reddit vs discord

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Well there is always tiktok. Where i can show of my latest dance moves. Although there can be copyright on the music.
Note : I don't have a twitter account ...
 
drhowarddrfine said:
Reddit wasn't the only game in town. Like today, there's IRC, mail lists and this forum.
Click to expand...
In 20 years, the only thing that will have survived from today is probably IRC, mailing lists and (the concept of) forums.
People will have long forgotten Discord, Slack, Reddit, etc.

So the irony here is that IRC, mailing lists, forums will be seen as even more ancient by then, bundled in with the new kids on the block and Survivorship Bias begins its cycle again. The Lindy Effect is real.

However, I think "modernizing" the standard solutions is a good idea:
  • IRC - A frontend that casual people can approach. Mibbit is good as a start. But a company could easily make it "cool" and trendy for the kids (with e-stickers and other random crap?). The existing userbase is high so critical mass is already pretty much reached.
  • Mailing lists - Create closed circuits and internal emails. Many non-technical people struggle to set up their own mail servers and things like hotmail, gmail are grim. An approach could be to IMAP/POP3 into a mailing list server directly that provided virtual accounts that can only be used for the list. The member could then reserve any free virtual email. This means relay spam is prevented, server keeps more control and people can keep using proper mail clients like mutt/alpine rather than faff with web clients. IMAP could be leveraged for a complete (read-only) archive of the lists. I think there is commercial viability for a product here.
  • Forums - These are fine. They can be bloated up with web crap as much as people seem to want these days.
 
Alain De Vos said:
Who still uses IRC.
Which server & which channel ?
Click to expand...

Good questions.

forums.freebsd.org

anyone using IRC today?

just for fun and chat with users of this forum, anyone?
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org

forums.freebsd.org

Solved - What's the prospect of FreeBSD IRC Surviving?

FreeBSD IRC Channels have always been on Freenode. London Media Trust own PIA and now Freenode with Andrew Lee in charge. There are already bribe allegations going off the roof; see tweets. Some other OS communities own their IRC servers/networks. FreeBSD has multiple channels like those OS...
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org

Both topics are relevant, however people will complain if relevant topics are used. Welcome to The FreeBSD Forums.

Instead, let's have fragmented, discontinuous discussions 😞

grahamperrin said:
… the more that I use things with a sense of continuity, the less I'm inclined to waste time in IRC. …
Click to expand...

grahamperrin said:
… For FreeBSD I typically look first to Discord, then Matrix. …
Click to expand...

I wondered whether I'd revert to greater use of IRC (Libera.Chat) after the Element Matrix Services (EMS)-provided bridge ended. Nope, IRC is a rarity.

HexChat shows five favourite networks, I can't remember why three are there:

1708993913011.png

1708994109674.png


Of the Libera.Chat channels that are joined automatically, #freebsd-desktop is the only one where I sometimes think of asking a question.

For the last significant question that I asked: unfortunately, the answers were nowhere near the root cause of a bug.
Alain De Vos said:
… tiktok. Where i can show of my latest dance moves. …
Click to expand...

If ever I add a rule to /r/freebsd, the first will be something dance-related. Thanks for seeding the thought :)

drhowarddrfine said:
today, there's IRC, mail lists and this forum.
Click to expand...

… and <https://blendit.bsd.cafe/c/freebsd>, and so on.
 
Cross-posts:
In Reddit, ggeldenhuys (Graeme) wrote:

Discord sucks for threaded discussions. I'll stay with the FreeBSD forum as my go-to for questions, and there for a more casual chat about FreeBSD.
Click to expand...

Please note, The FreeBSD Forums lack true threading.

Will Xenforo ever adopt threaded comment structures (like Reddit)? | XenForo community

An add-on (post/topic 8591):

[OzzModz] Post Comments | XenForo community

Discussion of the add-on (post/topic 200669):

[OzzModz] Post Comments | XenForo community

grahamperrin said:
… The absence of threading i.e. nesting within topics causes bickering to be seen by everyone who views the topic. It's a recipe for trouble, especially in a community where some people seem to take the greatest pleasure in bickering and/or negativity. …


Less of a problem in Reddit, where threading with nesting is the norm. …
Click to expand...
 
msplsh said:
When you do these link dumps and stuff with little to no post text for contextualization and integration into the topic, that seems like a real buzzkill for discussion, for me at least.
Click to expand...
Indeed. It just creates holes in our forum. In ~2 years when someone is researching through older topics, many of the external links will be dead by then.

This behavior is fine on reddit and discord because they are just glorified chatrooms. But here it is verging on antisocial.
 
To me, it's a matter of being able to extract useful information for myself from pretty much anywhere.

Any place will have its share of bad apples who end up making for a bad experience for others. Any place will have its share of oblivious people who are clearly out of their element. If you hang out in any one place long enough, you'll come across the good, the bad, and the ugly of that place.

I think it's important to not lose sight of what you're after. For example, I discovered that Reddit is not a bad place to look if you're looking for information on how to run FreeBSD on used hardware. Why exactly it's not a bad place to look - I can write a long blog post about that. But at the same time, if I want to do something interesting with ZFS, I would not look to Reddit for that. And even on Discord, I discovered that the crowd there doesn't know about good places to look for ZFS-related info, either.

It does take some time to develop a sense what a given place like Discord or Reddit is good for. And everybody's sense will be different. And that's OK. 😩

And BTW, I'm not married to the idea that Reddit is awful (or awesome). It's the Internet, dammit. Moldy, rusty, steaming pile of metal and plastic, spanning this planet.
 
$earch 'discord meaning' and contrast main results with the contradictory intent expressed at https://wiki.freebsd.org/Discord of a harmonious space.

Until I'd learned not to, every click on a discord link landed on the 'login or go away' page.

I'm never inclined to join any site that I cannot browse to see if it's my sort of space.

Links to discord should be accompanied by a warning, say 'joinwall' or 'members only', like news sites behind paywalls.

And I really don't understand pushing to fragment FreeBSD ďiscussions over so many different sites, then trying to stitch them back together again with cross-linking.

2c, spend it wisely ;-)
 
Buried in your linkdumps you quote yourself complaining about surfacing bickering, yet encourage more of it by asking to be "specific?" I assumed more self awareness, I guess. The question is about Reddit and Discord environs and you're complaining about these forums. Posting gigantic Reddit screenshots of just... the index pages... to prove a negative about negative behavior? Reddit demographic links and pictures: Why?

All I'm saying is when stuff starts getting attached, more than two links, and quotes from vaguely related threads show up, the discussion seems "over" and the detritus has piled up.
 
Back when I was doing electronic engineering--before I ever got into programming beyond microcode and assembly--I had subscribed to every print electronic magazine around. It numbered to something over 10 issues I would get every two weeks to a month. It took me a while to realize that most of those magazines didn't contain much worthwhile or were just repeats of what other magazines had or contained more ads than useful information.

I whittled that list down to maybe five different magazines and found a method to quickly scan through all the pages to make sure what was worth the time to read.

The same is now true for online sites. I think I now only visit five sites on a regular basis and only skip through most of them. Sometimes they'll generate several links I'll visit later, just like the articles I would tear out or bookmark in the old print magazines.

I get so much more done when I stay off any social sites. I can concentrate so much better when the articles I read are text only and, when I can, I will copy the text and save it as a console readable file to get away from all the unnecessary graphical elements.

My wife caught me getting too distracted by skimming one site in the morning while drinking coffee. I got in the rut of talking to people, testing out their strange ideas, comparing charts and all that. She'd get mad at me for wasting whole mornings for a week. She knew what it was and so did I once she pointed it out.
 
smithi said:
And I really don't understand pushing to fragment FreeBSD ďiscussions over so many different sites, then trying to stitch them back together again with cross-linking.

2c, spend it wisely ;-)
Click to expand...
I personally see all those different sites as merely a way to reach out, promote, and spread the word about FreeBSD. Authoritative source of info is still freebsd.org... If we consistently refer people to the Handbook (no matter the channel, be it reddit, discord, slack, Mastodon, IRC, whatever), then these external channels have served their purpose.

External channel moderation is best left to those channels, IMHO.
 
grahamperrin said:
Which part of <https://forums.freebsd.org/posts/645278> was troublesome? Can you be specific, rather than just dump complaints and stuff?
Click to expand...
For example, the very start:
grahamperrin said:
Cross-posts:
Click to expand...
I'd probably want to say something of my own, not just "Cross-posts:"... Like a sentence or two that are descriptive, AND tie into the current conversation/thread. For example, I can suggest this: "Yeah, I've seen some old comments about what Discord is good for, versus what Reddit is good for. Like these:"

grahamperrin said:
Please note, The FreeBSD Forums lack true threading.

Will Xenforo ever adopt threaded comment structures (like Reddit)? | XenForo community

An add-on (post/topic 8591):

[OzzModz] Post Comments | XenForo community

Discussion of the add-on (post/topic 200669):

[OzzModz] Post Comments | XenForo community
Click to expand...
This part does take off on a tangent to explore the idea that specific implementations of forum software (and comment structure) may be part of the problem. Once again, introducing the idea in a way that ties in and contributes to the conversation - that will go a long way.
 
kpedersen said:
However, I think "modernizing" the standard solutions is a good idea:
  • IRC - A frontend that casual people can approach. Mibbit is good as a start. But a company could easily make it "cool" and trendy for the kids (with e-stickers and other random crap?). The existing userbase is high so critical mass is already pretty much reached.
  • Mailing lists - Create closed circuits and internal emails. Many non-technical people struggle to set up their own mail servers and things like hotmail, gmail are grim. An approach could be to IMAP/POP3 into a mailing list server directly that provided virtual accounts that can only be used for the list. The member could then reserve any free virtual email. This means relay spam is prevented, server keeps more control and people can keep using proper mail clients like mutt/alpine rather than faff with web clients. IMAP could be leveraged for a complete (read-only) archive of the lists. I think there is commercial viability for a product here.
  • Forums - These are fine. They can be bloated up with web crap as much as people seem to want these days.
Click to expand...
  • IRC - I think of Discord as a modern replacement for IRC, for many reasons, including better security setup.
  • Mailing lists - I'm pretty sure there are actually commercial products out there that organize/archive/publish emails on email lists. FreeBSD most likely has such software in ports, for those with the inclination and ability to set it up.
 
astyle said:
I'd probably want to say something of my own, not just "Cross-posts:"... Like a sentence or two that are descriptive,
Click to expand...

Fair enough, sorry, I thought it would have been easily guessable, I edited the two bullet points above to show the titles of what's linked. For both links, the title was:

Reddit vs Discord — The FreeBSD Forums​

For a discussion about Reddit and Discord, it seemed appropriate to involve users of Reddit and Discord.

(I would have added both links sooner, but there was troublesome content in Discord.)
 
smithi said:
… don't understand pushing to fragment FreeBSD ďiscussions over so many different sites, …
Click to expand...

It's not entirely pushing to fragment. A more positive perspective:
  • Reddit, huge user base – pull people to a FreeBSD area
  • Discord, huge user base – pull people to BSD and FreeBSD areas
  • X huge user base, the platform become troublesome, some people switch to the fediverse, e.g. Mastodon – pull people to FreeBSD-friendly areas.
Accept the diversity, make the best of existing user bases.
 
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