Many users react harshly to what some see as a coming crypto-fueled revolution.
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Yeah I don’t know what they were thinking with that… ^.^;
Why can’t we just get a good messsaging system with features like discord but without weird stuff like what they keep thinking of doing… >.>
Even Discord Nitro isn’t a bad way to monotize either.
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What features of Discord do you like most ODL?
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First a list of hates, because I really really hate these parts and they should be known for any replacement system:
- Proprietary network API, not allowed to make your own clients (like a TUI client, grrrr).
- Extremely general bot unfriendly lately (which I know is for anti-spam reasons lately, but they are failing horrible at that point, and they could easily put the bot control in the server runner’s control or at least let people report them within the client interface without loading a webpage, as it stands if feels like their recent backwards incompatible bot API changes are more to prop up paid things).
- They (as a company) have some… odd ethical issues that have come to light lately (which wouldn’t matter if it was an open standard so other clients/servers could be made).
However, what I like (with some alternative systems that also implement such features if any):
- Typing indicators (‘most’ other things have this now, even IRC if on a new enough server and client).
- File Transfers (though they are hosted on the server, which is also a plug and minus as there is no permissions associated with those URL’s), at least IRC has DCC and most text systems have something like this now too)
- Screen broadcasting is… mostly functional, works well but not very featureful, but it does indeed work very well. I can’t think of any open chat system that has such a feature (IRC over DCC I guess, though no clients implement it that I can think of?)
- Voice chat is top marks (I ‘think’ matrix has this?)
- Has sub-threads now, can split off a new thread/conversation from a message, but it’s done in a really weird, annoying to use, and kind of crappy way (I hear it’s similar to how slack does it), I prefer Zulip’s method of sub-threads, those are just utterly top marks! (Zulip is pretty awesome in general).
- Has status and presence features that are quite pluggable and non-intrusive but very useful (I could see ways it could be more generically useful though, especially with self bots being allowed again, grrr).
- Lot of other little minor things and well done polish, from how custom emotes are handled to the really useful keyboard hotkeys to a variety of other things.
But honestly, the big thing about it is easy file transferring/hosting and video and voice broadcasting.
Matrix and Zulip are both pretty good alternatives, just missing the broadcasting capabilities is the major thing, but they do most everything else (in some cases better, in some cases worse).
Zulip is pretty awesome though, a lot like matrix, and it’s pretty programming community centric (I’ve only seen it used in quite a lot of programming communities), not as bridgeable as matrix, but has some very very useful features (like its streams, the side conversations, those are just absolutely top!), and still fully FOSS, though the backend server isn’t terribly efficient (I think it’s made in python, but matrix’s isn’t that much better currently, but it does have better future prospects).
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