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Stop Using Discord for Your Open source Communities | mattcen's mumblings (blog.mattcen.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by noodlejetski to c/foss

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Recently I accidentally made a Fediverse post which went viral:

stop using discord for your open source communities

That post is short, punchy, opinionated, and prescriptive, which I suspect is the cause for its virality.

Unfortunately, like many micro-blog posts, it lacks nuance, which many replies highlighted. I made the post to vent my frustration at needing to join a Discord server to interact with a community, so it is far from a measured critique of the subject.

This blog post is an attempt to address those nuances in greater detail. This is not an exhaustive analysis, and I’ve resolved to not let “perfect” be the enemy of “done”.

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[–] VoxAdActa 119 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I wish people would stop trying to use Discord as an information repository/hub. It's a chat program. It's designed for people to engage in transient, real-time back-and-forth communication, not to store discussions or information for long-term use. I get so cranky at people who insist that Discord can be used like a web forum when it so obviously sucks nuts at it.

A forum has content that can stay up indefinitely, where the message history on narrowly defined subjects is packaged into a convenient container and is visible as far back in time as one cares to go. It's easily searchable, and old discussions for which a user has new questions can be brought back up to the top of the list, in full. Trying to recreate that kind of functionality on Discord is not only stupid, but also generally futile. It's the exact opposite of what Discord is intended to be.

[–] SkepticElliptic 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I wonder if it's due to younger people's lack of understanding file structure. All modern operating systems offer the user the blackhole theory of storage where you just plop all of your files into one big unorganized storage bin.

It's so bad that computer science students are entering college without understanding what folders/ directories are.

So it makes sense that people who use discord are comfortable with the idea of just having one big pile of discussions instead of having them broken up separately.

Unfortunately, it's a big mess to navigate.

[–] Mantis 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It’s so bad that computer science students are entering college without understanding what folders/ directories are.

These are dark times...

[–] Juno 10 points 1 year ago

High school teacher here: can confirm, students have zero understanding of how to use files 🙄 - this, all while the geriatrics who preach 👏 "oh kids with the computers!!! They know the computers don't dontcha know? I'll never forget my granddaughter programming my VCR, kids just get it!"

Those people are the ones doing away with basic computer science and typing classes (they also can't type and also claim they can't type on their phones)

[–] SkepticElliptic 4 points 1 year ago

That's what happens when you give kids ipads and Chromebooks with no freedom. Anything under the hood gets obfuscated in order to tightly control everything the user does.

It's sort of like how you had to kind of know how your car worked back when they were a new thing. Now you get in and it just works.

[–] nickb333 3 points 1 year ago

This sounds like the current trend with Outlook. Nobody at my $DAY,_JOB seems to bother organising stuff. It just gets left perpetually in the inbox and they all use the super search functionality.

[–] abrr1sz 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Absolutely. You can't really search Discord communities and it is genuinely bad if you want to keep some important information for others to use. Channels were messy enough and the introduction of threads has made things even worse. I was once a moderator of a Discord server and I can say that moderation capabilities are (edit: were?) also very limited to the point where moderating a relatively active (2k+ members) server was getting a 24/7 job and we had like 7 mods(!).

I can't grasp the whole concept of Discord servers even though I was moderating one. They're bad as a knowledge base, they're bad as a discussion platform, so why do people keep creating them? Moreover, why do so many open-source oriented communities (e.g. pine64) use the proprietary platform that is Discord? The only reason I see is solely the fact that Discord is very well known, and many people use it. And the situation is getting even worse: as far as I am aware Discord, which was initially created for communication between gamers, was widely used during the pandemic for online classes and a lot of development teams even use it as an alternative to Slack.

[–] VoxAdActa 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can’t grasp the whole concept of Discord servers even though I was moderating one. They’re bad as a knowledge base, they’re bad as a discussion platform, so why do people keep creating them?

I mean, as a chat room, it's fantastic. It's a massively upgraded IRC (except in terms of the ease of discovering new servers), with QOL features I didn't even know how badly I wanted back in the old Yahoo! Chat days (such as the ability to spin up a temporary thread to take an in-depth conversation out of the main channel without going to DMs). It's for discussions that happen right now and are not meant to be conserved forever because, generally speaking, they're not expected to be that important. I love discord for that, because I miss chat rooms.

But it's absolutely garbage for being a repository of static knowledge. Releasing patch notes only in discord is ridiculous.

[–] averyminya 5 points 1 year ago

What's interesting is that it seems to be a cultural difference? I mean, back in the days of IRC we had Bash which essentially was IRC memes. They were pretty good, but discord has much fewer posts of this kind. Advent of photo memes mostly I'm sure, but it's still interesting.

Discord is at least easier to get some of what your looking for with searches. IRC was known that it was gone for good once you logged off, or you would find out the hard way. Mind you, I'm not advocating for it, just agreeing with you in that it's more robust and people are somewhat using it wrong.

Because it's absolutely people using it wrong. Time and time again, you create #help or #information and people post in #specific-channel asking for the speil. Like dude, it's literally already all in #information and you can ask there.

Like with most things I think good things can be used poorly and even some bad things can be used well. People use discord poorly, but despite it being pretty bad it still does pretty well compared to its predecessor.

[–] Creesch 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you were trying to manage a server with 2k active users 7 mods isn't all that much. Assuming for a moment this was a little while ago (discord did release some pretty nifty mod tools over the last year or so) and you had not set anything up in regards to third party bots.

With the newest discord modtools in addition with third party bots discord is in my experience very good to manage for a chat platform. Certainly much easier than IRC ever was and still is for that matter.

[–] abrr1sz 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Of course not all 2k were active but the server definitely had a very active and dedicated core of users and we had many newbies joining almost everyday. The worst I remember, actually, was when one of our admins decided to promote the project on TikTok (for some reason) and his content was blessed by the algorithm. It was a literal meat grinder.

I'm not sure if there was even something that could have been automated. Like, of course you could automate banning raiders or spammers, iirc we had that, but what is there to automate when you're dealing with plain xenophobia/racism/homophobia (and this was not a rare occasion)? Introducing word filters might work in some contexts but this was not the case since it was a very multilingual server. Well, server-wide filters would be useless, channel-wide filters could be helpful, though, but I doubt there is a way to implement them without bots, unless Discord introduced such capabilities.

Good to hear that a lot has now changed for the better though but it would not really improve my experience back then simply because the community of discord servers can sometimes be pretty awful. Maybe it'll go away as Discord is getting way more mainstream nowadays but even just a few years ago it was a very specific kind of people that joined Discord and they were not always nice.

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[–] BitOneZero 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I almost never see someone link to a Discord past conversation on fixing an issue/problem solving. It's a one-way black hole.

[–] CinnamonTheCat 3 points 1 year ago

Discord is a black hole for your messages to go into.

[–] noodles@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that's my biggest issue as well with Discord being used as a community forum alternative. The searching is extremely bad and limited and the since it's "chat-like" you won't find the replies to the discussion easily.

[–] ono@lemmy.ca 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Putting a community on Discord also means locking it (and all the information you create over time) behind Discord's license terms, policies, and whims.

I care about my users. I wouldn't ask them to agree to those terms, let alone allow Discord to be gatekeeper of my communities.

[–] TheOtherJake 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Worse yet. Install a whitelist firewall or have a look at the connections required to access Discord. You will immediately stop using it. It involves dozens of undocumented raw IP address connections and weird ports. Top this off by telling me what their business model is and how they are profitable. They provide no documentation whatsoever about what they are doing and why. The best explanation anyone has ever given me when asked why they use discord is, 'because everyone else is doing it.' That is idiotic nonsense.

[–] ArcticCircleSystem 5 points 1 year ago

The issue is a social platform is useless without the social aspect. If someone's entire friend group is on one site, they're unlikely to move to another. Trying to get the whole friend group to move is also easier said than done due to inertia and t eother members of the friend group also being in communities and friend groups that aren't on the new platform. Now imagine that on the scale of a site like Discord and combine it with FOSS alternatives often have fewer features, less software support (for bots, clients, etc), and higher barriers to entry and you have a recipe for disaster for many new social media platforms. ~Strawberry

[–] crius 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is something I said even recently here but the general consensus is that "it's fine".

It's incredible how much people tend to just dismiss a valid concern when it's not an immediate threat to themselves.

[–] Lazycog@lemmy.one 8 points 1 year ago

It's also about the barrier of entry. Discord has a barrier, but it is not high. The fact that this platform is their commercial product ensures that issues are minimal (well...). For non tech-savvy people and those who don't have time / don't want to put in time to troubleshoot and figure things out this is the reason they go for these commercial solutions.

Just my observations from trying to switch friends and family over to free open source alternatives. It was a huge hassle to even get people to try out and move to signal, but signal has lowered the barrier quite a bit and now it's stable (was not always as fast and stable as now).

[–] fbievan@kbin.fbievan.live 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

entirely agree with this blog. If you are running open source or Free software communties, don't use discord to facilitate conversation.

[–] douglasg14b 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

100%. There are community tools made for this purpose. Make a discourse forum, if your project is on GitHub use GitHub issues and discussions. Discourse is fantastic, and is purpose made with all the features and gamification you could need for community knowledge management and q&a.

These are actively indexed and can hold a wealth of information that is invaluable to users of your open source project. And decreases the load on you.

Also, somehow, you can get worse than discord.... Slack. Slack servers that wipe anything more than 10k messages ago is absolute cancer for communities and community support...

[–] Dee_Imaginarium 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also, somehow, you can get worse than discord… Slack.

We go can deeper...

MS Teams

[–] douglasg14b 4 points 1 year ago

Please no

[–] CinnamonTheCat 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Gamification is not a good thing, imo. Also, also.... people on GitHub seem to be super hostile as opposed to just dming them on discord.

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[–] Rentlar 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I would much rather be on matrix... but discord sure is convenient.

[–] Cube6392 9 points 1 year ago

I would love to not be on discord, but none of my friends are on matrix and none of them would be willing to try it unless I set up a server myself

[–] StrayCatFrump 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

Have you tried Revolt? It's supposed to FOSS and offer similar functionality to Discord. I keep meaning to try it, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

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[–] noeontheend 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is aptly timed for me—I spent some time this weekend trying to decide what chat service to use for a project of mine. I'm just starting to try building the community, so it feels like I should have a chat ready if/when people start showing up.

I didn't consider Discord because I wanted to stick with free software, for the reasons outlined in this post and other similar ones. In the end, I settled on Zulip, but would be happy to reconsider (so far, the chat is just me talking to myself!) if anyone wants to suggest an alternative or has experience in a similar situation.

[–] ono@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I would use Matrix, because it's completely open and distributed (like the fediverse). I'm not sure whether I would use a public server or host my own.

Matrix is also good for private chats, offers end-to-end encryption, and is gaining on Discord in terms of features, so anyone creating an account would likely end up finding it useful for more than just my little community.

[–] alongwaysgone 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Eh, I have a serious love-hate relationship with Matrix. For groups its fine. But trying to communicate with individuals on matrix is a major PITA, because of its end-to-end encryption which causes constant issues, IME. It's great, in theory. But, in practice is just far more of a PITA than its worth.

[–] strangerloop 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been considering switching to Matrix for individual texting. What makes it a PITA in your experience? Is it hard to create conversations, do messages not get delivered, or is it something else?

[–] alongwaysgone 2 points 1 year ago

If you aren't on the same server, encryption doesn't always work very well, and you semi-frequently end up with conversations where you can't read each other's messages. Id you try get signed out of your app on a given device, you'll likely lose past conversations. Etc. It's just... obnoxious.

[–] noeontheend 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks! I did consider Matrix as well, and in fact just set up a personal server yesterday. I was worried about it being too high of a barrier to entry (the reason I stayed away from my first instinct, IRC...). At least Zulip is intuitively just a chat app, even though it might turn people away who don't want to register for yet another account. One option could be to add Matrix and IRC bridges for Zulip, in the hopes of keeping everyone happy?

I'm still not sure what the best way forward is. It's a tricky balance between promoting FOSS and remaining widely familiar.

[–] StrayCatFrump 4 points 1 year ago

Supposedly Revolt is FOSS and is similar to Discord. I haven't tried it yet, though.

[–] Mewio 16 points 1 year ago

I do not like when a community asks me to join their Discord server if I need support on something. Not everyone uses Discord and some that do do not even want to be using it. I use it for work and friends, I wouldn't use it otherwise.

[–] Mummelpuffin 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Please god let's go back to traditional forums. Heck, stuff like [that which shall not be named] and Lemmy are sort of the "modern equivalent" although I'm not sure why we needed to stop using traditional forums in the first place.

[–] lagomorphlecture 4 points 1 year ago

Because it's, honestly, just easier to have the forums aggregated in one place instead of having to visit and keep track of 15 different forums on 15 different sites.

[–] Scary_le_Poo 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As an open source developer.

Fuck that. Discord allows me to do so much and centralize communication. Small developers do not have the manpower to monitor multiple communications. I know people love to tout matrix, but it's features pale in comparison to discord.

Additionally, 99.9% of your users are already on discord. The other 0.1% are going to bitch and whine about the fact that you're not using matrix.

[–] DisietSma 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's great that you have centralized a community but the trade off appears to be that information is also centralized and unsearchable by traditional means (internet search). What if stack overflow partitioned it's knowledge base in such a way ?

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[–] ArcticCircleSystem 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Why not use a forum so that search engines can actually index information from the support site? Users are capable of going to forums. ~Strawberry

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[–] agoramachina 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

IRC, anyone?

[–] StantonVitales 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

1000% came in here to say I wish we all still just used IRC. Soooo hard to find a good, active IRC channel about a topic I care about these days 🙁

[–] agoramachina 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Plus, Discord is real pissy about 3rd party clients. I mean, at least theirs is good, unlike...well... But I just want to run everything from the command line without being banned, dammit! RIP cordless T_T

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[–] 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 year ago

Another classic next to IRC -- mailing lists :)

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