Rumour: Discord to be purchased by Microsoft

Karl_ wrote:Discord is essentially just chat room software. You join a chat server and it has rooms for different subjects in. It's not too complicated.

It's popular with teens and students at the moment, in the way that IRC was back in our day. Fandom communities used to have an IRC channel, now they'll have a Discord server.

I think we are generally all a bit too busy on this forum to really be "into" real-time chat internet communities though. I keep an eye on the GRcade one but that's about it.

This is probably the crux of it for me. Most discord servers I've ended up on have left me wondering "why am I here?" and its really more of an issue I have with the content I've encountered on the platform, rather than a problem with the platform itself.

I'll be in a discord for a youtube channel making cool animations or something, but there'll be all these rooms to discuss recipes, or post gooseberry fool memes, and it's just odd to me why that discussion is happening there. It all ties into a general bewilderment I have about the need for so many "content creators" to try and build a community, like every channel on YouTube or twitch needs its own fan club or something, that then has to have its own sub section for off topic discussion.

I've tried using the GRcade discord server as well, but I'm just not sure why you wouldn't just post on here instead of there? It's like splitting the community across 2 platforms for no real reason. No offense intended to Winckle and anyone else who maintains it.

I think Discord works well for "live" things, obviously being a real time platform that is probably a given. So voice chatting to people whilst playing a game, using it to arrange game sessions etc.

Knoyleo wrote:I've tried using the GRcade discord server as well, but I'm just not sure why you wouldn't just post on here instead of there?

Real-time notifications and easy access to voice-chat, basically. It's pretty useful for saying "I'm playing Apex now, let's group up". You can then ping everyone that's online that's registered an interest in that game and voice-chat to any who respond.

Jenuall wrote:Yeah everything but the surface level of Discord confuses me greatly. I suspect it is all relatively simple in reality but I simply don't have the time to investigate and work out how these things operate now.

It's a pretty primitive chat program. Think of it like shipping channels in the ocean. You can't see them until a boat cuts through the water leaving a wake. If two boats meet in the middle of the ocean to swap illegal drugs, you have to catch them in real time, otherwise there's no evidence of a meeting left behind. No names, no accounts, no records of exchange.

Anyway thanks for the reminder that we live in the specific capitalist dystopia where there is no modern open standard for text chat.

Well now it's all perfectly clear to me!

On the other hand if Microsoft rebrand Discord as MSN Messenger I'm 100% on board

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Tafdolphin wrote:God please strawberry floating no.

Photek wrote:I haven't a notion about how Discord works either, it's confusing AF.

Never, ever try Slack.

Or trello.

Or...any other group/team management service?

I'm saying that Discord is super streamlined and easy to use. Seriously, it's ace.

Slack is great what you on? It's like a simplified Discord with your own URL. We had it at work, but our manager got rid of it because we used it too much for non-work related chat. All those custom emojis gone. ;-;

As for Discord and those confused by it. I think the simplest way to put it is just 'Whatsapp group chat' bubbles on the outer-left pane. Click on one and it'll show the different channels within the group chat on the inner-left pane. I guess a good analogy would be a 'Whatsapp' chat bubble for Games and another for Stuff. Each thread is like a channel. And each channel is either text or voice. That's it.

Setting one up and what you can do with it is a bit more complicated though with all the permissions, bots, and 3rd party extensions, etc.

I've joined a few discord channels for things and just haven't found the time to get my head around the (admittedly probably very small) barrier of understanding that is blocking me from getting involved.

For example I joined one channel but it doesn't show me anything beyond a "Rules/Welcome Page" type conversation, but I can't see anything anyone else has posted in there beyond a stickied message that is telling me the rules of the channel. I'm presuming there are other conversations going on that I can't see yet because they are hidden from me until I perform some kind of joining step - but what that is doesn't seem clear to me!

I strawberry floating hate Slack. We tried using it for work but realised Discord was just much better and also free.

Karl_ wrote:It's popular with teens and students at the moment, in the way that IRC was back in our day. Fandom communities used to have an IRC channel, now they'll have a Discord server.

I think we are generally all a bit too busy on this forum to really be "into" real-time chat internet communities though. I keep an eye on the GRcade one but that's about it.

I'm ideologically opposed to Discord replacing IRC in the same way I'm opposed to reddit replacing forums.

What if we took a decentralised web run by enthusiasts and instead centralised it under two corporations whose primary motive is profit.

It's all a bit depressing really

OrangeRKN wrote:I'm ideologically opposed to Discord replacing IRC in the same way I'm opposed to reddit replacing forums.

What if we took a decentralised web run by enthusiasts and instead centralised it under two corporations whose primary motive is profit.

It's all a bit depressing really

Politically I agree with you 100%. There's nothing I can do about it day to day though so I try to separate the bit of my brain that hates the modern corporate internet from the bit of my brain that wants to get pinged when Aaron and Winckle are playing Apex.

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Tafdolphin wrote:I strawberry floating hate Slack. We tried using it for work but realised Discord was just much better and also free.

Your place of work sounds reasonable and fun

For sure I mean I occasionally use discord too. It's a critical mass problem and I don't mean to berate anyone for using discord because it's obviously useful and has some great communities on it!

Jezo wrote:
Tafdolphin wrote:I strawberry floating hate Slack. We tried using it for work but realised Discord was just much better and also free.

Your place of work sounds reasonable and fun

Video games are cool.

All the oldies in here confused by Discord :dread:

No wonder the GR one is pretty dead other than IT work chat and Apex Legends. I use the app all the time for various servers and for me it’s a better medium than forums which feel like they are dying a slow death in this day and age.

strawberry float Microsoft buying it though.

The fact that Discord (along with a whole bunch of other stuff like Twitch) is blocked at work whereas forums like this are not is another big barrier to me becoming more committed to it

Mafro wrote:All the oldies in here confused by Discord

If an older gentleman like Limmy can manage Discord then anyone can.

I've only used it once (when Hades stopped accepting pad commands all of a sudden) but it seemed straightforward to use, and I was given an official response and solution almost straight away. So in that respected it's much better than asking via Twitter, forums, email, forms, etc.

Saint of Killers wrote:I've only used it once (when Hades stopped accepting pad commands all of a sudden) but it seemed straightforward to use, and I was given an official response and solution almost straight away. So in that respected it's much better than asking via Twitter, forums, email, forms, etc.

As real time text chat it's going to have the advantage of quick responses and live communication. On the flipside it doesn't work so well as a knowledge base - if someone else has the same problem they will probably have to ask again (and hopefully get another quick response), whereas if it was asked and answered on a public forum it would more likely get search indexed. That comes with a privacy cost to public forums too, although with discord servers I feel it's often hard to gauge how private the chat there is which adds a risk of thinking something is private and short-lived when it isn't.

Karl_ wrote:
Knoyleo wrote:I've tried using the GRcade discord server as well, but I'm just not sure why you wouldn't just post on here instead of there?

Real-time notifications and easy access to voice-chat, basically. It's pretty useful for saying "I'm playing Apex now, let's group up". You can then ping everyone that's online that's registered an interest in that game and voice-chat to any who respond.

I didn't even realise it did voice chat. :lol:

I can definitely see more benefit to it there, I assume this would be on place of something like the old mumble server?

Rumour: Discord to be purchased by Microsoft

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