- cross-posted to:
- programmerhumor@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- programmerhumor@lemmy.ml
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One of the stupidest trends of all time.
There is FOSS alternatives out there like Revolt or just plain old IRC which is good enough imo. The Discord bullshit is so annoying.
All chat programs are shit for long term accumulation of knowledge. Discord, revolt, IRC, they’re all just as bad for it.
Forums are where you’ll find people who are actual experts discussing because they want to be able to easily reference previous posts by other people.
IRC at least you have text logs, but I agree.
we just need IRCv2 which should add chat history
How do you replicate a conversation like this in a IRC format?
https://www.advrider.com/f/threads/yamaha-wr250r-threadfest.936588/
Where’s lemmy in regards to this?
Lemmy/Reddit style platforms are good at generating short term discussions, it’s threaded chats.
The main features that makes forums the best to accumulate knowledge is bumping and linear discussions. There’s only one discussion that everyone is following if they want to talk about a specific subject, the knowledge on that subject is centralized and keeps accumulating instead of requiring to be constantly repeated because the previous thread is lost to time. The linear discussion means you don’t have to go back up and start reading a different branch to know what some other people are talking about (which often times leads to having many people basically saying the same thing without realizing it), all new replies appear in chronological order and people quote others to provide context when necessary.
Look on old school forums for more “boomer hobbies” and it’s ridiculous how long conversations can keep going. I provided a link in another reply but the Yamaha WR250 thread on ADVRider has 428k replies since 2013, all that is possible to know about this motorcycle is in they thread and pretty much any question you might have will have its reply in there. There’s car forums with discussions that have been ongoing for decadeS!
Meanwhile on Reddit of you want to ask a question in a thread that was started 24h ago you’re shit out of luck, no one but the OP will know about it. On Lemmy? Everyone sorts by top 6 hours.
In regards to the advrider comment, I don’t find those ridiculously long-running threads all that convenient even though they are very useful. In your example the WR250R thread could have multiple subtopics being discussed at once in the same thread which I find frustrating.
For example, one guy might ask about tires and while that’s being discussed another guy shows up asking about a big bore kit to make more power. Now there are two discussions happening at the same time and all I can do is view the thread chronologically. Then someone else shows up asking what oil everyone uses. Then someone new joins and says “Hey it’s not possible to go back and read through all 2300 pages in this thread, what GPS are you all using?”
Like sure it’s great that all the information is in that one thread but navigating through it only in chronological order can be super frustrating.
I have been playing with the idea of a documentation.org. Something publicly funded (mostly through corporate and individual donations) that hosts technical manuals, white papers, guides, links to video tutorials (likely YouTube), FAQs, and even links to Discord and/or forums if they exist. Documents are public, free to index (no login to view), version controlled and held in perpetuity.
Obviously there is much more to it, but I think we have reached a point where something like it is required.
Aren’t you basically describing readthedocs.io?
In the most technical terms, yes. The idea is not new or bizarre, but I see the same missteps repeated. For starters, the venture HAS to be a nonprofit with zero need for monetization. It will also need an inviting and easy to navigate user interface, accessible to the most nontechnical of users. You need to have a massive document library from multiple large players from day one, so you need to have a lot of contacts.
As I said it’s not fully cooked, but I have spoken to a few people that could help me make it happen and they seemed open to it.
First thing that comes to mind is https://devdocs.io/about
Please consider a Patreon for doc review. I don’t mean reviewing the doc against the project for fitness, as that’s the job of each project to maintain and review their own docs; I mean by a technical writer who can de-localize (you only think I mean ‘internationalize’) the document and make it syntactically and logically correct against a generic, classic style guide.
The rising popularity of really bad errors is definitely turning me off from videos or documentation from a few sources with a lot of churn. It ruins the flow and it robs the assumption of authority which I’d argue is an important part of any documentation.
That is a good idea. I am fairly certain I could get funding and/or loaned resource time for English, Spanish, French and German, but crowd funding incentivized localization for other regions is brilliant.
Also I’d rather just have these things in the repository.
That’s not the point. The point is that pointing to Discord means that there simply is no documentation.
I meant it more as a communication platform, not nescessarily for hosting documentation. Either way, using a forum is still pretty good alternative
Removed by mod
I only want the documentation if you have to fax it to me
Whatever, Mr. Stallman.
The very fact that you have to ask and wait for an answer is an inconvenience.
one time, I asked and got a reply that it has been answered already, followed by a rant of why the hell people were asking the same question over and over again. IDK man, maybe you could update the installation instructions in your readme, then people wouldn’t be flodding discord with the same question over and over again.
(it was regarding the project being incompatible with the newest version of a library and you had to manually install an older version to get it to work)
Firstly, discord is entirely the wrong medium for documentation.
Secondly, documentation should be at least as accessible as the code. That is to say, if I can view the code without creating an account for some service, then I should also be able to read the documentation too.
Documentation is bad enough. But it’s worse when that’s the only channel to get support. I once read a project maintainer boast that they never read the bug reports and issues on github and if anyone had a bug to just chat him up discord. I mean, dude, no wonder nobody uses your software or takes it seriously. Much less want to collaborate on the development.
I can’t understand why someone would want to do that. Maybe it’s my help desk and IT upbringing, but for the few software tools and things I’ve made, if you chat me without filing a bug/issue on GitHub, I’m not gonna help you.
To play devil’s advocate here: sometimes there are genuine reasons to try and request support before making an issue. I’m not particularly smart, nor too techy. If something isn’t working, I’m just going to assume I’m an idiot and I’ve messed something up. If I can’t figure out how to make it work, my first post of call will be trying to find a community related to whatever isn’t working, or on smaller projects I might try and reach out to the Dev. Opening an issue always feels like a “hey, your program isn’t doing what it’s meant to do, here’s what’s wrong with it, please fix it” and not “I think I’ve fucked something up, can you please help?”
I suppose it depends what you’re developing though.
You can open an issue and say exactly that
Yep, and if it becomes a frequent request, add clarification to the readme / wiki / documentation.
Also, if you push folks towards issues, then they become indexable by search engines! So even if you have a solved problem you can at least find that… Discord? It’s a black hole.
And then get it insta-closed withing 20 minutes saying that “this is a problem with your setup, not the software” even when “my setup” was literally setting up their project using their documentation (docker compose files).
That is how developers treat people with questions that they deem “stupid.”
It turns out their documentation was wrong and some environment variable that they said was optional, was not actually optional and the service would go into a reboot loop without it. I figured that out no thanks to the devs.
Agreed. I may not want to mix my discord identity with whatever project I’m looking at. I especially don’t want to mix my personal online identity with my professional identity. I post too much politics for that.
Yes, this exactly! I still cannot fathom how Discord took off. It offers literally no advantages over forums, and introduces some massive disadvantages.
It took off because it was objectively the best catch-all communication option for gamers at the time. It’s still the best option for certain use cases like that, but I’ll never understand why people prefer it for projects, troubleshooting, updates, etc. It seems incredibly lazy and unserious to me. And the current Discord mobile layout is absolutely horrible, making for a totally miserable user experience.
I hated back in 2015 when people were leaving other communication platforms for the lesser option of Discord
Even today Discord still doesn’t have directional chat and you can’t be in multiple calls at once
At least mods help mask all the missing features
I left mumble, teamspeak, and Skype for Discord.
Discord is easily the better options among those choices.
I also can’t think of much use for being in more than one call at once. I dunno seems like you’re just looking for a different thing. And that’s okay.
Discord didn’t, and still doesn’t, require a download. Easier for people to pick up and easier to use on locked down computers.
This. Whatever can be used on devices without admin rights, such as work or school devices, for “free”, will get picked up by normie worker drones and college students and minors in droves.
It’s been pretty handy in a lot of ways, but yeah I do hate what it’s doing to indexable information and it’s only a matter of time before it goes for IPO and suddenly gets way worse seemingly overnight…
I’m unfamiliar with Directional Chat outside of things like VRchat, how that work if you’re not manipulating your position in space relative to other users?
Still manipulating space
In Axon you had a 2d plane with a picture you could drag around for where you were compared to everyone else
Oh damn, thats cool! Never heard about that before.
RIP ventrilo and iirc 8(
My office has official chat (teams) and unofficial chat (Mattermost).
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a more casual discussion platform at work, which is what Mattermost had become.
At the beginning it originally had an appeal that anyone could create a voice chat server for free in a matter of seconds.
Teamspeak needed a hosted dedicated server. Skype was “calls” and not communities. Mumble was hardly known.
I completely accept why it took off but I hate where it has gone. it’s over complicated and feature creeped electron shite
Poor ventrillo. Not even a mention.
About as remembered these days as xfire
I feel ashamed. Good call out
tbf discord is good for organizing activities in games with online multiplayer. definitely shouldn’t be used for documentation in place of forums though.
Yea, I don’t get the documentation stuff. It’s like saying you’ll use Google Chat history as your documentation.
Also good for organizing D&D.
well that is a multiplayer game and can be played online
Also good for casual socializing
I’m glad doujinstyle realized their mistakes and revived the website after some time as discord only.
IRC > Discord
Modern web IRC clients like The Lounge or Convos can now display images, play mp3 and mp4 formats, and they have upload options. It can still be excellent for real time support, but I’m not so sure about documentation though.
Of course an IRC chat won’t be used for documentation, I meant for general chatting and support. Also I didn’t know that, hopefully I’ll be able to replace the absolutely proprietary discord with it.
You can create a discord server instantly with a handful of clicks for free. That’s why.
Also, plenty of people use it for chat.
You don’t see its incredible simplicity as an advantage? That’s crazy
Simplicity? What fucking simplicity?
Seriously. My only interactions with discord are in ways that its replaced a simple web forum or IRC channel.
Well if that’s your only exposure to it, then yeah I could see why you think it’s not good.
But if you just want to hang out with a regular group of friends async and in voice chat, it’s pretty damn good.
Skill issue
Notepad is simple
Doesn’t mean it’s the best thing for documentation.
Actually… a readme file is probably better for documentation if you’re really going for simple.
Sometimes a readme is all a project needs
I may be getting old, but I think D*scord (I’m all for cencoring it like a slur) isn’t any more simple than a phpBB or something similar was. Quite the opposite actually, at least for any user trying to navigate the the darn thing.
Having used both, if you can somehow navigate a phbb board then you can easily navigate discord. The only thing stopping you is you.
Maybe navigating is the wrong term. It’s just impossible to find stuff relevant to me on discord. On any given larger server, there may be a few channels I could be interested in - but they are just a single chat log, often with lots of off-topic spam, and many different people having almost separate discussions at the same time. On any given larger phpBB, stuff is mostly separated into different threads with all the off-topic posts being delegated to a single thread. It’s better searchable and better organized.
What even is “relevancy”? Their search is just a search by matching keywords. There isn’t a magic algorithm discord uses. Every time I had an issue with some sort of bug or function I just search for specific keywords and 9/10 times I find something. On the odd-chance I don’t then I’ll behave like a human being and ask. I just don’t get what’s wrong with that? You can already limit those keyword searches with specific constraints so you don’t get much noise.
Counterpoint
Counter-counterpoint: He did eat something off his foot in front of an audience.
Would not have minded going the whole year without thinking about that.
I don’t think “simplicity” is in a FOSS evangelist’s vocabulary.
Using Discord to support code is like trying to teach sculpture over the telephone.
simplicity is a double edged sword. convinence is nice, but the internet feels a lot more homogenous these days than in the past
you don’t see a tool being too simple for the problem at hand to be a problem in tool selection? that’s also crazy.
If Discord is simple, why does the Discord app have 149 MB?
Of all the counterpoints you can give me against discord not being simple, you choose file size. Lmao. I’m not even gonna start
Discord is better than IRC in any way except available clients, while also doing voice/video chat rooms so it replaced Teamspeak/Mumble. With the additional (at first) paid streamers and being free it took off especially with younger audiences. I remember how terrible Skype was and Discord just worked.
Because it was easier to create a server in discord than ts3
What makes it even more crazy is 90% of projects are using github/gitlab/gitea or some other modern git platform that literally has a wiki feature built in. And everyone and their dog either knows or could very quickly learn how to use markdown to write the wiki.
If you want a chatroom at least use matrix as it’s open source and privacy respecting. Though IRC is better for a community. And good old forums are best.
Matrix
Open Element iOS
Start stopwatch
Syncing completes
Stop stopwatch
I have eight rooms added to the Matrix client! And Lemmings tell me it’s not Element, things are just slow.
Hoping they were wrong and I’m doing something wrong or this is totally atypical (e.g. connected to a really slow server).
FOSS is worth tradeoffs. Unindexable corporate software is regressive. But! Need some more speed over here! Individual chats/rooms are slow/buggy too.
try element x, on android it opens almost instantly. still in beta though
That’s the “historic matrix / element”
Use newer ones with sliding sync capabilities
Is GitHub wiki still garbage or did they make it easy for anyone to contribute to?
It’s a git repo you can make PRs into
wait since when?
Not sure, always has been since I’ve used them
still garbage
I will never understand “forums are best”. I’ve tried, but they are worse in just about every aspect compared to any other communication system I’ve seen.
People just like what they like, I guess.
The good thing about forums is that, once a problem is addressed, the solution remains there and is indexed by search engines for everyone to see. You can say anything about forums, but I doubt you never fixed some issue by looking at some old forum thread, without even having to bother anyone.
Definitely use case specific.
If you want to learn from a number of car enthusiasts how to address one specific error code with one specific model of car, is there anything better than finding a five page long forum thread and reading a few dozen posts about it from the last few years?
Correct me if Im wrong but only contributors can edit the wiki. If I remember correctly you cant just do a PR to the wiki. Which is sad.
It’s possible to allow anyone to edit a Github wiki. But I’m not sure whether edit permission can be set per page or wiki wide.
I’ve tried to use matrix… Is there a good matrix client? Like, one with admin commands? Maybe I just didn’t “get” it, but it seemed not even yet half baked.
If the documentation is on discord, there is no documentation. Documentation has to be freely available, otherwise it doesn’t count.
Friendly reminder that open source projects don’t just need coders contributing to them.
Technical writers are very appreciated.
How does everyone feel about the “isolation” of information exchange? Specifically with systems like discord which encourage you to congregate behind a wall? Historically things like community forums were open to the public and thus indexable.
Hosting documentation on Discord is like hosting it on IRC.
While a useful tool in its own right, it’s entirely the wrong choice for this job.
I have a strong suspicion that 90% of that shit is not being backed up. If a server gets deleted for whatever reason, all the documentation is extra gone with a side of never coming back.
No wayback machine, no wget, no open source. Add in server moderators can go rogue or get hacked at any given time. Recipe for catastrophic shitshows
Discord provides no way to backup and restore a server. There are freemium third party products and some rudimentary open source tools that do so, but yeah, it’s wild how much information about open source software (this also applies to the game development community) is just in a proprietary walled garden with a single point of failure.
It’s a good thing discord saves all your data. Thanks discord
Well, we left reddit for beginning to plant a walled garden, so…
I’d say we left to plant a community garden. Anyone can see it, Anyone can join or start their own.
If it’s indexable it’s not a walled garden
We left because the previous garden is getting walled and this one isn’t.
Yeah… That’s what I said…
Not clear if you talk about here or there I think
It’s actually quite worrisome, many projects exclusively have their troubleshooting or support on Discord now what’s going to happen years down the road when all those Discord servers have closed or no longer active and the invite links expire this is going to be a vast knowledge base that’s just lost to the world
This is why going back to the moon is so hard, when msn groups closed back in the early 1970s we lost alot of very precious knowledge.
Is this a joke?
No, there was MSN in the 70s but communication was made through a machine called Microtron. They are largely lost to the world due to being made from degradable PCB plates.
I see your point, but couldn’t you say the same thing about any forum?
“What happens when the forum shuts down? All threads discussing issues gone forever”
If you host a forum, you can easily access the database to move threads into some kind of archive if you no longer want to host it. It could also be moved to another server. Stuff like that.
Using a proprietary service instead is just a bad idea.
The web is on archive at least
Nope - cached/archived versions will continue to exist
That’s why FOSS ends up forking and forking
Imagine “stealing” a project just because you can write sensible documentation.
Another way to think about this is that those projects that have a more structured approach to documentation have a better chance at lasting longer, attracting more contributors, and making more lasting impacts
Is it stealing if it’s been dead for 30 years? Or is it modernizing it?
What? We are talking about discord documented software.
If it’s open source and the license allows it, I wouldn’t consider that stealing. If a fork gets more popular than the original, then it either addresses a major missing feature of the original or is simply more active. If this displeases the original dev, they can hopefully work it out with the maintainers of the fork. This is a feature of FOSS, not a bug.
Opened a discord link for info the other day…looked like a fucking Las Vegas casino. The.fuck.
Imo this kind stuff probably because these “dev” having safe space on those discord servers rather than using something properly setup site/forum.
Heck you can make your own documentation using github/gitlab built in wiki or if you want something fancier, setup a site using JAMstack/static site generator, pick suitable theme then use gh page to host it.
I even more hate this stuff when the files is gated inside discord server, dude out of all possible file hosting services why the heck you would use discord?
Gates turn with money. That is the why.
I have been lucky and haven’t seen this. What a horrible thing to do.
I haven’t seen this either. OP, you got a link? I’d love to see what kind of software is doing this.
Not exactly the same thing, but the xone (XBox One controller driver for Linux) project disabled Issues on Github and uses a Discord server instead. Which is stupid as heck, because I’m not going to join a Discord server just to check if someone has already encountered the same issue as me.
It’s generally nothing big enough to have heard of unless you’re looking into whatever niche it fills.
Only example that comes to mind is mechanical keyboard stuff. For some of the smaller / one-off designs there was a habit of “if you need troubleshooting, here’s a discord link” instead of even minimal documentation. For “standard” stuff that used the same lil microcontrollers as everything else just a minor annoyance, but saw it with ones that used custom / no microcontroller too, where even a “you need X diodes, Y sprockets, etc” would’ve been nice.
Like OP tend to see it and move on and forget about it because it’s not worth it. The few times I really wanted to get some service running on a raspberry pi or arduino or whatever and tried the discord was a handful of ‘regulars’ swapping memes that were annoyed I wasn’t intimately aware of their codebase.
Troubleshooting I could see being in discord. But it shouldn’t be the only option.
I got the feeling this is mostly niche stuff or very new developers that don’t have GitHub experience.
You can integrate GitHub issues with discord. I imagine similar integrations exist with gitlab
I’ve only got anecdotal stories but I have heard from my friends that ROM hack projects do this and I personally don’t get it. If it’s to hide from the big N, Discord won’t back you there. Just teach your users how to use patch files instead.
TrueCharts (third party app repository for TrueNAS) does this and it drove me crazy until I eventually gave up and moved everything to Docker. Lack of serious documentation was just one of the many reasons.
Never clicked on one of those Discord links, never will.
Not sure if everyone here knows the difference between documentation and discussion.
best I can do is please react to the #roles channel with a ❤️ to unlock the channel. what’s that? you’re looking for a fix to an issue you’re having in an older and supported version of the app? well sucks for you and suck my d*** we’ve already deleted that channel a long time ago who needs that old info anyway
I think we fixed that for someone a few months ago, maybe you can scroll back and find it. I think the guys handle was user-something, might have been around May…
Reading this made me feel a bit of anxiety
