Comment by Springtime
3 years ago
What began as effectively an IRC-like alternative + file hosting and voice support is now being used as a replacement for forums and I think that's where the issue is.
IRC isn't publicly searchable either unless someone was logging it and uploading them to some web server. IRC chats similarly often contain very useful info and answers.
Discord unfortunately doesn't have any native chat export feature so the best that can be done are third-party exporters, copy-pasting or screenshots which aren't ideal and don't end up being indexed as desired even if communities wanted them to be.
> What began as effectively an IRC-like alternative + file hosting and voice support is now being used as a replacement for forums and I think that's where the issue is.
IRC was always an alternative/replacement for forums for many people (there was always the IRC vs forums debate for projects, gaming teams, etc.). Discord is just better IRC (Slack would have been this without the self sabotage via limited free accounts and sleeping on voice chat for years). Now it's more... Discord vs Reddit. But think of all the lost lore on those IRC servers or random private forums that are now gone.
Don’t forget the multiple severs multiple logins hassle, I wasn’t particularly bothered until I got to about the dozen mark at which point I started to resent any new slack I had to interact with, because even with a password manager it was a shitty interaction, because your likely matching on the slack TLD not the per slack unique FQDN, and given that owners can rename the slack and change that it’s not a bad thing to have the slack TLD be the login domain… anyway some people found this a problem immediately (likely not using password managers) and you can tell that it’s been an issue given that Slack really pushed the Magic Link logins pretty quickly, they obviously felt the pain.
> there was always the IRC vs forums debate for projects
Was there? IIRC for any non-tiny community the conclusion pretty much always was to use both, for different purposes.
> Discord unfortunately doesn't have any native chat export feature so the best that can be done are third-party exporters, copy-pasting or screenshots which aren't ideal and don't end up being indexed as desired even if communities wanted them to be.
Server owners have the option for message logging bots. If communities wanted logging, they do have that option with server owner buy-in.
Arguably, difficult-to-archive by default if you aren't a server owner helps foster a safer chat experience.
No, it fosters a less safe experience, when the behavior is hidden. For someone willing to spend just about 30 minutes, it isn't hard to have a script log in to your own account to record messages without anyone noticing.
That's against TOS, and my line of reasoning is that it helps against opportunistic and casual abuse, and there aren't really mitigations against more determined abuse.
e.g. your relationship with someone has soured. Your IRC client has your private messages with them saved in a backlog. You can access them at any time. vs. you normally wouldn't save a backlog of messages because Discord remembers your message history, and if their relationship with you has soured, they have the option of nuking their messages.
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How? I’m an owner.
https://www.linen.dev/
You can google for a third party bot service, google for openly-distributed bots and host your own, or write your own.
> now being used as a replacement for forums
In Matrix there is an awful "threaded discussions" feature now, where collapsed forks branch off from the main chat flow. Which you have to separately manage. Keep a chat a chat, and a forum a forum.
Why is this bad, threaded discussions have existed for all internet time
Why do you think the threaded discussion feature is awful? I find it useful to keep track of multiple running conversations with someone or have a topic discussion within say a #Help room.
I always wanted to get this feature in chat, as my conversation (with a single person) often consist of few separate, independant threads.
Exactly right.
We're complaining about a problem that was no different in the heyday of IRC.
Ultimately, publicly searchable information is a voluntary act.
> We're complaining about a problem that was no different in the heyday of IRC.
IRC didn't pretend that you had information stored there, though...
Discord hides this fact better by offering semi-permanence and a "search" feature, so it seems like its a real-time forum, when in fact its just slack with better video features...
Its very different. The IRC of the yester-yore was filled with people sharing links to more-permanent docs, mailing lists. Discord is filled with people under the mistaken impression they have documented anything by having a chat with a search feature, (and this is has happened to me) claiming that the "rules" are documented somewhere in a channel and why haven't I seen them, when the "rules" are in fact buried, no longer accessible, or just hidden in a wall of conflicting information.
If you have an IRC, you have a dedicated community of people who try because they must, if you have a Discord you have a group of randos at best, or at worst a delusional echo chamber.
> Discord is filled with people under the mistaken impression they have documented anything by having a chat with a search feature... when the "rules" are in fact buried, no longer accessible, or just hidden in a wall of conflicting information.
Part of this is a result of some communities not being organized well enough but also making do with fitting an IRC-like format ('servers'/channels/message buffers) into a more structured one. People are willing to compromise on having less suitable structure for denser/more important information since Discord offers such attractive and easy-to-use features in one place.
That said most communities I know of create channels devoted to rules/FAQs, though for things like lists of file announcements/releases (in eg: modding communities) it's messier.
The new forums channel feature has helped by making things sortable and more structured but those only apply to new channels not existing. The forums feature also highlights Discord has recognized how communities have been using their site like a forum for certain channels such as Q&A/releases/showcases (and why comparing it to publicly indexable forums is even more relevant since the feature set will only grow).
IRC can be accessed by any client adhering to IRC standards which are free and open.
Discord can be accessed by any client adhering to Discord standards, which are closed and proprietary.
Nobody has an obligation to publish information for public access, nor is free necessarily superior to proprietary or vice versa, but Discord is absolutely less accessible than IRC or HTTP(S) as an objective fact.
>Discord can be accessed by any client adhering to Discord standards, which are closed and proprietary.
It's worse. Official Twitter account: >All 3rd party apps or client modifiers are against our ToS, and the use of them can result in your account being disabled. I don't recommend using them.
https://twitter.com/discord/status/1229357198918197248
In practice you can't have a client that has local chat history, local search, or just better information density on the screen, and simultaneously hope to not have your account nuked.
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99.9% of users don't care about any of that. Users want embedded media, custom emotes, free fully featured clients on every device they use (any client that needs a bouncer doesn't count), integration with desktop software such as games, video streaming / screen sharing, and voice calls.
Notice that every single chat software used by normal humans (iMessage, Google chat, FB messenger, etc) has most of these features, just with much lower bitrates than Discord.
For the very few users that don't need any feature they didn't have in the 90s, IRC is still around. The rest of us just add one of many text logging bots to our discord servers.
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Nah, Free Software is better than proprietary. Discord's attack on privacy and user safety are there to see.
>We're complaining about a problem that was no different in the heyday of IRC.
so the death of lore happened essentially when textual knowledge moved from the printed, physically stored version to the electronic version that has no easy way of going and getting the verifiable source of lore for reference when needed?
sounds about right.
IRC never persisted anything so nobody used it as information source.
It's true IRC never stores anything server-side besides user and channel registration details, depending on the network's features and services.
But it is patently false to say nobody used IRC as a source of information. IRC was essential in sharing information quickly back in the 90s. Information on things like natural disasters and the fall of the Soviet Union were shared live using IRC.
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> file hosting
That part is such a joke. I routinely run into the problem that I can't send someone a screencast because it's over EIGHT MEGABYTES. In 2023. And Discord insists on storing the bit-perfect copies of original images and videos too to add to the insult. I would be perfectly fine with them being compressed and/or stored temporarily but nah. I have to resort to cloud storage services like Yandex disk to go around that asinine limitation.
Your files are too powerful, my ass.
> I routinely run into the problem that can't I send someone a screencast because it's over EIGHT MEGABYTES.
Same. I can't just hit print screen and paste it into Discord, a single frame of my 3440x1440 resolution is too big for their free file size limit. I have to crop and/or scale it first. Just frustrating and an extra few steps.
That is actually one aspect where I agree with Discord : free hosting isn't free !
(And I would prefer that my files weren't arbitrarily modified by the host. BTW, there is software, like ShareX, which allows you to automatically do operations on files when you capture them.)
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Forums have the same problem of locking up knowledge, and they also keep out anyone who doesn’t want to constantly visit a web site.
Mailing lists and newsgroups are the proper mechanisms for this. And you should be able to use them with a browser forum-style too.
While some forums do lock information behind registration-barriers, it's rare, whereas every discord is locked behind a email+cell phone barrier. It's far, far worse for anyone who doesn't want to be part of your community or install an app just to be able to read the docs or download a patch or ask a question.
>every discord is locked behind a email+cell phone barrier
Unless it's changed recently users can enter Discord communities without an email via an invite link*, just choosing a username. It's what made onboarding so easy and similar to just joining an IRC server with a nick.
What's been ironic is since Freenode had their spam issues years back there was a push among many channels on that network to allow only registered users (ie: email tied to nicks) to post, which has continued over in the migration to the Libera network and I find really unfortunate for such channels of those networks as low friction and less permanence in ties to identity have been a distinguishing feature of IRC. (Obviously this doesn't affect IRC broadly but those are among the largest networks for tech communities).
* Eg: https://discord.gg/blender
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I have joined 2 discords in the last week (as lots of 'community support' seems to be moving there these days). I set a username but I haven't had to supply any other info - I can't post anything and there's a banner saying I need to claim the account to avoid losing access but it's definitely not every discord which requires a verified account.
Doesn't help with the issues around searching for data from outside of discord.
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That depends on the forum. Most forums could be searched and posts found via your search engine of choice. Well, the current crop of forums (discourse) prevents that with being JS based, but I would not count it as a good forum anyway.
I have no idea why so many choose to run a forum using discourse. It's the worst forum software I have seen.