Pro and anti Discord - Page 2

Pro and anti Discord

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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
Posts: 14673
Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43

Re: Pro and anti Discord

Post by Forboding Angel »

raaar wrote: 10 Oct 2020, 15:51 - discord (multiple channels - list of invite links is hard to find)
I mean... They are all in the pinned messages in #main
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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
Posts: 14673
Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43

Re: Pro and anti Discord

Post by Forboding Angel »

I guess it comes down to this...

Do you want Spring to grow? If yes, then cultivating a community on discord is by far the best way to do that. Cozy dreams of using FOSS only are just that... dreams. Normal everyday people don't give a shit what you're using as long as it's easy to use and their friends are using it. FOSS stuff tends to be in large part, clunky, Terrible UIs, unintelligible settings processes.

You may get a hardon setting all this stuff up and making it work, but the other 99% of the world population do not. But then I guess 1% of 7 billion is still a lot of people. Good luck funneling them into spring.
abma
Spring Developer
Posts: 3798
Joined: 01 Jun 2009, 00:08

Re: Pro and anti Discord

Post by abma »

Forboding Angel wrote: 23 Dec 2020, 09:27 Do you want Spring to grow?
yes, but without using discord :-P
ivand
Posts: 310
Joined: 27 Jun 2007, 17:05

Re: Pro and anti Discord

Post by ivand »

@abma, you are the last person out of active spring developers not using Discord. :regret:
saturnV
Posts: 107
Joined: 03 Dec 2020, 07:58

Re: The end of the maintenance branch

Post by saturnV »

ivand wrote: 07 Oct 2020, 21:12
If everyone had/has this attitude, Matrix would/will never gain traction. It's there. It works. Stop the excuses.
It's not an excuse, it's a fact. Matrix is a barren land as far as spring community. Who would I talk to there? To you and to Sanguinario_Joe? I'm sorry but that is not enough. The BAR Discord has ~2000 dwellers, I don't track ZK numbers, but they have a lot too. (...)
And you talk to those 2000 users? Do they answer? Do they talk to each other?
Those "2000 dwellers" are just that: dwellers.
If you scroll through BAR or zero-K discord, only a handful of people is actually talking and mostly you see old, known names. (the developers or old players)
ivand wrote: 27 Sep 2020, 19:01 No matter if you like it or not, 95% of the tech and content talk has moved to Discord, and that is one of the reasons the forum feels wasteland-ish for the last few years.
The forum is dead but it has not been replaced by anything. I have not yet found a serious and active discord on spring development. Which one is it?
Even a small forum (such as this one) usually has multiple active active threads and they can last several days or weeks. That is impossible to replace with a real time chat.
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Silentwings
Posts: 3720
Joined: 25 Oct 2008, 00:23

Re: Pro and anti Discord

Post by Silentwings »

@abma, you are the last person out of active spring developers not using Discord.
To be fair, he is on Springs matrix, which is bridged. I think I might be the most "active" person with the honour of (since ~6 month ago) being on neither.
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MasterBel
Posts: 271
Joined: 18 Mar 2018, 07:48

Re: Pro and anti Discord

Post by MasterBel »

saturnV wrote: 28 Dec 2020, 16:44 Even a small forum (such as this one) usually has multiple active active threads and they can last several days or weeks. That is impossible to replace with a real time chat.
I'd expand this by saying that in no way should we be trying to replace the forums with discord. There's a lot that Forums are great for that Discord isn't.
Conversely, there's a lot that Discord is great for that the forums aren't. I think it should be expected to have growing pains since the community as a whole is (relatively) new to this entire depending on Discord thing. I think we both use it too much, and not enough. It's been really beenficial for the BAR community to be on discord I feel. The best things about it are making the community more approachable to new players, since it's easier to get help and a quick response. Certain aspects of development communication that would just clutter a forum, such as just checking the status of things etc. seem to be much more effective on Discord.

I think the question is not should we use it, but how should we use it. For someone like Silentwings it seems to make a lot of sense that he dwells mostly (only?) on the forum, due to the nature of his assumed role in the community, imho. The role of people like IceXuick seems best suited to Discord, and role of people like Ivand seems to work pretty well interfacing towards the two. Forums are great for detail and thoroughness. Real time chat is great for Just Getting Things Done.

My two cents at least.

A third cent:

People like Abma need to be easily reachable. Discord won't necessarily fix that. Discord by its nature makes it easier to reach people faster, but only if they have a regular presence there. Discord promotes having a regular presence, the forums not so much.

I think people in roles like Abma could do well communicating a bit more (thanks for the recent posts about server updates, it's really nice to see the posts even if nothing went wrong), that would make them a little less of a black box and more of something we can understand and have more realistic expectations of. Idk, but things like letting people know when you'll be away and when you'll probably be back will help with our uncertainty about why we can/can't reach you. Not to make you tell us your life story, just to let us know when things are gonna affect us because if you don't let us know we'll probably have to find out the hard way.

My three cents at least.
Ares
Balanced Annihilation Developer
Posts: 555
Joined: 19 Mar 2011, 13:43

Re: Pro and anti Discord

Post by Ares »

Spring discord was ok but forboding angel has got someone to ban me from it. What's the point if mod developers can't even go there.
saturnV
Posts: 107
Joined: 03 Dec 2020, 07:58

Re: Pro and anti Discord

Post by saturnV »

I think people in roles like Abma could do well communicating a bit more (thanks for the recent posts about server updates, it's really nice to see the posts even if nothing went wrong), that would make them a little less of a black box and more of something we can understand and have more realistic expectations of.
Why? There have been some topics where people want to urgently talk to abma:
1) when he gave BA repo to the BA10 team and people thought it was a bad idea. Then a bit later again, when everyone could see it was a bad idea.
2) when he (with other devs) banned old engine versions.
3) when abandoned autohosts (of BA10 mostly and other games) were running old test-versions that were being deleted.
People wanted the script to adjusted or switched off.

He actually had posted on all points at least once: he was not going to change anything. It is just that people keep repeating their points because
those things were so important to them. So that is why you get the impression that he is hard to reach but actually he has already said all he wants to say. He does not want to talk about it. Why should that be different on discord? That should also give you "realistic expectations" what to expect in the future.
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MasterBel
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Re: Pro and anti Discord

Post by MasterBel »

saturnV wrote: 29 Dec 2020, 04:13 So that is why you get the impression that he is hard to reach but actually he has already said all he wants to say. He does not want to talk about it. Why should that be different on discord? That should also give you "realistic expectations" what to expect in the future.
You're missing a bit of the context. There have been times recently where (for very valid reasons) Abma was not contactable, and we didn't know who else could fix the failing infrastructure. Which was SpringFiles, I believe. That's all been dealt with now.

Differences of opinion are a different thing, and not what I was addressing.
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PicassoCT
Journeywar Developer & Mapper
Posts: 10450
Joined: 24 Jan 2006, 21:12

Re: Pro and anti Discord

Post by PicassoCT »

Personally: I get where abma is coming from. Discord is part of the "closed" web, leaching off and slowly killing the "open" web.
It would be nice, if some of the discussions there, could be copied back via irc bot into the forum- and in return forum posters could bot-post to discord. The blatant obvious things, like that all users prefer the closed web (thanks forb), do factor in - but nobody builds any longterm vibrant thing in a closed eco-system, without the great bezjesos getting his due.
Something like this would be nice:

https://github.com/reactiflux/discord-irc
https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2403111


Basically drop the conversation into irc, and then shoutbox it into the forum.
+ Makes it open web again
+ Makes it searchable again
+ Archived in public
+ Prevents undead open infra, until the great mono-culture-monolith eating virus comes and there is only undead open infra..
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MasterBel
Posts: 271
Joined: 18 Mar 2018, 07:48

Re: Pro and anti Discord

Post by MasterBel »

Interesting idea Picasso, though I think that given the nature of discord communication there's a lot that it wouldn't benefit so much to be saved here on the forums. It'd be less reliable but I think I'd prefer to see contributors on discord opting to transfer important discussions to the forums, at least in a way that won't prevent those discussions from being productive, and in a way that cuts out the noise.

Evidently, though, that currently doesn't happen. Personally I try to start topics on the forum if I can, and if it's relevant, but often I find I'm a lot less likely to get a productive response on the forums.

I'd feel weird to just start copying other peoples' text from the Spring Discord over here (there seem to be a lot of productive conversations there) but if we made some announcement about it to the people it would impact (who are asking for help on the Spring discord) I'd feel a lot more comfortable transcribing the conversations onto the forums. Especially if they were given to opt out from their conversations being posted on the forums (idk why they'd want to, tho.)
raaar
Metal Factions Developer
Posts: 1094
Joined: 20 Feb 2010, 12:17

Re: Pro and anti Discord

Post by raaar »

I think a culture shift where people just post on the forum more often should be enough.

Discord's relevant enough to make it worth it to have a presence there, but don't depend on it too much.
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PicassoCT
Journeywar Developer & Mapper
Posts: 10450
Joined: 24 Jan 2006, 21:12

Re: Pro and anti Discord

Post by PicassoCT »

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