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@sturmsucht can’t stop praising #deltachat for anything requiring a closed community discussion. For anything else, especially as a support related resource, there is always #discourse
@sturmsucht If we didn't rely on PluralKit so heavily, we'd have moved off of Discord years ago. Lock-in is really bad.
@sturmsucht And what is proper, recommended replacement?
@sturmsucht we originally started out with IRC but one of our contributors made the convincing case that the discord audience is much bigger, so i decided that we expand to there. and the assertion was correct: the audience *is* bigger.
i personally would prefer a p2p clone of discord but apparently we're not there yet. i'm not exactly sure what the holdup is.
@lritter well, it makes more sense for a game dev to be on discord than for any other company - especially security related and companies that proclaim their foss / anti-big-tech background or purpose.
But still, you can choose to not have discord as your only support platform.
In the end it comes to this: If we use discord we contribute our and our users' personal data to discords's revenue while ignoring secure alternatives because everyone else also jumps off the bridge.
We can do better.
@sturmsucht it's not just a game; there's also OSS tech being developed.
but sure. i totally agree. orgs can only meet people where they are though. and when they're in the wrong place, we'll meet them in the wrong place, because it has greater value than chasing purity for its own sake.
if we had more market pull though... if people came to us wherever we are ... i'd certainly change the rules.
@sturmsucht getting adoption for anything else is such a pain unfortunately.
Like do you want to have conversations with people about the project or do you want the ideal venue and get a tenth or hundredth of the attendance.
I should be more on IRC I suppose. But I haven't had the habit in a couple of decades.
First Element room I wanted to join just hung for eternity and never resolved.
@lawik weird assumption that discord is the place where the majority is.
The barrier for using a forum is so damn low - especially compared with Discord. AND you can actually index it so that you get less support requests because people FIND the answer for what they were looking for.
As I said, Element is not the only alternative. I think it's still a good one as they have put A LOT of effort into it over the last 2 years. But I still prefer a forum for the reasons mentioned.
@sturmsucht
Is it a weird assumption or is it based on my experience of where I've seen present-day projects successfully build active exchange?
Tiny sample size but I know it is hard to build an active group anywhere and picking a tool many people already have lowers the barrier. Discord is extremely widely used outside of open source. I can get OSS die-hards on IRC. But I doubt I'd get a newly minted programming student as easily.
I don't want to argue for Discord being the right choice. I think the analogy you wrote that I responded to is accurate. But the challenge of the choice of tool is real.
I do like forums. They are not the same function for many people as a chat. The Elixir ecosystem which is where I hang out have a forum that is an awesome resource. It is not a good place for most people to socially connect with each other around projects or throwing in the quick questions.
Outside of the help/questions the forum format attracts people with a lot of time and desire to argue.
The function of Discord could be handled by IRC or Element. But the low barrier to entry and high degree of actually working plays into it a lot in my mind.
@lawik I see. It's a difference if it's "just" support or basically collab in development.
But your argument for Discord here is the same why people stay at big tech: Everyone is there.
And I personally think these costs of convenience have become too high in a world where fascist tech bros provide the tools to catch you off the street.
Also, if someone is really interested in having a discussion with you about your product, they should be willing to use your more private channel.
@sturmsucht yeah, fair. For support I'd have liked more places to use .. email :D
But yeah, it weighs on me. The state of things suck.
I wonder if Signal has enough traction that they could break things up assuming they built more threading and such.
I gotta try Element for something again.
Being vegan I do often make inconvenient choices but I prefer to do that for myself more than for others.
@lawik @sturmsucht
Agreed on email.
Who are these people who have Discord but not email?
And if they really are that many, why do OSS projects need to force users onto Discord instead of having both?
(I recently ran into a similar problem with an OSS project that refuse to take bug reports from people without a Microsoft Github account - and then discovered that someone else had reported the same bug on Github 2½ years ago).
@lawik As people who know better, we should be more pro-active. And I don't speak about forcing every stranger to go vegan (vegan myself here), but not cooking meat for others when it's your own party
Thought about Signal as well. No threads there (yet?), but also in Discord people don't understand how to use them. 🤷♂️
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@sturmsucht I have this weird Déjà vu of having posted literally this years ago.
@whynothugo it's so weird, right? looks like nothing changed.
@sturmsucht
Also if your documentation is on Discord, then your project isn't documented.
@sturmsucht We are currently in a discussion to get a user group away from there, but what could I recommend? I am not deep enough into Discord but learned that neither IRC nor Signal are considered as appropriate replacement.
@sturmsucht bro, today I bought butcher fries at the butcher.
100% vegetarian. It's all possible.
@sturmsucht The thing is... There can be discord thingies (refuse to call it a server...) that look like they're official, but completely are NOT.
The #krita discord place is big, busy and the people managing it do a good job (I think), but it's not affiliated with the Krita project or foundaiton.
For Krita users, the place to hang out is krita-artists.org, for developers... Our IRC channel, #krita.
@sturmsucht 오픈소스 소프트웨어에 디스코드를 사용하지 말라고 요구하는 것은 鞠躬盡瘁死而後已와 같은 경직된 태도이며, 이는 프로젝트 목표 실현에 해롭습니다.
https://wildgoose1950.pixnet.net/blog/post/5678890
@matling
when Discord is the only possible tool that helps you organise and achieve your project goal, I think you should question your project - and your profession.
I never understood the appeal of that place. It's a garish kids toy. It's awful. People seem to fall for the most inane crap.
@tomjennings 100%. I really wonder how that happens. If you think choosing a Mastodon server is "too complicate" try using Discord. It's a terrible user experience to use and confusing as fuck when you start with it.
@sturmsucht @tomjennings
I think its like all Furry and Kinky people using exclusively Telegram and Bluesky, because everyone of the people they want to talk use exlusively Telegram and Bluesky and promote that as "have found my home there"
Its a self-reinforcing circulation
Either you join them there where they are and increase the size of the circle there, or you are a lonely disconnected outsider
Thats why i so much wish for Federation, also bridging with XMPP; Matrix; Deltachat etc
@sturmsucht @tomjennings
The original onboarding flow was VERY smooth.
You click the join link, if you didn't have it installed you got prompted to set a nick name and password.
After that you got dropped to the chat.
Almost as simple as IRC via some webchat client.
I think there are people who choose rooms to hang out in by how fun the furniture is.
@sturmsucht Don‘t get me started. The ASWF (Academy Software Foundation, subgroup(?) of Linux Foundation), hosting a ton of OS projects in the realm of image modification, rendering etc.
Chat is on Slack, Code is GitHub and Meetings on Zoom. Guess there is more tools me would generally not want to touch.
(And and btw. haven‘t signed a CLA so can‘t really collaborate, as they require my home address or me lying about it. From a foundation around OS that needs cookie information. Which is something a serious OS project would not need anyway.)
@sturmsucht Discord is one of the platforms i want to go poof. And that is telegram included, since there are also a lot of projects that offer support exclusivley trough telegram.
At least discord does not require a phone number (yet).
@sturmsucht I now see regular companies having support discords.
Which feels like a laser tag arena where only suit and tie are allowed
@sturmsucht Yes, very annoying.
@sturmsucht Same could be said for Lefty groups supporting BDS but then promoting it on WhatsApp and Facebook
@Lisa_48 That's a different thing in my opinion. It sounds weird, but it doesn't help to e.g. scream into the fediverse that it's a good alternative to big tech social media. These people already know. That message must be seen on big tech platforms. For Lefty groups: basically same. But even then you can be a Lefty and still use big tech. Even if that feels off from our side given their owners and their power over algorithms.
@sturmsucht Not really about the 'still using it', that's fair enough, but it's the sheer arrogance of refusing to accept there's any other options combined with the decision to use a chat platform like whatsapp by BDS campaigners when there are perfectly workable alternatives you can easily download and install as an alternative - because it's also a chat, not social media.
@Lisa_48 ah, yeah, got you. That's a thing I also don't understand at all.
I've a friend who posts spiritual, anti-billionaire, grasroots-movment, overcome-"the-system" stuff on IG, but when I ask why they are not switching, they say that there are no alternatives. Even when I point to them, they stay on IG.
People stay inactive and avoid alternatives, because they hope the existing might get better some day. A couch revolution with no energy involved.
@sturmsucht couldn't agree more. I can't help but think it's just a fear of being alone. It's not as easy to rebuild in places like this, it's not easy to not just do what everyone else has gotten comfortable to be doing.
In the meantime, all we can do is try eh?
Love your posts, and glad to have found you on here and look forward to your future posts
@Lisa_48 For Discord that's basically the private decision of a project or company to use the platform. It's a chat system not a social media platform.
@sturmsucht Well I'd have to say my experience would make me disagree. I've seen people scream at people for buying a Costa on a Palestine march b/c it violates the BDS movement; groups like YourParty exclusively communicate on WhatsApp - exclusively being a key word here. Keeping in mind the CEO of WhatsApp (not Meta, but WhatsApp specifically) donated millions to help Israel and in a public appearance literally laughed at people doing BDS. Sounds like vegans serving steak to me.
@Lisa_48 @sturmsucht what alternative way do you suggest. The reality is that you can't implement bds completely. I think someone who using meta apps responsibly but boycott stuffs like coca cola sodas has more impact for bds then the opposite
@sturmsucht I tend to agree but also faced with the fact the alternative suck ...
@tnt agree to disagree here. If you don't like Matrix, there is stoat.chat or honestly any forum software out there to self-host. NodeBB, flarum, etc.
I think support really doesn't need to be on messengers for communication. It honestly shouldn't use them, because you can't index and search those answers through search engines.
@sturmsucht @tnt The problem is getting regular people to use it. I only have discord because that's the most used place, its the only reason why I have mainstream social media accounts for my podcast also as on Mastodon the userbase is just crickets.
@sturmsucht This! Same with marginalized people on Facebook, Instagram, X, etc.
@sturmsucht Shout out to @dosgameclub for their active IRC channel!
@sturmsucht
arguably it's more like chickens holding events at a tyson foods factory.
@sturmsucht I wish discord would go away, it’s the most difficult interface to find information and has a myriad of other problems too. Besides not working with adaptive text sizing.
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