I guess we have different perspectives. Ease, convenience = forums, existing userbase? = Do you prefer Reddit for this reason?, familiarity = forums lol, search-ability = forums, privacy = forums, etc etc.
The discussion seems very muddled and opinionated ITT because I’m not even sure if you’re talking about a Discord Server or a forum/communication platform on a dedicated server. You might be able to slap together a Discord server faster, but the organizational power and not putting that extra work on users for Discord participation makes forum’s superior. Part of the project development is sysadmin. If it’s not, why take it FOSS at all? Discord is designed to take up your time, those pretty bots and “perks” keep you viewing. What could’ve been a well thought out message on a board with a reply now becomes 20+ texts which you’re stuck communicating on. Rinse and repeat every day, on a forum you simply link the previous conversation and you’re done.
I think it’s a neutral wash atm, Discord may be packaged better to be mainstream but it’s bloat all around with lots of negatives. Anyone saying Discord is better is just preference at this point, lots of counterintuitive comments like we need “real-time” communication but also anything else takes up project development, like Discord is some kind of time saver.
Open source isn’t a religion. I put code out there because I made something useful and believe others will find it useful. I will answer questions if it takes little to no effort to do so.
I do not put code out there for the purpose of running infrastructure for end-users. This is an unreasonable waste of time. I do enough of that at work.
I think you might just be blinded by Discord for some reason. I’m not sure what “niche” you’re referring to with Discord that can’t be provided with forums (unless you’re worried about cosmetics I guess?). There are forums with real-time communications like chat, notifications, direct-messaging. I’m not trying to argue, getting your perspective is always helpful and might show something I’m missing, but your responses seem vague and not really a counter-point.
My perspective is of a FOSS developer with multiple communities of thousands. If you can’t grasp it, that’s on you. It’s also why purity moralizing isn’t useful. I have only so much mental bandwidth to spend on organizing and self-hosting. If people are not stepping up to do the community management and infrastructure work, I will go with the past of least resistance.
If you can’t grasp it, that’s on you. It’s also why purity moralizing isn’t useful
oh ok, thanks for the clarification.
If people are not stepping up to do the community management and infrastructure work, I will go with the past of least resistance.
That’s basically it in a nut shell, path of least resistance. Doesn’t refute any claims made in the article or arguments presented here. Just a shame another company has a stranglehold on a whole category of services that have to be used to participate in society … while developing FOSS.
Doesn’t refute any claims made in the article or arguments presented here.
Nothing to refute. I never said otherwise. Discord is just more convenient for people already overworked.
Just a shame another company has a stranglehold on a whole category of services that have to be used to participate in society … while developing FOSS.
Yes, it is a shame. I hope you’re doing something practical about it instead of moralizing towards FOSS devs.
Building communities and stuff that bring value to users is what really matters at the end of the day. Too many folks in the FOSS world like to stand on soap boxes.
My time is valuable, if I can have someone else run a service, then that’s time I can spend doing things I enjoy.
Self host when it makes sense, either from a cost perspective or a data privacy perspective. Everything is a balance.
Nothing will ever be as convenient as letting someone else handle your infrastructure headaches. You don’t win by complaining, you win by providing a better user value.
It’s why Steam beats Torrents and Torrents are coming back over streaming. My time is precious man.
Ease, convenience, existing userbase, familiarity, choose a few
I guess we have different perspectives. Ease, convenience = forums, existing userbase? = Do you prefer Reddit for this reason?, familiarity = forums lol, search-ability = forums, privacy = forums, etc etc.
Running and managing a server takes a non-zero amount of work and is a commitment…if you’re actually serious about it.
That’s work wasted on sysadmining and not going into project development.
The discussion seems very muddled and opinionated ITT because I’m not even sure if you’re talking about a Discord Server or a forum/communication platform on a dedicated server. You might be able to slap together a Discord server faster, but the organizational power and not putting that extra work on users for Discord participation makes forum’s superior. Part of the project development is sysadmin. If it’s not, why take it FOSS at all? Discord is designed to take up your time, those pretty bots and “perks” keep you viewing. What could’ve been a well thought out message on a board with a reply now becomes 20+ texts which you’re stuck communicating on. Rinse and repeat every day, on a forum you simply link the previous conversation and you’re done.
I think it’s a neutral wash atm, Discord may be packaged better to be mainstream but it’s bloat all around with lots of negatives. Anyone saying Discord is better is just preference at this point, lots of counterintuitive comments like we need “real-time” communication but also anything else takes up project development, like Discord is some kind of time saver.
Open source isn’t a religion. I put code out there because I made something useful and believe others will find it useful. I will answer questions if it takes little to no effort to do so.
I do not put code out there for the purpose of running infrastructure for end-users. This is an unreasonable waste of time. I do enough of that at work.
please list all your personal foss projects and discussion forums you’ve set up for them please. I would like to join them all.
Forums are not the same as real-time. And yes for most of the people using discord, forums wouldn’t cover the same niche.
Discourse has somewhat decent chat built in these days.
I don’t want real time. Does me no good in my time zone.
That’s what lemmy is for.
I think you might just be blinded by Discord for some reason. I’m not sure what “niche” you’re referring to with Discord that can’t be provided with forums (unless you’re worried about cosmetics I guess?). There are forums with real-time communications like chat, notifications, direct-messaging. I’m not trying to argue, getting your perspective is always helpful and might show something I’m missing, but your responses seem vague and not really a counter-point.
My perspective is of a FOSS developer with multiple communities of thousands. If you can’t grasp it, that’s on you. It’s also why purity moralizing isn’t useful. I have only so much mental bandwidth to spend on organizing and self-hosting. If people are not stepping up to do the community management and infrastructure work, I will go with the past of least resistance.
oh ok, thanks for the clarification.
That’s basically it in a nut shell, path of least resistance. Doesn’t refute any claims made in the article or arguments presented here. Just a shame another company has a stranglehold on a whole category of services that have to be used to participate in society … while developing FOSS.
Nothing to refute. I never said otherwise. Discord is just more convenient for people already overworked.
Yes, it is a shame. I hope you’re doing something practical about it instead of moralizing towards FOSS devs.
Building communities and stuff that bring value to users is what really matters at the end of the day. Too many folks in the FOSS world like to stand on soap boxes.
My time is valuable, if I can have someone else run a service, then that’s time I can spend doing things I enjoy. Self host when it makes sense, either from a cost perspective or a data privacy perspective. Everything is a balance.
Nothing will ever be as convenient as letting someone else handle your infrastructure headaches. You don’t win by complaining, you win by providing a better user value.
It’s why Steam beats Torrents and Torrents are coming back over streaming. My time is precious man.
Exactly this.
Thank you for your work
💙
Great, use Matrix
I’ve used matrix. I am still using matrix. Just not for anything with a significant community
NixOS uses it, and it has the biggest repo out of any distro, so I’d consider it a significant community
Great. Which means NixOS has enough volunteers to handle that part. I don’t.
Servers & clients use too many resources. Because of this, most have centralized around Matrix.org which kind defeats the purpose.
Didn’t XMPP solve that in, like, 1999?
(Really, what is with devs and nu-protocols these days? Back in my days you could run a webhost on a potato)
There’s a Mozilla home server as well, so federation is working.