Solved What did you think of the FreeBSD Discord channel

[a6h]

Love it or hate it, finally FreeBSD is on the Discord! I read the announcement on the Valuable News – 2020/09/28. What do you think of the FreeBSD Discord channel? Please share your thought. Thanks!
This is the link to the FreeBSD channel on the Discord:

Discord - Group Chat That’s All Fun & Games

Discord is great for playing games and chilling with friends, or even building a worldwide community. Customize your own space to talk, play, and hang out.

discord.gg

 

[shkhln]

There is also https://discord.gg/2CCuhCt (from https://wiki.freebsd.org/IRC/Channels#Discord_Networks) and https://discord.com/invite/XsaWcba (https://twitter.com/allanjude/status/1306943592267681795). Likely a few more. I'm not even thinking about trying any of them until this shit is sorted out.

 

[a6h]

I didn't know that. Thanks for info. This is the 1st time I use Discord. I'm completely new to the platform.

 

[shkhln]

Well, I don't use it at all, so you are not alone.

 

[a6h]

I made an exception in this case, i.e. signing up for Discord to join FreeBSD channel. Let's hope for the best!

 

[unixhost]

What are the benefits of Discord over other communications platforms, i.e. this forum, mailing lists? I've never used Discord before so I'm curious.

 

[George]

The twitch people (the gaming community) are on discord.
I think people under the age of 50 don't use irc any more..

 

[obsigna]

Love it or hate it, finally FreeBSD is on the Discord! I read the announcement on the Valuable News – 2020/09/28. What do you think of the FreeBSD Discord channel? Please share your thought. Thanks!
This is the link to the FreeBSD channel on the Discord:

Discord - Group Chat That’s All Fun & Games

Discord is great for playing games and chilling with friends, or even building a worldwide community. Customize your own space to talk, play, and hang out.

discord.gg

I got two opinions:

1. I am positive with Discord. While it is true that it is used by a lot of gamers (I am not one) it is also true, that it works much better for my type of IM usage than e.g. WhatsApp. I like to do messaging using my computers which got a real keyboard. Now this bullshit WhatsApps-Web annoys me all the time with this stupid message that my cell phone needs to be connected, that it is low on battery, that I have WAWeb open on another computer - I can't find enough words for telling how I hate this. Even MY chat history is no more mine, but belongs to these bullocks. Unfortunately too many idiots use WA. Now Discord is a real relieve in respect of all said issues, a technically perfect software thingy.
   
   
2. I am not that amazed about the new channel because it ist not clear for me who is behind this.

 

[kpedersen]

It seems that the BitlBee IRC bridge has support for discord so I might give their public servers a shot at some point:

https://www.bitlbee.org/main.php/servers.html

I would install my own bridge but I am sure Discord will be obsolete and replaced with something even more slow and proprietary by the time I have finished compiling it

 

[ekvz]

The twitch people (the gaming community) are on discord.
I think people under the age of 50 don't use irc any more..

Not exactly true to that extend but i get where you are coming from and you have a point. I relation to gamers it's not that much dependent on age though i guess. A lot of them had already moved to voice based solutions way before Discord even existed. Actually that was the original target audience for Discord to get a foot in the door but by now pretty much everyone and their dogs use it.

works much better for my type of IM usage than e.g. WhatsApp.

No offense but is "better than Whatsapp" seriously some kind of archievement these days?

Even MY chat history is no more mine, but belongs to these bullocks.

I am sorry but how is this going to be much different in relation to Discord? It's not run by a charity or anything. It's a company that sooner or later will need to recoup it's investments and likely even more than that. Now the only valueable thing they have is peoples data... Hmm... i wonder where that's going to lead.

a technically perfect software thingy.

I'll have to agree here. The realization is pretty nice. Sadly that doesn't change the fact that it's a proprietary fly trap. Actually one that has and continues to destroy what little personality there was even left on the internet by centralizing, monopolizing and mass producing what used to be the realm of many independent communities. But don't let that hold you back. This trend didn't start just yesterday or only in relation to real time chat applications and it's unlikely to be stopped let alone reverted anyways.

I am not that amazed about the new channel because it ist not clear for me who is behind this.

Does it really matter that much? It's a click-click-go solution so it's just natural people are going to do just that. Check it out if you feel like it and if it doesn't suit you you can always leave.

With places like Discord it's not really realistic to expect anything radically different anyways. Sure the channel owners can switch some knobs but as soon as boundaries are stretched it will almost certainly always come down to what's in Discords best (business) interests and given that there are no alternatives (like how you could switch to a different provider when you disagreed with the administration of an IRC, XMPP or similar server) there is zero reason for them to make compromises and also nothing to turn to. It's always a take it or leave it thing where oneself has no leverage at all.

 

[drhowarddrfine]

I haven't seen much activity, and it looks kinda like irc. I'm not sure of the benefit and I didn't see much activity.

 

[a6h]

it is used by a lot of gamers

I wasn't even aware that such [sub?]culture exist i.e. The Gamers. Then as always media happened, and bunch of journos started to trash the gamers. I looked into it. I found gamers very fascinating. Now I think of gamers as biological forms of "Killer application" (*).

(*) https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/killer-app
(*) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_application

 

[a6h]

Now this bullshit WhatsApps-Web annoys me all the time with this stupid message that my cell phone needs to be connected, that it is low on battery, that I have WAWeb open on another computer - I can't find enough words for telling how I hate this.

We will never see eye to eye on this matter.

 

[ekvz]

I wasn't even aware that such [sub?]culture exist i.e. The Gamers.

There is. It might be even debatable if it's really that much of a sub culture anymore. The twitch crowd is only a part of it but just check what kind of viewer counts not just a handful of those streamers regularly pull in. It's quite massive.

Edit: https://www.twitchmetrics.net/channels/viewership I think that speaks for itself.

 

[sidetone]

I am not that amazed about the new channel because it ist not clear for me who is behind this.

When I clicked on the link, it says, "vermaden invited you to join The FreeBSD Project".

A FreeBSD forum member who often has content on the Internet about FreeBSD, unless it's an impersonator.


(edit, likely really vermaden, as it's something that user would do. I didn't think I needed to state that)

 

[a6h]

IIRC I used to read vermaden post/tutorial on bsdforums.org Forums. It's one the oldest internet/nickname I can remember! Learnt a lot from him/her.

unless it's an impersonator

I really don't know, but I don't think any impersonator is involved.

 

[unixhost]

The twitch people (the gaming community) are on discord.

I'm not sure if you were replying to my query on the benefits of Discord or if this was just an observation. Is this a positive? There may be benefits to FreeBSD overall through greater exposure, but at the same time, is this the right audience? There will always be a small level of crossover (i.e. a gamer who administers company infrastructure) but I'd imagine the primary objectives of each audience are incompatible.

I am not that amazed about the new channel because it ist not clear for me who is behind this.

Does it really matter that much?

I think it matters, particularly given the title is "The FreeBSD Project" Discord. Is this an official community, supported and/or endorsed by the FreeBSD Foundation? Is it a formal support channel? Informal? I don't have a full understanding of how representation of the project is governed, so would someone else who is similarly naieve misinterpret this as an official channel when it's not? Or is it?

 

[Jose]

I use it because it's the only way to communicate with my kids nowadays. It runs reasonably well in Firefox under Freebsd.

But I'm with Ekvz. I'm not joining any more instant communication walled gardens. Sure, I'll join Slack if you're paying me, but I'm going to drop that like a hot rock when you're no longer paying me. I'm certainly going to stick to the forums and mailing lists for Freebsd, since I have the option.

 

[Beastie7]

Discord? Ew. Why draw more users away from channels the FreeBSD project already has for its community? I don’t get it. I’ll stick with good old Forums and plain text. IRC annoys me so I tend to not use that. Although an open source slack-like alternative would be nice.

On a side note, I wish more FreeBSD developers participated here.

 

[obsigna]

I started Discord and it updated itself and in the Change Log, I found the following:

I like their attitude.

 

[mark_j]

Love it or hate it, finally FreeBSD is on the Discord! I read the announcement on the Valuable News – 2020/09/28. What do you think of the FreeBSD Discord channel? Please share your thought. Thanks!
This is the link to the FreeBSD channel on the Discord:

Discord - Group Chat That’s All Fun & Games

Discord is great for playing games and chilling with friends, or even building a worldwide community. Customize your own space to talk, play, and hang out.

discord.gg

I get it, you've got to approach a newer generation with what's "hip". So, I can see the appeal.
As others have said, one has to worry about the dilution of information across FreeBSD's various areas: mailing lists, irc, forums, discord, twitter, facebook(?).

After all, years ago all communication was done via mailing lists and majordomo.

 

[mark_j]

I started Discord and it updated itself and in the Change Log, I found the following:
View attachment 8540
I like their attitude.

Maybe more than 1/2 of them will vote. Idiots, you get what you don't vote for.
(I found a bin full of Trump votes the other day, too, Donald.) ?

 

[drhowarddrfine]

I'm not joining any more instant communication walled gardens.

Agree. And what's with Zoom? I never heard of it till a few months ago when there was some privacy or hacking problem with it. Now that's all I hear about--people doing zoom as if it's been around as long as Facebook or Twitter.

A FreeBSD forum member who often has content on the Internet about FreeBSD

vermaden has been on these and older boards longer than I have--about 16 years.

bsdforums.org

Did you have the same name back then? Man that place got polluted fast.

 

[sidetone]

vermaden 's content/website showed up in my phone's web feed once or twice. The person was wondering where that traffic to their webpage was coming from, and what the referral looked like. I was unable to get a screenshot from that page on my phone to show.

It perhaps was this same one, https://vermaden.wordpress.com/. I don't remember well if that was the same one then. It could have been one featured on Medium.

 

[obsigna]

Now I had a look on the members list of the FreeBSD-Discord channel. The who is who of the contributers is there: Alan Jude, Warner Losh (bsdimp), Mark Linimon, to name a few.

I haven't seen much activity, and it looks kinda like irc. I'm not sure of the benefit and I didn't see much activity.

You see the activity only once you check marked the #readme.