I have an existing community of thousands of users on discord, attempts to migrate to other platforms have failed. What would you suggest?
The community was inherited and existed when I became maintainer.
this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
1314 points (95.9% liked)
Open Source
37596 readers
28 users here now
All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!
Useful Links
- Open Source Initiative
- Free Software Foundation
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Software Freedom Conservancy
- It's FOSS
- Android FOSS Apps Megathread
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to the open source ideology
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Set up a Matrix bridge and promote it too. You can't force a community but you can inform and give choice.
We tried that. Did nothing but divide the community, cause increased cost, increased administrative burden, increased spammers and detracted efforts from actually working on the project. Ultimately, about five legitimate community members continued to used it over three to six months.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
i don't understand discord's popularity at all. it's so annoying to use
Because that's where people are?
It started getting popular years ago and that's when me an my friends switched to it too (back when I didn't know shit about privacy). You gotta keep in mind the alternatives back then were Skype, which was meant for 1 to 1 calls, had shit audio quality and issues all the time and TeamSpeak, which was complicated because you needed a server (we were kids, we only knew what a server was from Minecraft) and had a text chat that was only a small part of the bottom of the window that was full of connected and disconnected messages, so I actually didn't even know you could write in that. TeamSpeak's interface also isn't exactly good-looking or very intuitive. Then came Discord, you could create a server for you and your friends for free, you saw who of your friends was online and playing what, you could see when someone was in a voice channel and could just join, you had multiple text chats where you could easily send a link or memes while playing and you could easily share your screen with the others. It was a major improvement over the other two. I know that it sucks from a privacy standpoint but there's good reasons why people started using it.
load more comments
(4 replies)
How familiar are you with IRC?
I was told by someone that IRC is kind of what discord is built on. Maybe the answer is someone in that relation, if what i was told is accurate or not
load more comments
(2 replies)
COVID got people used to video/audio communication, then the other platforms enshitified while discord remained as shit as they always were.
load more comments
(7 replies)
This article is two years old, and perhaps discord have improved their accessibility, since this user find it more accessible then matrix. Yes, it's a single usercase, but worth mentioning nonetheless.
I think there are other arguments against Discord that haven't been mentioned: data privacy. I know there was an instance where Discord collected user without their consent, and that is enough for me to avoid the platform.
I much rather use matrix or the horridly old IRC protocol than Discord. Or forums. Or just plain old issues!
IRC has the same problem as discord when it comes to using it for support. It can't be searched. The same questions will get asked over and over again.
With forums and issue trackers, users can find a solution to previously solved issues with a simple web search.
Discord collects every message you ever send in cleartext.
You can even request your entire metadata blob to see for yourself.
load more comments
(25 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
my main problem is issue cannot be searched on search engine
Irc was never searchable, but that was never an issue before.
The issue is that we used to have both irc and forums. Discord has taken on the role of both in 1. Unfortunately, that means that it also needs the remote search capabilities of a forum to not screw over the community, long term.
It's amazing the number of times a 3+ year old discussion on either a forum, or Reddit has bailed me out of a hole. Everything like that on discord is cut off, unless you know it exists.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Chat and forum are different things and serve different purposes. Even matrix doesn't solve the search problem. Use a forum for this.
yeah that is why discord should not be used for problem-solving or archival purpose. Hell, even mastodon,reddit and lemmy can be indexed properly on search engine.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
But I also don't want to make zillions accounts, one for each project, just for a quick question.
load more comments
(3 replies)
This article has a few primary arguments for not using Discord—
- because it is proprietary software
- because it has poor accessibility
- because control over moderation and other administrative tools is ultimately in the hands of Discord rather than the community.
I know this opinion is going to be unpopular but here I go anyway.
Other than the accessibility argument, I find these arguments quite weak. Yes, Discord is proprietary software, but the reason it's used is because a lot of people are familiar with it and many people already have Discord accounts.
Although I'm a firm supporter of free software, I also believe that it's more important to use the right software for the job than to idealistically use inferior software just because it happens to be open-source. And yes, I regard most of the alternatives to Discord listed in the article to be inferior solely because they are unfamiliar to users. Sometimes, the superior choice happens to be proprietary and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. That's the way it is sometimes; you can't win every fight, as much as you'd like to.
If your goal is to foster a community of regular users and make it easy for normal users to interact with contributors, there is no choice that will hamper that goal more than using an obscure alternative software that nobody's heard of.
With respect to chat logs and administration tools... for the most part, nobody cares. Discord's tools are sufficient for most groups and few people consider the drawbacks to outweigh the other benefits.
True, but managing expectations is needed tho, mainly about exit strategy:
If a community needs to leave, the content on Discord must be considered "not important", "not transferable" and "not archive worthy".
If Discord changes freemium, limits users or otherwise applies enshittification just leave your stuff and start over.
load more comments
(2 replies)
The strongest argument for me is that discord is commercial, borne of venture capital spent on operating at a loss for years to gain users. It is therefore bound for a turn towards profit and enshittification, sooner, rather than later.
The flip-side of that argument is that "librefosschat" alternative might also be dead next year when it runs out of money :/
At least commercial vc enshitiffied stuff tends to get ridden into the ground, so there is a long offramp.
Not really. Something you can self-host, like irc, xmpp or matrix, has an infinite offramp.
load more comments
(14 replies)
load more comments
(6 replies)
Openstreetmap 👀 👀 👀 👀
Yes I know of and use the bridged Matrix Room. But bridges can't mimic or replicate every function which has effect on dialogue between users on both sides.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I second this!
It's especially disappointing to see FOSS people on Fediverse promoting it.
load more comments
(5 replies)