I really shouldn’t. Using discord is dumb. Using discord for a switch emulator, while Nintendos lawyers are waking around with their cocks out is stupid.
If their priority is to make a nintendo emulator, they have to think about keeping their lines of communication secure against corporate legal threats, because those lines of communication are basically what software development is.
Sure, but they also need to be on a platform that people actually use. I agree that there are lots of reasons against Discord, but my point is, they didn’t choose Discord because of a lack of intelligence.
Yep, I’ve known specialists that are extremely good at their job but when you hear them talk about other stuff you sometimes wonder how they manage to tie their shoes in the morning.
Have you considered that the person you consider smart is focusing all their brain power on their projects and they don’t have time to set up and maintain a website? That’s what discord is for, an easy, quick and dirty community aggregate
While there’s truth in your words, there are alternatives that require little effort. Even a IRC channel would have been better.
Discord is not only a terrible bad application, it’s the equivalent of writing posts on medium. If and when they decide to gatekeep your content, there’s nothing you can do.
IRC is considered unsafe too to a certain degree with pirating folks.
Also let me emphasize this: for every discord server shut down like this, there are 100+ servers with almost the same purpose that still exist and will continue to for at least the next 3y.
If you are doing development as a hobby, you just don’t have the time to use a different system, get used to that system, and then critically convince everyone else to go there too. Just look at Lemmy, I want it to be great as well but we have to accept that a few tiny steps more in the day to say usability of a system can be the difference between Twitter and Mastodon. And before ppl are saying “well Twitter was there longer”, sure but that doesn’t mean we cannot see the trend for growth that does or doesn’t exist.
Also let me emphasize this: for every discord server shut down like this, there are 100+ servers with almost the same purpose that still exist and will continue to for at least the next 3y.
you completely missed the point here:
the issue that those aren’t around NOW, the issue is that they WILL inevitably disappear eventually and every shred of knowledge platformed there will be irretrievably lost to the void.
discord is a black hole for information:
it sucks information in and deletes it from existence.
the issue that those aren’t around NOW, the issue is that they WILL inevitably disappear eventually and every shred of knowledge platformed there will be irretrievably lost to the void.
That’s still not really the purpose of discord, and I think you have actually missed the point. It’s not an informational archive, it’s a tech support line, and oftentimes one which can be used to improve the FAQ and documentation, which is usually found on GitHub or independently hosted, and is usually light enough in weight that it can just be copy pasted anywhere or even included in software. For much of these kinds of software, creating an incredibly comprehensive and well-organized FAQ isn’t as large of an up-front priority as mashing bugs. Of that use case, what strikes you as better, the app that everyone already uses, or IRC?
Not easily searchable, only solves the problem of the user who is currently being interacted with, and on top of that a forum does everything you mentioned but better because it is indexed in the web, meaning the next person with that problem will probably find the forum post before they contact you. No one is taking these discord chats and updating FAQs with them, and if they were, they could save that time by just having a forum that is indexed by search engines. IRC isn’t the best option, but it limits corpo takedowns like this so at least what you have doesn’t randomly get nuked one day. Altogether, moving from forums to discord is a massive downgrade and much information will be lost in the Discord Exodus that will come with time as the company consumes its users for the shareholders.
No one is taking these discord chats and updating FAQs with them
Why do you think this is, though? This really hasn’t been my experience, people are usually pretty quick to add shit to the FAQ if it actually comes up ime.
You’re also relying a lot, ironically, on Google, when you advocate for using search engines as a repository for forums. Google is not that good anymore, and most forums don’t come up. For a niche software, do you think the specific forum for that software would actually come up 99% of the time, or would the results just be flooded by a bunch of youtube tutorials and posts to random subreddits and other forums about irrelevant shit that you weren’t looking for? If you were even lucky enough to get results in the first place, that is. Partially this is due to things moving to discord, but partially it’s due to Google having an effective monopoly on search engining.
If you’re just going to like, go to a forum and use the forum’s internal search. One, it probably sucks because they always have these stupid idiot rules like no common words and it has to be in a range of 4-40 characters and no symbols, shit like that, which sucks. But also, you can do the same thing with discord and just navigate to the web version and then just look up what you wanted to find on the chat logs and read an old conversation. They seem functionally pretty similar in that respect.
Moderating a forum to protect against random people spamming you with CSAM attacks is also more time-consuming for a small developer, and it’s also time consuming to redirect people to previous threads when they inevitably come in and post shit that’s already been asked about, which is also going to breed probably a more insular culture than discord, as impossible as that might seem. Again, you’re also waiting like 2 days for a response, and this is especially stupid when you’re dealing with a back and forth, because not everyone is going to put in the effort to present their problems as thoroughly as possible and present you with like an actual bug report or screenshots or anything. They might not even know what to search for or ask about, and then they’re completely fucked. It’s easier to manage discord because of it’s more active nature.
Basically, the problem is this: Forums put more responsibility and onus on the users to adequately present their problems in a more easily parsable format, and better search for solutions to their own problems. It’s not a mystery, then, why people might prefer to use discord, in my mind.
I will say this, if you are a Lemmy user, sure probably.
But I did a simple websearch for “how to set up a freenode server.” The very first 3 things I saw (what fits on the screen) were a page full of syntax, a 13 minute YouTube video, and a page where the first thing that’s written is literally “Internet Relay Chat is a difficult thing to get used to, especially for people who were born into this world of full graphical interfaces and messaging web apps that handle user interaction seamlessly.”
For the average user, creating a channel does not “take seconds” if you need proof, discord. Its popular because it is so easy to use and the numbers back that up
Uhm, freenode already exists, you don’t have to set up another server just to create a channel. There are clients that are embeddable into webpages as well, so joining an existing channel could be as simple as opening a page for a new user.
Otherwise it’s just install a client, select freenode and join the channel.
I challenge you to find a non tech savvy person who can do this In under 10 minutes.
Lemmy is absolutely an echo chamber of the tech minded, you have to remember most people wouldn’t be able to even get on this platform because that “little bit of effort” is way too much for them
That’s what discord is for, an easy, quick and dirty community aggregate
and thats also the reason why this project is now gone…
also you are pretty much “paying” with all you information and since they started heavily monetizing Discord you will pay even more as they soon will start to sell you conveniences or essential features. Also Tencent you know, which is pretty much like Nestlé, so it should be avoided.
The lack of intelligence is thinking you can build a grey zone project in discord. It’s like saying you want to build a house but don’t want to pour a foundation. Like, good for you, focus on windows and paint, but you’re not gonna get anywhere.
Easy quick and dirty are not acceptable when you are trying to build emulation software based on the products of a very litigious international corporation
I think you just need to know what you are getting into.
It’s a private company, it’s closed to sourced, they capture and monetise your data.
For people who value transparency and privacy, there are better options. This emulator project, should have known better than to use is.
aaalll of that being said, it’s very popular and if you are not concerned by any of the points raised in this who threads, it’s a good place to meet people to chat about Warcraft or whatever your thing is.
Just be aware that any thing your write, effectively belongs to them forever.
They don’t really need a chat though, do they? For their purpose of user-interfacing development and tracking, a forum would be much more useful when coupled with a code hosting system, no?
Can do bug reporting/tracking and development through the latter, while the former allows discoverable FAQ, dev-to-user and user-to-user support. With chat, the last point is just about impossible plus it’s not discoverable.
They still should, it would be a great way to highlight how futile Nintendo's efforts are. Unfortunately, there's a good chance they'll just forget about doing live communication like this anymore.
I hope Nintendo is able to make emulation illegal once and for all and end all this. People really shouldn’t be allowed to run whatever software they want, they should only be allowed to run Microsoft Windows and the fun games they include on the bonus disc
Side note, is there there a good open source alternative to Discord in terms of it’s exact functionality? (And I don’t mean as a forum alternative, but voice comms and streaming). After their app update, I’m kind of annoyed with them. Yet, my community is rather dependent on them despite their enshittification.
We got sucked in because you could simply link it to randos on MMOs and if they didn’t want to download an app, could still have voice comms in browser. Before that, we had ventrillo, mumble, etc, but nothing was quite as easy access for randos. But man, they kind of suck lately so… hrm. :/
I’m pretty sure most of people who mainly use discord as their main social apps probably never touched forum-based internet.
Hosting your own forum is also better as you (the owner of the site) can still retrieve the msgs as long as you still have the access to the host server (so you can back them up in case shutting down, then going to resurfacing later).
Not to mention using discord is already risking yourself because of their shitty policy.
Maybe in my message seems to focus solely on discord for putting the blame… The problem nowadays is that mostly these “devs” share/upload/host their releases in Discord which means you do use Discord’s CDN to host their files. Another common complaint of these practices is that you need to join their server in order to just download relevant files which makes it infuriating if you stumbles across these practices often. For example I joined 8 different discord servers just to download a software/binary/release, why can’t just put the release on something like Mediafire, Google Drive, Megaupload or perhaps sourceforge.
I do understand Discord is communication platform but most of time some people are too lazy to manage stuff so what happen is that everything is hosted in single place as such Discord.
some third party hosts let you sign up anonymously with an anonymous email etc.
Only ever connect to the server host via VPN
Get a domain with anonymous WHOIS protection
Stick it all behind a reverse proxy
Technically Nintendo or whoever could demand your proxy/host to stop doing business with your account, but they won’t have enough personal info to go beyond that and you can just rehost it under new info.
There is always a price (inconvenience) for secure-ness in online world.
There’s 2 option to host a forum,
You can use service like forum hoster or rent a VPS (so you can setup your own server although not self-hosting).
Self-host yourself (this one a bit tricky if you aren’t prepared).
Learn some good basic OpSec habit (eg. Never use same password, Never put your personal detail in your active directory especially on your site source document, use 2FA and so on).
Learn to spot a phising or malicious link and never to randomly click random link in an email (in times when someone tried to social engineering you).
Use reputable service provider if you are not going to self-host yourself.
If you happen to self-host, make sure to check your open ports and secure them. Bots always probing any site in the world!
For some reason if you’re going to run sketchy stuff, never use your real credential. This point may not apply on your region as it depends on your local law.
Hm not really sure this answers what I mean. If you are hosting a site, how do you stop corps demanding your name from the hosting provider and going after you?
Sadly for that matter it is more to the legal area.
For identity they can catch you either from email or the payment info. For email you can make one easily, but for payment search a provider that accept virtual (credit) card, or get something that accept crypto wallet.
Yeah, online exposure can point you sooner or later depending how motivated the party that seek you.
Technically Discord is trying to solve this with their threads feature, but I’ve found either the server owners don’t force it or the users don’t use it. Either way, it sucks.
The threads/forum feature on discord is just awful. Topics get buried and I think the general ethos of discord encourages people to just spam in the chat channels rather than wait in a forum for help.
It’s so goddamn easy to set up a basic forum site for a few bucks a month, and it’s not like there aren’t hundreds of options for file sharing as well.
The Xbox and PSP modding forums were where I used to hang out before Reddit, a well-designed and run forum is so much better than trying to basically make a website out of a chat room.
Still not the point of a live-chat application. The use case is not the same as a forum. You want an archive where everything is well-organized and most questions have already been answered. Discord and other live chat services are more like live tech support, to fill the gap between the raw technical documentation found in GitHub, and the just getting started guide or FAQ, which are usually lightweight enough that they could be posted anywhere. Discord doesn’t exist to be an archive that holds all the knowledge, discord exists so that when you open an app, you can go in, ask a couple questions, and hopefully someone will get to you in a couple minutes, at most, rather than in a couple days.
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