@gamingonlinux OK!
/me put important info into a 2h53min podcast without chapter marks on spotify.

@gamingonlinux this is my main grief with the otherwise amazing @statamic community. I miss the old days where forums where the go-to solution.

"I know let's host files and important info on a proprietary chat platform that requires logins and isn't searchable outside it, what could possible go wrong?"

Uh, everything. Stop it.

@gamingonlinux I'll add Facebook groups to that as well.

I was essentially forced to make a fake Facebook account just to join a huge group that is only on Facebook and has a ton of knowledge and experience.

It's walled off to the rest of the internet and I didn't even know the group existed until recently.

Old school forums are the way.

@gamingonlinux And with "important info" you mean classified documents about vehicles in WarThunder? Indeed, discord is not the right place.. 😂

@gamingonlinux A-fucking-men. This obsession with Discord — because it's easier, I guess? — has always irked me. Then support people get upset about people asking the same questions when Discord's search functions suck, and it's like... at least use Reddit or something where it's searchable. Or *go back to forums*.

@gamingonlinux I was not related to this until I found #FoundryVTT Development informations are in source code or in Discord channels 😳

@gamingonlinux "the actual web" what server? where? nothing is safe

@gamingonlinux I agree. However, I recall coming across AnswerOverflow on Hacker News. Seems to allow you to index server messages. Whilst this doesn't eliminate the issue, it can at least allow the information to be discovered easier.

https://www.answeroverflow.com/about
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36383773

@gamingonlinux I want to say an easy to use solution that would allow you to spin up forums and wikis with ease would solve this, but that's like what reddit does kind of, and people still use discord.

@gamingonlinux This is my #1 pet peeve with the internet in 2023. Down with Discord!

@gamingonlinux@mastodon.social I hate, hate, hate the isolation of so many hobby communities in Discord. For one, as you state it keeps important info hidden unless you are a member. For another, I will not subject myself to many firehoses of information by joining dozens of Discord servers just to keep up with my interests.

I end up joining certain Discords briefly just to find something or ask a question, and then have to leave because I just don't have the hours in a day to keep up.

@gamingonlinux Thank you for reminding me to repost everything on here, and to create my own website. Still have a lot to sort through.

@gamingonlinux A restaurant near me got rid of their regular website recently -- it points to some online ordering platform now. So their phone number and business hours are *only* listed on their Facebook page, which wouldn't load on my phone. (It kept trying to open the app and make me sign in -- I don't have a Facebook account.)

It ended up being faster to walk over there and look at the hours on their door than to try to find that info online.

@gamingonlinux I was just having this conversation last week. Yes!
FAQ's are no use if someone has to delete a server to make room to join your server to see them.

@gamingonlinux like War of Thunder forums?

@gamingonlinux

Github pages are free guys and just markdown (and most of yall are already using gh)

@gamingonlinux Or people that only provide support on a Discord server... Which means you _have_ to open up Discord, then ask your question, spend ages to figure it out etc.

Instead of clicking a link, skimming through a thread and (hopefully) finding what you need.

@gamingonlinux The exact reason I made a static website with gitlab pages and zola. The repo and website are getting cached and searched by search engines and *usually* turn up hits.

@gamingonlinux This this this this!

@gamingonlinux to be fair though, private platforms that target a geeky demographic (or any demographic) have a very good history of never later enshittifying their platforms once they decide it’s time to start impressing shareholders. Nope.

@gamingonlinux Sign up free and get $250
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@gamingonlinux While we're at it, just stop using Discord. There's a FOSS alternative called Revolt that I've been looking into. Some of the QoL features are broken right now but they're working on fixing it. I'm looking into trying to transition to it, but as always the hard part is getting everyone else I know to do it too, a much easier task when there's large communities that exclusively use it, but I have no sway in such communities.

@gamingonlinux This was a trending/explored topic just days ago. Mastodon is turning into an echo chamber?!

@gamingonlinux Any important info for the public needs to have backups.

It needs to be outside the control of a single entity (preferably at least one copy under your control), and something you can access -- encrypted if you have the key, but not something that needs to be unlocked by someone else.

It's a real pain, but you've gotta do it if you want to make sure all that info in the hands of a single platform doesn't suddenly go poof. Backup or perish.

@gamingonlinux make a bunch of extremely bare bones but highly semantically structured HTML pages with minimal CSS styling and chuck 'em into the /var/www of a $35 home server you got at a surplus store, along with a Perl CGI script that uses ripgrep under the hood to search the pages. Done. Infinitely better.

I wonder if there's a way to delete my messages from both sides automatically for all chats. So I could delete my account then.
@gamingonlinux

maybe one day mastodon will be searchable

@gamingonlinux Likewise for Slack, MS Teams or any other chat app.
Important info belongs in either a document system or in a wiki IMO.

@gamingonlinux exactly that is the reason why I created a forum for CPM. Everything about that is on usenet of all places. Not searchable, and you need a manually reviewed account and learn some decades old arcane software to post something.
Why would I go through all the effort just to post something that no one will ever find?
If I want that, I'll write a diary or something.

@gamingonlinux
Which is also why it's a shame open platforms like Mastodon and most of fediverse have search as an afterthought.

@gamingonlinux Exactly.

And do it right: https://karl-voit.at/2020/10/23/avoid-web-forums/

@gamingonlinux it’s been so horrible seeing this happen. I feel like it was started by shady communities that specifically did not want to be indexed by Google, which is great and it’s a choice.

But then every community parroted the move thinking that this is the new new. And it’s just been completely detrimental to any modern tech hobby.

The worst part is seeing maintainers quit because of repeat questions, after they did it to themselves by hosting a community in a freaking chat app.

@gamingonlinux
You know how you have two faces, one you show everyone & another for those close to you? Discord being a disaster is what their typical users were looking for. Young users wanted a place their parents couldn't find to put their non-public-facing life. Handing over their privacy was the lesser of many priorities. If you want to fix this problem you have to be willing to offer an alternative that the next generation will want.
#BornAfter911

@gamingonlinux Is mastodon searchable? asking for learning purposes.

@gamingonlinux YES.

@gamingonlinux but then Google will get it and add it to their collection.

@gamingonlinux I remember making a discord account and immediately getting my account banned for "suspicious behavior" and was being forced to give them my phone number. Fun times. Obviously i didn't tho, if they dont want me using there platform then so be it. Such a shame that a lot of open source projects seem to think its the only option, not even giving a matrix bridge.

@gamingonlinux ... or private info. Discord is also not private.

@gamingonlinux oh god, when Icy Veins announced they were expanding into FFXIV everyone was like “it’s just going to be the same info as The Balance Discord. And I’m thinking, yeah, except it will be on a nicely formatted web page instead of a Discord and shitty Google Docs links.

@gamingonlinux Even despite not being searchable Discord still feels like a super clunky solution for all of this. I mean - sure it has realtime chat and is mostly "free" and all. But couldn't we also do this kind of thing in a dedicated web basis? Forum with an optional realtime side chat for rather irrelevant banter that gets cutoff after, say, 60 days.

I can only explain this with ease of use here. It's fast to set up and attracts people by also being easy to join and interact. 🤷‍♂️

@gamingonlinux is one of my annoying pet peeves at the moment. The companies or projects that dump things on Discord and just send their users there are just lazy.

@gamingonlinux szme@sebsauvage
Same with slack and every chat application

@gamingonlinux I used to love discord in the early days, and still love it as an 'irc+skype+teamspeak' replacement, even though they are a data kraken. But man, does this whole 'wiki on discord' trend annoy me.

@gamingonlinux what would you recommend as alternatives? I have started a list, planning to write a blog post, but what are some solutions you think would help.

Discord is used because it's social, easy, and everyone has it installed. And there is an app for it to streamline the experience and make it consistent.

So what would your shortlist be for every joe shmoe to easily build, collaborate and share information. That is free, hosted for them, and easy to use. And on the web.

@gamingonlinux Preferably on a website that will have stuck-up people make "graphic design is my passion" jokes because omfg am i sick of looking at squarespace templates and generic mobile scrolls. Basic html is actually very easy to copy-paste in order, and all ya need is a square with text to get the info out there, everything else is frosting. Personally, i take a basic site more seriously than a pay-to-win template site or scroll.

@gamingonlinux

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned how notorious Discord is against privacy.

- Use a 3rd party client: locked out until you give a mobile number

- Use a VPN: captcha upon captcha and ... probably locked out and need to give a mobile number

- No Google Voice numbers

It is never about account security with these companies. You can use any mobile number on the internet and that somehow = 'security'

I do think it will follow FB in the sense that future kids won't use it.

@gamingonlinux

"The web" is ambiguous, and includes things arguably worse. I'm looking at you, Facebook, but you're far from the only offender.

So - concrete suggestions that are stable, free, and longlived?

I'll start - I'm a fan of pages.github.com. Free, stable, and yes now owned by Microsoft but I'll let that slide for now. Or, you know, a github repo.

What other options are *good* places to host community content?

@gamingonlinux also slack. F that.

@gamingonlinux This yes my gosh fuck discord

@gamingonlinux while I agree with the general don't use Discord as an information storage medium, it can be done well. A project I've followed has a bot that publishes channels in Discord as a markdown page on a website automatically.

@gamingonlinux what is discord?
🤣

@gamingonlinux I sure wish GloriousEggroll would see your post because fucking hell https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom#2-if-you-have-an-issue-that-happens-with-my-proton-ge-build-provided-from-this-repository-that-does--not--happen-on-valves-proton-please-do-not-open-a-bug-report-on-valves-bug-tracker-instead-contact-me-on-discord-about-the-issue

@gamingonlinux if there was something that could replicate its best features and was web searchable I would, but it's so difficult to format things to put on a wiki

@gamingonlinux Bonus points if you bitch at people for asking questions "because [the answer] is in the Discord."

@gamingonlinux
I keep hearing about it, but never saw it. Can you please mention some examples, maybe even the one that made you write this?

@gamingonlinux Addedum: don't load the content asynchronously!

@gamingonlinux I hate discord.