[andybak]

Another open Source project locking their community discussions away on Discord where it can't be easily discovered or searched.

At least consider mirroring to the web - or at this stage inform people you will one day make posts available on the open web. Acquiring that consent afterwards is painful.

[ImHereToVote]

I prefer to read documentation via Minecraft chat. That way I can craft a diamond pickaxe to smash my head in.

[pawelduda]

You can run examples in redstone

[treyd]

I've been wanting a bot that would scrape discord conversations into a database and then render them as HTML to be served statically, bash.org-style.

[andybak]

https://www.answeroverflow.com/ roughly does this and can be self-hosted

[djhworld]

I really miss forums tbh, what happened to them?

It feels like Discord has replaced the good old forum but it's worse in so many ways.

[justinclift]

> I really miss forums tbh, what happened to them?

Spammers and similar bad actors. :(

[IshKebab]

Most forums were awful phpbb nonsense where it was impossible to find the information you wanted. Search always required logging in and the only interface for very long threads was paging through them 10 badly laid out posts at a time.

No thank you.

Of course modern forums are better. Disqus is ok, and D's forum software is arguably the best thing to come out of the D project.

In any case Discord is not a replacement for forums; it's a replacement for IRC.

[stavros]

Unfortunately, it tries to also be a replacement for forums, with the worst of both worlds (the lack of real time, AND the lack of discoverability).

[bmacho]

None of the phpBB-like forums that I am aware of (phpBB, SMF, vbulletin) require login to search.

[ipsi]

I recall running into the odd one or two like that - I have vague memories that it was because searching was _slow_ and it didn't take more than a few people using it to bring the site to its knees. Restricting it to logged in users helped, and I think I saw some sites restrict searching to only post bodies for a period too, for similar reasons.

I haven't run into it recently, but I have at least vague memories of it happening in the past.

[SkyMarshal]

What makes the D-language forums so good? Never used them. (https://forum.dlang.org/)

[IshKebab]

Just have a browse. It's so fast! Also very clean, not stupidly sparse layout. Proper markdown support. I believe it also acts as a mailing list/newsgroup somehow but I'm not sure on the details of that.

Mainly it's just so fast and clean.

[andybak]

> Search always required logging in

I always used a search engine to search. Site search is usually worse than Google (is/was)

[nilslice]

hear ya loud and clear -- and we use multiple forms of communication.. GitHub issues and discussions are actively suggested when we find that a conversation is turning into something that would benefit others and move from Discord.

Discord is really advantageous for us to have real-time conversations with people though.

[esafak]

Note to other maintainers: GitHub does have a nice Q+A feature. Use that, not Discord!

https://github.com/features/discussions

[justinclift]

Not really a real-time chat replacement thing, so it's not a suitable replacement.

[esafak]

That's a feature. Promote discussions, not chit chat.

[nilslice]

we also like Discord _for_ the “chit chat” though. getting to know the community that’s growing around your project is one of the most enjoyable aspects of open source IMO!

[andybak]

My point is that people WILL use your Discord as a forum and it WILL accumulate valuable knowledge.

This knowledge should be mirrored to the web so it's discoverable and archivable. And to do that you need consent - you should notify users now even if you don't implement it now.

[SkyMarshal]

Is there some service available for mirroring discord chats the web?

[esafak]

https://www.linen.dev/landing

[SkyMarshal]

Looks excellent, thanks!

[dizhn]

Zulip has a read only view available for the web too.

[SkyMarshal]

Oh cool, thanks!

[andybak]

I used https://www.answeroverflow.com/ which can be self-hosted.

[SkyMarshal]

Very useful, thank you!

[h4x0rr]

Iis there any problem with that? Discord is nice to use, free and most people already have it.

[andybak]

1. Discord search is very poor

2. Discord will go away one day and so will all the accumulated knowledge

3. People who aren't directly looking for your project won't find it. It's will have no search footprint. You have to actively seek out the Discord to discover that that's activity there.

"Most people" don't already have it. Only a fairly specific handful of demographics.

[pests]

> "Most people" don't already have it. Only a fairly specific handful of demographics.

This just shows how in-a-bubble people can be. I'm trying to think of a single person outside of my hardcore gamer friends that I know who would have Discord - drawing a blank.

[h4x0rr]

I was talking about "most people" in the IT bubble as well

[troupo]

The problem is that information in Discord is locked away and is completely inaccessible.

As an example. An Elixir library I'm using, Ash, had its support forum on Discord. Just recently they moved it to a proper forum. Here's the immediate result [1]:

--- start quote ---

Moving to ElixirForum just benefited me. I googled elixir ash registry to understand what it is and if I still need it (I ended up with it from an example somewhere). The top result was this excellent question and answer

--- end quote ---

A forum is always nicer, and is accessible to more people.

[1] https://elixirforum.com/t/ash-community-updates/58515/9

[self]

There are several problems with Discord; see https://mastodon.derg.nz/@anthropy/110922638711307077

[dvngnt_]

can't view without a phone number at times

[justinclift]

Discord doesn't seem to need a phone number.

Are you thinking of Telegram, which does?

[dvngnt_]

it depends. if your account gets flagged by some ML algo then they can ask for a number for verfication.

it's similar to meta where some flagged accounts have to add an id