this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
1423 points (95.3% liked)

linuxmemes

21213 readers
73 users here now

Hint: :q!

Sister communities:

Community rules (click to expand)

1. Follow the site-wide rules

2. Be civil
  • Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
  • Do not harrass or attack members of the community for any reason.
  • Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
  • Bigotry will not be tolerated.
  • These rules are somewhat loosened when the subject is a public figure. Still, do not attack their person or incite harrassment.
    • 3. Post Linux-related content
  • Including Unix and BSD.
  • Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of sudo in Windows.
  • No porn. Even if you watch it on a Linux machine.
    • 4. No recent reposts
  • Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.

    • Please report posts and comments that break these rules!

    founded 1 year ago
    MODERATORS
    poopsmith
    zephyr
    rtxn
    1423
    ditch discord! (discuss.tchncs.de)
    submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/linuxmemes
    346 comments fedilink hide all child comments
     

    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".
    you are viewing a single comment's thread
    view the rest of the comments
    [–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Why so much hate post about discord lately? What's happened?

    [–] calcopiritus 81 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    1. This is not lately, it's been happening for a long time.

    2. Nothing in particular happened.

    3. I'm gonna explain the meme: Discord started as a gaming communication software, after some time they expanded and discord servers are not used just for gaming. This leads to some software projects being coordinated in discord servers. However, discord is not a tool designed for this purpose, and because of that, OP had the reaction of this meme.

    The disadvantages of discord when used as a community for software projects (as opposed to traditional forums, for example) are as follows (not an exhaustive list):

    • Most importantly, discord doesn't get indexed by search engines. So you can't just Google a problem and a link to a discord message with the answer will appear. Some say that if something is said in a discord server, it hasn't been said, because it's not findable. You have to know in which server to look for, and then use Discord's own searcher (which in my opinion is bad).
    • Conversations are just a flow of messages. Recently they introduced threads, which acts more like traditional forums, with an OP, title and answers. However, most people still just use the chat.
    • If you ask a question in a chat and nobody answers, people will just keep chatting and your question will be faded away, hidden by more recent messages.
    [–] UnderpantsWeevil 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

    Most importantly, discord doesn’t get indexed by search engines. So you can’t just Google a problem and a link to a discord message with the answer will appear.

    That's true. But also Google's algorithm has been circling the toilet for years now. So even if you were expecting a Stack Exchange esque reference to a problem in a Discord server, there's a much better chance that you'd get a bunch of SEO garbage inside the first couple of pages purely thanks to degradation in Google's internal optimization.

    If anything, I'd consider Discord's opaqueness a benefit, as it keeps a lot of the spamming and automated manipulations out of these spaces. A good channel will have a Git space associated with it pinned to the main feed. And an active community will often have its own Wiki or equivalent to help organize FAQs for new users.

    Its annoying in so far as its more transient than the older school repositories. But that's the direction the entire internet has been moving for the better part of a decade. Not really the fault of Discord.

    [–] calcopiritus 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

    Well, if all the good answers are behind non-indexable discord servers, of course search engines will be filled with SEO crap. If I Google "how to parse HTML with regex" stack overflow comes as the first entry.

    Wikis and FAQs are not at all unique to discord.

    If the only benefit is that "it's not reachable, therefore spammers won't spam", then it is shit. If an information source is not reachable, might as well not exist. If you don't want spammers, you make things read-only, or whitelist/blacklist system or any other system.

    [–] UnderpantsWeevil 1 points 9 months ago

    Wikis and FAQs are not at all unique to discord.

    No. And I'll happily concede that the above is annoying af when the Wiki/Web FAQ should be the primary source for info. But Google should be able to search/cache/serve that kind of info and clearly seems incapable of doing so anymore.

    If the only benefit is that “it’s not reachable, therefore spammers won’t spam”, then it is shit.

    I don't think that's the only benefit of Discord, by a long shot. I just consider it a fringe benefit, relative to the older "Here's a link to a Slashdot post from 2001 that's got 5000 comments, 90% of which are now gibberish that's piled in thanks to the high Google index."