this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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person backing up his car exploitable with the following four panels:

  1. person looking ahead. the text below him says, "wow a cool software. let's check out the community"
  2. screenshot with the text

    Community
    The main place where the community gathers is our Discord server. Feel free to join there to ask questions, help out others, share cool things you created with Typst, or just to chat.

  3. hand on gear shift zoomed in, switching to reverse
  4. person looking behind with the text "nevermind".
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[–] [email protected] 89 points 7 months ago (8 children)

I don't get discord at all. It seems like the worst parts or IRC and the worst parts of webforums mashed together with no redeeming values added. I can't find anything, I can't tell what conversations are over, I can't figure out any of the in-jokes. If the place is too dead it's completely devoid of anything of value, if it's too big everything of value gets buried.

I've tried to take part in a couple of servers, those attempts have never last more than a couple hours.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That's was my exact experience on a pokemon go server. So many channels and conversations that notifications are useless and searching for the information I needed was difficult. Just one giant group chat which is awful for storing needed, retrievable, information imo.

Made me never want to step into discord again.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Same thing with EVERY SINGLE GORILLA TAG SERVER. Way too many mentions. Not straight forward enough. I can not express this enough. It’s insane!

[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It's great for smallish groups of friends bs-ing or collaborating, but bigger than that I've always found it painful

But, some people can apparently keep up with the firehouse of comments on Twitch streams while they make me not want to bother with it at all, so...

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

Yeah. My D&D group uses it for audio and video feeds and a little bit of between session chat. I appreciate how good the audio settings are.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

It has probably the worst UI of any site or app. I can never find the settings I need to modify or what the heck I’m looking at. It tells me that there’s a new reply specifically to me but I can never find it because it has long scrolled up in the history.

I tried posting an image using the app on my phone but it kept ignoring it. Somehow I magically hit the right button and it included it in my reply. I had no idea.

The content is hidden from the world unless you sign up and join, so the knowledge captured on a discord server is essentially useless.

It’s definitely a mashup on irc and web forums, but infinitely worse.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I think it is only used more than IRC because you can post images.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What do you mean find anything?

Discord is used like this:

Text message: you wanna play today? Yeah.

Discord: here's the server address. Thanks

Discord voice chat: I made us a bunch of supplies. Cool I dug up a diamond.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

And if we were talking about hooking up with our friends to play Minecraft, that'd be a great point.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Everyone is like "discord is a bad project discussion and documentation space! "

Which could be read as "it's very hard to cut this steak with a plunger!"

People are complaining about using a tool incorrectly.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (2 children)

We're complaining about having to use it incorrectly. We can't help if the software project (that's part of a software project, that's part of a software project we need) only offers support via discord.

To belabor your metaphor, you're saying that we shouldn't complain if we want a steak and the only place to get steak only offers plungers as utensils.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Does that really happen? I only used discord for limited socialization, discussing e.g. math in specific channels.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Well the specific context here is software projects using it as the platform for their community... So it's kind of like going to a steakhouse and being given a fork and plunger to eat with. It makes sense to both complain about the steakhouse, and remark on the shortcomings of using a plunger for the purpose it was imposed on you for.

Now of course, it's wrong to say that Discord or a plunger are bad tools per se-- They are both occasionally useful for when I need to deal with some problematic shit. They are unpleasant, but I just hold my nose and thoroughly wash my hands after.

Actually the plunger analogy tracks better than I expected.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

To which I'm saying anyone who engages with discord in a project space that is silly. Creators and users. Software dev happens elsewhere. Fork it and make it better.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Fork... what? The software project that you're trying to get help with? The problem isn't that you need to change the code, the problem is that you want to be able to leverage the community.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Oh sorry are you not familiar with GitHub or other branching code managers?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Haha that's not the issue, but it's pretty clear that you're deliberately misunderstanding at this point.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I understand it fine. People are intrigued by a useful project, only to find the junk devs run a discord for community engagement, issue tracking, devlog, and so on.

People feel helpless they they have to engage with discord in this way, because it is shit for that stuff.

People have no ability to self correct their experience, even though the system has built in features to allow them to improve the project by forking it and raising the standards.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Great, I knew you could understand if you wanted to (hence the "deliberate" part).

So... Yes. Exactly. The complaint is about poor choices in the implementation of the project's community. Not everybody who would want to use the software (e.g. Typst, in this meme) knows how to code at all. Those people are reliant on the community for support, and may choose to avoid a project if the community isn't good for them. That's the premise of the meme, and orthogonal to any properties of the version control system.

Among those who can code, it's still reasonable that someone might consider the community when evaluating the cost of integrating the project... Especially if they plan to be an end-user of the application.

It's great if you grok the source of every project you use and accept the burden of maintaining them yourself in lieu of a good community. That's really neat. But I don't think it's practical for everybody to do that for everything they might want to use... Yes, even though the Fork button is right there.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So generally people would prefer to complain that improve? Very cool. Just flail and meme

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Lol yes, people would often rather avoid getting involved with a piece of software at all (and perhaps complain about it), instead of taking over the burden of developing and supporting it themselves. Kids these days, right?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Sucks to suck I guess

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I've always found that Discord's search works pretty well!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah that's what I use most to see if people have asked the same question I have then I jump to the discussion they had and that leads me where I want to go, but I do get it would be really annoying for someone who isn't logged into discord or uses it to chat with friends

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Forums do it better, can be indexed by a search engine, can be bookmarked, and can be archived using the wayback machine or a similar service. Important information shouldn't be buried in chat logs. And discord's forum feature was an idea they tacked on and is a poor substitute for the real thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Those are definitely some excellent points

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

The barrier to entry for IRC is very high for non technical users. It's also archaic, has little to no customisation and can be difficult to moderate at high volumes.

I'm not defending discord here, but the IRC comparisons are silly.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I am guessing they advertised the right time in the right place. I agree, it's absolute trash

[–] [email protected] -3 points 7 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

28yo here - Discord feels as if ADHD was a piece of software

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

As someone diagnosed - you couldn't have said it better 10/10

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I’m 25 and share all these woes, what is old to you?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

I’m 21 and completely agree.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Old is when you don't try to understand the interface anymore.

Discord enables so much that's never been so convenient before. Can't say I like the company, but it's pretty much the best at what it does.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I joined reddit at 23 like 3 yrs ago from Tumblr/4chan(tttt)/VK/irc and already used discord before. It's just shit and you're coping

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

K? Coping with what exactly?