Gregory's ServerA really annoying thing that absolutely needs to stop:
- "More info in the discord!" / "Changelog in the Discord!"
STOP THAT.
Discord is a closed, proprietary platform. Post your stuff on the actual open web where more people will see it.
 93 comments
@gamingonlinux Big agree. I've never yet managed so much as even to sign up for a discord - when I once tried, I kept getting accounts blocked due to "anomalous behaviour" in the middle of 2FA validation. WTAF? "On discord" = "doesn't exist" here. @crazy_pony @xylophilist @gamingonlinux going to use โparanoid nerdโ as profile bio now ๐  @gamingonlinux imma ask a stupid question but... how? Not everyone on discord has tech knowledge to do that, you know? So if you post a problem post the solution and it'll be much more effective.... @VeroniqueB99 @gamingonlinux I think he's referring to game developers etc., i.e. people who already have project websites. @VeroniqueB99 if people are competent enough to: - Use Discord They will already know how to post it in public elsewhere  @gamingonlinux @VeroniqueB99
And, I'd add, if they somehow don't know, it will be worthwhile to learn how to do so! It's very easy and takes little time nowadays! :neocat: @gamingonlinux @VeroniqueB99 not to mention, if they already have a place where they can put the text โread the change log on Discordโ then they already have a perfect place to post the change log. Whether thatโs a blog, a press release, a GitHub release, a mailing list, whatever. The change log should just be in the thing Iโm *already reading*.  @VeroniqueB99 @gamingonlinux Type "open source forum hosting service" and get ready to pay between 1 and 5 bucks per month.
If you don't have the knowledge and don't want to invest your time into self hosting then pay someone to do it for you. Simple as. @VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social @gamingonlinux@mastodon.social not a stupid question... keep in mind we're talking about people making videogames, you would assume if they can do that they'll be able to handle a website, or know someone who can. But even if not: post it on the games' steam or itch.io page, those are public and searchable!
@gamingonlinux I don't understand the impulse to use Discord for everything. Use it for chat! Use more appropriate tools for your releases, changelogs, outreach etc. Even using it for support chat is not ideal because any solutions arrived at will just be lost in time, though I understand why the immediacy is appealing. @hyperlinkyourheart @gamingonlinux I see it as a way to engage people and have them ready-to-interact early. @PypeBros @hyperlinkyourheart @gamingonlinux Can confirm, most people are using it for free/faster tech support. Even when you tell people to post issues on a perfectly open and available GH issues board, many *still* insist on throwing out issues and feature requests in a chat... That I don't look at and will inevitably get lost as the next couple of people start clogging the help channel. Unless you ACTIVELY engage with people on Discord, it just turns into a chaotic support outlet.  @gamingonlinux
It's as annoying as posting your changelogs on irc only. Discord is chat, not a publishing avenue. @gamingonlinux There's a podcast I occasionally listen to that posts links and show notes on Discord, it's ridiculous @zsmb13  @gamingonlinux or: "Join our Discord to get notified about updates and engage with other members of the community", and the alternative is check their semi-abandoned Twitter.  @gamingonlinux Agreed. Also restaurants that only have their menu/schedule on Instagram/Facebook... so stupid.  @rosco @gamingonlinux Presumably cheaper than actually setting up a web page. I just won't look at them.  @gamingonlinux@mastodon.social Russian authorities have already realized this, so they will soon just ban Discord within the country's territory โ:jahy_derp:โ @gamingonlinux@mastodon.social massive agree. I used discord only for an in game guild in my fav mmo but then I stopped playing and finally deleted my discord account lol.  @gamingonlinux yup. Just got bug report on GitHub referencing sample files posted on Discord channel. Which, of course, is not public :| @gamingonlinux@mastodon.social return to irc so that messages arent kept forever and people finally get that IMs are not meant to do that
 "Discord is a closed, proprietary platform." Even for people who don't have an issue with that, it's completely unfit for storing and disseminating information. @davey_cakes @gamingonlinux Agreed, but almost everything is on Discord now. I don't like it, but people won't use anything else. @kelpana @gamingonlinux oh sure I use it a bunch, main reasons being that I CBA setting up a Mattermost server. But being in more than 5 is an absolute pain, every channel is always full of unread messages, no way of knowing what matters and what doesn't. Login wall between me and stuff that doesn't need to be so secret. Tis rough.  @gamingonlinux what also annoys me is that most of the apps available in app and play stores come with this infantile marketing bs instead of a proper change-log. ew.   @danielsreichenbach @gamingonlinux I don't think a chat of any sort is a good place to put a changelog. @didek @gamingonlinux honestly, a changelog generally is of no interest to users. It's for developers. Users would just be feature tours  @gamingonlinux On that note, we really need to fix up #Matrix as a viable alternative to Discord. Itโs either that or we bring back #IRC. @enoch_exe_inc @gamingonlinux Matrix has worked well for me for years, I would recommend that absolutely. I also love IRC. @meatlotion @enoch_exe_inc @gamingonlinux It still needs some polishing, in my opinion, but I use Matrix for all my secure communications/ambiguously legal fan art. @enoch_exe_inc @gamingonlinux #BringBackIRC pro tip it's actually still there. v3 has some nice quality of life stuff. I've been running ergo ircd for a few years, so easy even a dummy like me can do it @happystardiaz @enoch_exe_inc @gamingonlinux I wonder if the #Minecraft IRC is still active. I used to come home after school to, one, play pre-Alpha Indev Minecraft, and two, log onto the Minecraft IRC server to chat. Iโve even had the luck of once being online with Notch himself.   @gamingonlinux Strongly agree. Unfortunately people are lazy, so until there is an open alternative with similar functionality and as easy to set up as Discord, people will continue doing just that. @sverx @gamingonlinux It's a weird mix of IRC + voice chat/conferencing with a tiny bit of the good old discussion forums. I find most people use it for things that would fit so much better on discussion forums, because what you put on discord will be lost forever after a week. But as I wrote, people is lazy. @sverx @gamingonlinux And that's a real problem, because there is a lot of interesting people and stuff that you can only talk to using either that or Twitter... @doragasu @gamingonlinux This is indeed the solution. Which is probably why it won't happen, at least until someone with enough talent, design sense, and (mostly) money makes the next thing that'll get big. And the cycle repeats ad nauseum. :) Or free forum hosting becomes popular, but that probably isn't happening.  @gamingonlinux It's really just a single letter thats off. Discourse is a perfectly fine FOSS forum software fairly decent for keeping further documentation... @gamingonlinux @tusooa @gamingonlinux Also don't put your distributables there. It makes updating a pain in the ass.
@gamingonlinux I'm a tech doofus and even I had no trouble installing a self-hosted forum back in the day. Also... gitlab etc. exist. @gamingonlinux the worst part is when they use discord as a way to ask questions. because then it does not get scraped by search engines. Making it harder for people searching on google to find there answer @gamingonlinux every time i see one of these posts i get overcome by nostalgia remembering my futile attempts to reminding people to post important info somewhere else than their facebook page in early 2010's... @gamingonlinux@mastodon.social @grepe@ieji.de yeah, most of the time when I see a open source project official page, linking something like news or follow-ups to a FB link, I just skip that project. @noodlejetski I actually REALLY FUCKING HATE THIS NGL as I've had to report quite a few GE issues there. And most of the time it's either getting dismissed by, or utterly buried beneath all the noise of the thousand-or-so other people there and it's maybe a 25% chance that an issue actually gets addressed. Also the anti-Nvidia bias is way too strong there, which as a user is, uh... *very* welcoming.  @gamingonlinux Developers who do this stand out as claiming to be an open source dev, while in reality being a proprietary shill. @gamingonlinux it being closed and proprietary is THE LEAST problematic part of this. It should.be on the open web because joining a discord to download something or to have a read me is terribly inefficient. @gamingonlinux@mastodon.social @dribbleondo@mastodon.social yeah, who on Earth needs a discord account just to read FAQ and changelog... Fucking THANK YOU. I mean, I use Discord a lot, but I certainly don't need more servers to join JUST to get friggin' info about things! @gamingonlinux Same goes for X-Twitter. Users from Brazil can't access it anymore. @gamingonlinux almost as irritating: "changelog" link that's just the list of commits on github since the previous release
  @gamingonlinux @dgar yes, particularly since you can only join 100 "servers" without paying - after that you must either leave a "server" to join a new one, or pay for Nitro or whatever they call it. So, every community that uses Discord is inherently asking participants/members to deal with this limit - unlike actual open platforms.  @gamingonlinux @gamingonlinux Discord is really good for discussion but awful as a knowledgebase. You wouldn't say "more info on our IRC", would you? And this is the same. @gamingonlinux "Changelog in the Discord" motherfucker you have a git repo right here and you can't put it in a file in the root somehow!? @gamingonlinux feels like the latest version of "download our app". I use discord to socialize and interact with communities that I care about. The absolute hubris to think that I care about your product enough to be _that_ involved with it is bonkers @gamingonlinux Equally obnoxious: Projects that have an issue reporting link that just takes you to a Discord server. Congratulations, you have just guaranteed that I will never ever file a bug report. (Or maybe thatโs their intention? ๐ค) @gamingonlinux  @gamingonlinux I deleted my discord account a while ago because itโs a closed system. And because the UI sucks, but mostly because itโs a closed system that doesnโt offer any value to anyone without an account. @gamingonlinux I like discord, I use discord extensively for things it's very good at. But I 100% agree with this message. DO NOT make me join your damn discord channel just so I can read the changelog. @gamingonlinux Absolutely agree. I am not a Discord user and I am not going to sign up for it just to see someone's damn info or changelog. This is the new equivalent of "subscribe to our listserv to keep track of changes", it's just annoying and few people will bother. And WHEN Discord disappears (or is sold to Google or Meta, or heaven forbid, Elon) there's a good chance all that information will either disappear or be made even more difficult to access, possibly even paywalled, and/or maybe used tor train an AI. @gamingonlinux the thing is, people do this not because they want to annoy people, but to make them engage with the community, stick to the project, basically do marketing for their product, and I see that as entirely legitimate. @gamingonlinux This is one factor that led to the death of an MMO I used to play. I was lucky that a fansite did repost the changelogs, heh. (A third party server for that game is even WORSE; you have to use Discord to even play! They have a bot that links your Discord account to an account in the server. I've abandoned that server due to the requirement)  @gamingonlinux People will use GitHub to host source code & then say "changelog & releases in the discord server!!!!!" in the readme.md & nothing else. It has to be malicious. There can't be any reason other than trying to inflate the size of a Discord server. GitHub provides changelogs & releases together as a feature so you don't have to upload "akskdkgkgg.deb" to one Discord channel & write "version I forgot: bug fixes, changes" in another channel. Please don't do this. @gamingonlinux PREACH HARDCORE! AND DON'T STOP UNTIL PEOPLE KNOCK THIS CRAP OFF! There are many apps and games and services I'd love to take part in or use and yet all the documentation is on Discord servers that are hardly ever organized right, filled with so much unnecessary babble, and at least one troll that's delights in telling you how dumb you are for making a newb mistake, or telling you to go read X channel... IT'S BULL SHIT! |
@gamingonlinux This ^