Ask HN: User communities that aren't Discord?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40955437

41 60 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

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).

Zambyte2• 2 years ago

Zulip is a pretty nice option

https://zulip.com/

Carrok• 2 years ago

The only option imo.

jFriedensreich• 2 years ago

i tried contributing to a community on zulip and its a devastating borderline disfunctional user experience compared to discord

the_duke• 2 years ago

The idea behind Zulip is great, but the UI is horrible. (Slow, clunky, ugly)

Developers can put up with it, but regular people will hate it.

esbeeb3• 2 years ago

I agree the slowness is a deal breaker. (Note: I tested it out a few years ago, but never went beyond that prototyping phase)

jauntywundrkind• 2 years ago

Zulip is stellar. I'd kind of forgotten about it, but I went on Bytecode Alliance's Zulip recently it was so much better having threads and conversation interleaved together like they do. I was quickly able to assess the last couple months, and subscribe to a couple async ongoing threads. Rarely have I experienced a chat system so able to be async.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 2 years ago

https://github.com/zulip/zulip-terminal/releases/expanded_as...

Does Discord even have a command-line client?

ranger_danger5• 2 years ago

Thoughts on this comment about it? https://programming.dev/comment/11056421

Zambyte2• 2 years ago

All they really say about Zulip is "it's just another corporate messenger". I don't really have much to say about that.

hauxir• 2 years ago

Kosmi https://kosmi.io

ranger_danger5• 2 years ago

What do you mean by complexity? How is using any other solution less complicated?

mronetwo• 2 years ago

Discord's UX feels quite bad. It's overwhelming and readability is bad. That'd be my biggest complain when it comes to "complexity".

ranger_danger5• 2 years ago

Never heard this complaint ever. I would argue all other solutions that are usable for the majority of people have much worse UX.

endorphine• 2 years ago

My thoughts exactly. It's one of the most overloaded and confusing UIs I've seen

rane• 2 years ago

Just one correction that Discord does not have to be downloaded as it works in the browser also. And you don't even need to provide an email address at first. As such, the barrier of entry is quite low.

skidd0• 2 years ago

You will quickly get flagged/banned and/or asked for a phone number/email address for verification. I've lost 2 accounts to this.

3np2• 2 years ago

I refuse Discord after eventually having every account get blocked pending phone-number verification. In my country that's effectively KYC (impossible to get a SIM card without govt ID).

Depending on IP and usage, this may happen at any point between registration and several years later.

spankalee• 2 years ago

If most of your audience doesn't use Discord, you're in a good spot. In the web dev world, so many projects use Discord that it's a massive benefit to just be in the server list with them. I felt my project had to use Discord.

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.

stefan_• 2 years ago

Theres gitter.im and the various "Matrix" clients but honestly it's horrible, it's the Linux desktop of chat.

solardev4• 2 years ago

What about just an old fashioned forum? Discourse (not Discord) is still around and is great for threading.

whyoh2• 2 years ago

To me an old fashioned forum would be something like phpBB. Discourse-style forums are relatively new and IMHO much worse in terms of UI. I really don't get the appeal.

solardev4• 2 years ago

What don't you like about Discourse?

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?

8b16380d• 2 years ago

Element

dist-epoch• 2 years ago

The big problem Discord solves is that nobody wants to create YetAnotherForumAccount.

olavfosse• 2 years ago

do people really consider this that much of a hassle

takes 1 minute to do

and no need to make/remember passwords with a password manager

gwbas1c• 2 years ago

do people really consider this that much of a hassle

Yes, I consider this a huge hassle

ranger_danger5• 2 years ago

IMO Discord is a non-starter for many tech people due to privacy issues and frequent/random phone number requirements. I and many others are completely unable to use it even if we wanted to, because immediately after logging in you get hit with a phone wall. Not everyone gets this but it indeed happens to a wide enough array of people to be quite problematic IMO.

wavemode3• 2 years ago

TBH I consider that a feature, to guard against spam and trolls.

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.

KomoD• 2 years ago

TBH I consider that a feature, to guard against spam and trolls.

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.

jncfhnb2• 2 years ago

Idk if I have ever seen a spam account on a tech support forum. Like not a single spam post.

Edit: on a discord*

ranger_danger5• 2 years ago

If only we could standardize on a federated SSO solution for all sites.

https://xkcd.com/927

fallinditch• 2 years ago

Have a look at Discourse https://www.discourse.org/

Also, BuddyPress has a new major update (v14) that's worth checking out.

SushiHippie• 2 years ago

I'd also say Matrix, as this is where the most communities are today that are not on propietary platforms.

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.

https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost

1oooqooq2• 2 years ago

matrix is like IRC + obligatory GPG.

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.

Arathorn• 2 years ago

this is very very confused.

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

palata• 2 years ago

IRC is very lightweight. Matrix feels rather at the other end of the spectrum. The IRC protocol is very simple. Matrix feels very complicated.

altilunium• 2 years ago

OSM recently migrated to Discourse instead

https://c.osm.org

zacharycohn• 2 years ago

Like, a forum?

bryanlarsen• 2 years ago

Why not both? Zulip!

a1o• 2 years ago

I think Simple Machines still exists

jsemrau• 2 years ago

when I was building finclout, I thought it makes more sense to organize conversations horizontally and vertically instead of the current UI paradigm where everything is vertically scrolling.

solardev4• 2 years ago

This makes my scroll wheel sad.

monlockandkey• 2 years ago

Flarum is a really nice open source forum

https://flarum.org/

esbeeb3• 2 years ago

I've been keeping my eye out for something more responsive (in an AJAX-like way) than phpBB, but less bloated than Discourse (as it's written in ruby). Something Open Source, decently low-effort to maintain (I like Debian), could run on a Raspberry Pi 5 for a small community, and doesn't require docker. This might be suitable. Thanks for the endorsement.

thesurlydev• 2 years ago

IRC

3np2• 2 years ago

How about a reskinned Element Messenger Web or Hydrogen?

rcarmo• 2 years ago

I honestly don’t get chat for communities (and I spent a lot of time in IRC). Without starch and structure, knowledge is constantly being lost and there is no way for newcomers to quickly get up to speed if they happen to be a timezone or two away from the “core” community. Forums and Discourse are so much better that I have to ask why it isn’t obvious.

outcoldman• 2 years ago

Have you looked at Telegram?

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.

rswerve• 2 years ago

The Todoist folks also make Twist, which is in this family and looks simple and pretty nice. Not sure why it has so little uptake. https://twist.com/home

humane_tech• 2 years ago

https://usehall.com/

NoMightDouble• 2 years ago

Saw that another user linked to Hall (https://usehall.com).

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?

Ask HN: User communities that aren't Discord?

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