llvm dev - Nov 2019 - RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's discussions

On Mon, 18 Nov 2019 at 07:29, Kristina Brooks via llvm-dev
<llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
> While I understand the difficulty regarding mailing lists especially
> if one isn't used to setting up mailboxes and filters to classify and
> label emails and do think a web forum may be easier to use, I would
> have concerns over Discord. Unlike IRC which has a fairly open
> protocol and many clients and open source server implementations,
> Discord is fairly hostile towards 3rd party clients, and has a
> concerning history with regards to privacy. While that may not be a
> concern for public channels, private messages are another matter
> entirely. The protocol isn't entirely friendly and is relatively new,
> which makes it inflexible to use compared to IRC. IRC clients are easy
> to leave in tmux sessions and reconnect,
I think "easy" is very subjective here. It is "easy" if you
already

* Know how to use Tmux (or screen).
* Have an always up server that you can have your IRC client running on.
* Are familiar with IRC.

I think it would be incorrect to assume that every person interested
in hacking on LLVM is willing (or knows how to) set this up.
> as opposed to Discord where
> something akin to a web browser is required for a somewhat stable
> client
Is there anything wrong with asking people to use Discord via a web
browser? To do many things these days you **need a web browser**. If I
compare the easy of use of using a web browser vs your proposed IRC
set up, the web browser wins, hands down.
There may be a more comfortable middle ground here if there is strong
community resistance to using a service like Discord. There are web
browser IRC clients that might be considered "good enough" that the
barrier to entry is low enough if we clearly document how newcomers
can use it to get started in the community.

Personally I've not used Discord much but I am going to try it for a
few weeks to see how it goes.

Dan.

But IRC itself (from the client perspective) is a very simple
protocol, there are many user friendly alternatives including web IRC
clients. The key point is flexibility, since with IRC it's possible to
pick a flow that suits your needs, especially if you're a heavy IRC
user (I'll admit, I'm slightly biased towards IRC). Due to its long
history, there's great flexibility that comes with regards to client
choices and use patterns. Discord, officially, only provides one which
is their web client (either in-browser or shipped on the Electron
platform) and no interoperability options, meaning that it will
require additional fragmentation and an additional client to pay
attention to.

It's very rich in features, which can be seen as a nice thing in
social chatrooms, but otherwise serve as a distraction in a more topic
oriented environment. It is a social platform to a large degree, which
may seem like a negative thing to people seeking to distance
themselves from complex social platforms/networks. And last but not
least, it's a very poor platform for personal messaging, given their
terms of service and privacy policy, I would have concerns discussing
anything remotely sensitive on that platform.

A lot of this ultimately comes back to the hostile attitudes towards
3rd party clients - inability to integrate it into an aggregate client
and limitations in terms of accessibility, with lack of customization
or opt outs out of a lot of features. And while they do not actively
seek out users of 3rd party clients and enforce that policy, there is
no saying that won't happen in the future. So there's little room for
compromise, the platform is very much "take it as-is or leave it".

Of course my view is very subjective, and I understand the desire to
seek out alternatives that are more user friendly, but I think
platforms like that offer no compromises (or are hostile towards such
compromises) are very far from ideal as they may inevitably leave
people behind.

I hope this explains my view better and I apologize for my it being
heavily polarized against Discord.

On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 10:46 PM Dan Liew <dan at su-root.co.uk>
wrote:
>
> On Mon, 18 Nov 2019 at 07:29, Kristina Brooks via llvm-dev
> <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> >
> > While I understand the difficulty regarding mailing lists especially
> > if one isn't used to setting up mailboxes and filters to classify
and
> > label emails and do think a web forum may be easier to use, I would
> > have concerns over Discord. Unlike IRC which has a fairly open
> > protocol and many clients and open source server implementations,
> > Discord is fairly hostile towards 3rd party clients, and has a
> > concerning history with regards to privacy. While that may not be a
> > concern for public channels, private messages are another matter
> > entirely. The protocol isn't entirely friendly and is relatively
new,
> > which makes it inflexible to use compared to IRC. IRC clients are easy
> > to leave in tmux sessions and reconnect,
>
> I think "easy" is very subjective here. It is "easy" if
you already
>
> * Know how to use Tmux (or screen).
> * Have an always up server that you can have your IRC client running on.
> * Are familiar with IRC.
>
> I think it would be incorrect to assume that every person interested
> in hacking on LLVM is willing (or knows how to) set this up.
>
> > as opposed to Discord where
> > something akin to a web browser is required for a somewhat stable
> > client
>
> Is there anything wrong with asking people to use Discord via a web
> browser? To do many things these days you **need a web browser**. If I
> compare the easy of use of using a web browser vs your proposed IRC
> set up, the web browser wins, hands down.
> There may be a more comfortable middle ground here if there is strong
> community resistance to using a service like Discord. There are web
> browser IRC clients that might be considered "good enough" that
the
> barrier to entry is low enough if we clearly document how newcomers
> can use it to get started in the community.
>
> Personally I've not used Discord much but I am going to try it for a
> few weeks to see how it goes.
>
> Dan.

On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 4:58 PM Kristina Brooks via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> But IRC itself (from the client perspective) is a very simple
> protocol, there are many user friendly alternatives including web IRC
> clients. The key point is flexibility, since with IRC it's possible to
> pick a flow that suits your needs, especially if you're a heavy IRC
> user (I'll admit, I'm slightly biased towards IRC). Due to its long
> history, there's great flexibility that comes with regards to client
> choices and use patterns. Discord, officially, only provides one which
> is their web client (either in-browser or shipped on the Electron
> platform) and no interoperability options, meaning that it will
> require additional fragmentation and an additional client to pay
> attention to.
>
We can spin this many different ways, but at the end of the day, IRC is not
"user friendly" by any stretch of the imagination for the general
public.
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Re: Discord vs. IRC

Another community I belong to, r/ProgrammingLanguages, went through similar
turmoil. For years, several members of the community used IRC for
interactive conversations. Within the last year, someone launched a Discord
server. Angst arose about the community being divided and about the
respective merits and downsides of both platforms. The arguments raised
were quite similar to those I have noticed in this thread.

Our solution was to be inclusive and proactive. We built a bridge using
Matrix between the IRC server and the Discord server, and that has kept the
two communities able to use the technology they prefer while participating
in each other's conversations.

Speaking personally, although I would prefer to use an open source solution
we have control over, my multiple attempts to work with IRC clients left me
so frustrated, I gave up even trying. This is largely due to how regularly
IRC disconnects and how history is so very fragile in its natural state. I
tried Riot (based on Matrix), and it was better, but I still ended up
disconnected too often, having to remember the right incantation to
re-connect and pray it worked.

Discord has always just worked for most of us, and its feature set has
significantly improved our ability to gracefully host multiple concurrent
conversations on regularly-changing subject topics, empower individuals ad
hoc with channels for their individual initiatives, integrate with Github
and other tools, and moderate out toxic individuals and conversations. Its
UI has been more than a "pretty face", as it allows us to more readily
swap
a wide variety of media with each other: In particular I value the
well-formatted and colored code excerpts.
>From my standpoint, community engagement is the ultimate determinant of
success, not technical flexibility. Since launching the Discord server, it
has ended up attracting a significantly larger number of very active users,
a greater diversity of views and topics, and a deeper sense of engagement
in accomplishing practical objectives. That said, the IRC community
continues to remain vibrant and active, and perhaps even more so because
bridging means that Discord users can participate in the IRC conversations.
Intriguingly, the two bridged communities have retained their own distinct
social personalities.

What worked for r/ProgrammingLanguages might not apply to the LLVM
community, of course. Time will tell. I hope it is useful to have shared
what we learned from going through a similar transition.

- Jonathan
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