Am I the only one who thinks chat apps are making the internet kinda worse by locking up useful information behind a system that can't be indexed\searched through on search engines? I know chatrooms could be odd to have appear on google searches but so many orgs and software projects now use discord etc as their support section so resolving an issue once doesn't help people in the future searching for the solution.

with that being said im glad matrix is improving

EDIT: apparently this is being worked on https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-public-archive thanks @testman@lemmy.ml for linking this. Now they just need to also start working on Threads which im assuming is already on their roadmap

[–] onlooker@lemmy.ml 31 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's not chat apps that are making things worse, it's the various companies and organizations using these apps for support channels instead of easily searchable software like forums.

[–] nxlemmy@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

Fair.

Although it would be nice for discord\matrix to include a server option so they can be indexed by search engines so the companies that use them for support can enable the feature

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[–] pingveno@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

It's a mixed bag. Only having a forum option reduces accessibility some for people who get anxious about putting their communication in a more permanent format. Not everyone wants their n00b questions (we all have them) indexed for all the world to see. That said, it's good to have a forum-like option that is search engine friendly to avoid repeat questions as much as possible. I remember that the Rust language had some people tasked specifically with curating an up-to-date and comprehensive body of knowledge on Stack Overflow. That apparently has helped people significantly with the learning curve of Rust.

[–] nxlemmy@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

but most forums dont even have a Real Name section and people use usernames just like chat apps. i doubt many people dont ask questions on forum because of that I just think the chat apps are more common because they got investments to make their UI\UX super convenient and pretty (which i think because of the fediverse and lemmy especially we now will have the best of both worlds)

I hope lemmy includes a follow post and follow comment thread feature so we can replace stack overflow with it

[–] hfkldjbuq 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Not everyone wants their n00b questions (we all have them) indexed for all the world to see.

Just create a throwaway account? Even experienced developers do that. But i like instant messaging for quick Q&A

[–] downdaemon@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago

There's software that mirrors public chats into static searchable pages, I can't remember the name but I've used it

[–] sibachian@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

chats are fine. the real problem is facebook groups that replaced traditional forums. i mean, it's essentially just a simplified discussion board designed around "the flow", and as thus, is no way to share and distribute information, especially since you can't really navigate it in a way to find the right answer. so every day it's the same five questions asked over and over again, and with facebooks rules on trade for non-corporate entities, it's essentially killing some hobby industries. though, you're right in that a lot of people have also moved to discord as some kind of forum replacement, and it's even worse for the purpose of information distribution.

not that reddit or lemmy are any better. i mean, they suffer the same problem due to the way information is meant to work on them, yet people use them as forum replacements.

basically, the real problem is that people have abandoned traditional forums and use these convenient platforms as replacements. but it loses a lot of functionality along the way. and it's a sacrifice that most people just don't care about due to the convenience.

[–] nxlemmy@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

reddit isnt a great replacement but googling anything and adding "reddit" to the end is really useful. I'm not sure how well lemmy gets crawled though. I can't seem to find anything on lemmy from adding lemmy to the end of a search. Even if I add lemmy.ml "lemmy.ml" or :lemmy.ml :/

[–] hfkldjbuq 1 points 2 years ago

basically, the real problem is that people have abandoned traditional forums and use these convenient platforms as replacements. but it loses a lot of functionality along the way. and it’s a sacrifice that most people just don’t care about due to the convenience.

It seems forums are at fault. Something like discourse should be federated. It is such bad usability having to sign up to so much different forums---at this point mailing lists do a better job.

[–] MadScientist@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

the beauty with matrix being open-source and decentralized is that anyone can just implement indexability themselves, as someone in the thread has already given an example of

though i don't think support servers are a good idea in the first place

[–] liminal@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

https://view.matrix.org

[–] nxlemmy@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

interesting, i didnt know this was a thing either but is it scraped by search engines?

[–] liminal@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The pages are plain html, so yeah? Now I'm unsure if search engines can really scrape the entire post history because pagination is done with anchors, I'm not sure how robust anchors are.

An anchor looks like this: https://view.matrix.org/room/!OGEhHVWSdvArJzumhm:matrix.org/?anchor=$c2Qx9k8CB4WBrNsIxW4WxlZ1MqBvYS-tfGFsA7QkxMg&offset=60

[–] liminal@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Yup this doesn't seem robust at all. Any message anchor= just points to a message UUID, which means there is a page, showing adjacent messages, for every message. The pages are mostly duplicates.

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