Ask HN: User communities that aren't Discord? Anyone aware of a user community product that has the simplicity of chat threads without the complexity of Discord/Slack? We’re trying to build a space where people can give feedback and meet other users but most in our audience don’t already use Discord (and wouldn’t find a ton of value in it to make it worth the download). |
Does Discord even have a command-line client?
Developers can put up with it, but regular people will hate it.
I grew up in the phpbb/vBulletin era, and even back then it was a common complaint when Discourse first came out. Never quite understood the hate myself, but I'd love to hear your thoughts?
It's been a while since I investigated solutions, but I really wanted Matrix to be viable at the time. I would check out https://element.io/ and see if it works for you.
I'm the founder and we're building a customer community platform exactly for the use case you describe.
Our focus is on a simple and intuitive user experience that is familiar to non-technical end-users. We've also tried to make it as frictionless for them to sign up and start contributing (nothing to download, passwordless sign up and login). You also maintain full control and data ownership of your users (unless Discord).
Keen to hear any feedback, and why / why not if what we've built would work for you?
Also, BuddyPress has a new major update (v14) that's worth checking out.
Although the UX is not that great, when logging in via a new device, as it takes long to do the first sync (the new syncv3 protocol is supposed to fix this but it's still in beta)
A direct Slack alternative would be mattermost.
most new users keep losing identity because they have no idea they are using vector.im as their "nicksrv" of sorts and that their recovery code and password are not their session key. it's a disaster.
but having webapp and phone apps help adoption.
the key you use in Matrix to get at your historical messages /is/ your security passphrase/key (assuming you set it up).
the vector.im identity server is just a phonebook to let people discover you based on email address if you so desire.
the UX in Element is clearly a disaster, given nightmarish confusions like this. we have tried to fix it in Element X and stuff like https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/blob/and... which is looking promising
Depending on IP and usage, this may happen at any point between registration and several years later.
I do believe it might cover everything you need, very simple compared to Slack/Discord. Has groups and bots.
I started using Telegram after trying to setup Slack as a family platform.
My ideal project forum is one where anyone on the internet can read the forum, but contributing to the forum requires some bare minimum effort of creating and verifying a new account. Both of those are the opposite of what Discord does.
It doesn't stop spam and trolls though, that will always exist, it stops real users who can't be bothered with yet another account.
Edit: on a discord*
takes 1 minute to do
and no need to make/remember passwords with a password manager
Yes, I consider this a huge hassle
e.g. no identity, no dcc, no figuring out the individual-and-very-particular nicksrv on each instance, etc.
I already prefer native browser search and proper pagination instead of loading the page on-demand, but if none of these bugs existed, I could at least tolerate the decisions. Given the bugs though, these design choices really grind my gears in a special way.
0: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/please-test-autoinstalls-for-...
I get "dumbed-down, mobile first" vibes from the UI, kinda like Twitter, which is the last thing I want for a forum with thoughtful discussions. And it's also more bloated/slower than classic forums (https://danluu.com/slow-device/).
I think the best forum software right now is XenForo. But even phpBB and many similar free alternatives (MyBB, SMF,...) are better than Discourse. Those can also be heavily customized (might be true for Discourse too, but I doubt it would improve it much).
I appreciate the details!
I don't like infinite scrolling either, and I agree that there's a lot of wasted space in the default layout.