skype, which was leaning hard into its enshittification around that time.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Where discord never had to lean into it as it was born shit

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

But it can always get worse. When they run out of money, some of the stuff that used to be free will begin to cost you something.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

It started getting popular years ago and that's when me an my friends switched to it too (back when I didn't know shit about privacy). You gotta keep in mind the alternatives back then were Skype, which was meant for 1 to 1 calls, had shit audio quality and issues all the time and TeamSpeak, which was complicated because you needed a server (we were kids, we only knew what a server was from Minecraft) and had a text chat that was only a small part of the bottom of the window that was full of connected and disconnected messages, so I actually didn't even know you could write in that. TeamSpeak's interface also isn't exactly good-looking or very intuitive. Then came Discord, you could create a server for you and your friends for free, you saw who of your friends was online and playing what, you could see when someone was in a voice channel and could just join, you had multiple text chats where you could easily send a link or memes while playing and you could easily share your screen with the others. It was a major improvement over the other two. I know that it sucks from a privacy standpoint but there's good reasons why people started using it.