1315
Please don't use Discord for FOSS projects
(drewdevault.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
1315 points (96.1% liked)
Open Source
31749 readers
180 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
- !libre_culture@lemmy.ml
- !libre_software@lemmy.ml
- !libre_hardware@lemmy.ml
- !linux@lemmy.ml
- !technology@lemmy.ml
Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
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.
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.
Matrix is IMHO a bad choice as it attracts the same demographic as Discord (glossy webclient) but is much more janky. Realistically speaking it is a poor Slack clone once you look beyond the technical aspect of federation which few people care deeply enough about to endure the buggy and half-broken user experience of Element.
I have had great success bridging to IRC (and XMPP). Yes, it will not fully replace Discord, but it allows a very dedicated group of people to participate in a community on their own terms and with great lightweight clients.
I agree though that any kind of bridge increases the risk of spam. But you should really try to get community members on board to deal with this kind of thing. Developing a software and running a community alone is not a good idea.
For you, I suggest sticking to Discord. I am of the mind that your effort should be focused on your community instead of enforcing a FOSS philosophy upon a group that may not have any interest in doing so.
If you are creating a new community, this is a different conversation, of course.