On 6/22/20 3:55 PM, James Cook via agora-discussion wrote: > On Mon, 22 Jun 2020 at 20:53, Publius Scribonius Scholasticus via > agora-discussion <agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote: >> On 6/22/20 4:06 PM, nch via agora-discussion wrote: >>> On 6/22/20 3:00 PM, Publius Scribonius Scholasticus via agora-discussion >>> wrote: >>>> On 6/22/20 3:50 PM, James Cook via agora-discussion wrote: >>>>> I can do that without objection >>>> I can save everyone time by saying that I will object. >>>> >>>> -- >>>> ---- >>>> Publius Scribonius Scholasticus, Herald, Referee, Tailor, Pirate >>>> Champion, Badge of the Great Agoran Revival, Badge of the Salted Earth >>> Can I ask what detriment you feel there is to having an extra optional >>> discussion forum? We already have the irc and it doesn't seem to impede >>> normal play... >>> >> For me, I am concerned that it could normalize the use of a proprietary, >> locked-in platform as an official place of discussion. > My concern exactly. > > - Falsifian
Trust me, I have spent my entire life using linux and working for non profits, I don't like proprietary. I understand the wariness against Embrace, Extend, Extinguish [1] strategies. But the concern about lock-in for this seems overblown. We had the extremely ephemeral irc. Nobody backed up the conversations there to some archive, and nobody cares because it was specifically meant for conversations that aren't meant to last. This is meant to give us back that ephemeral chat. And it already has, frankly. In the discord right now is 9 established players, 1 observer, and 1 new player. We've done a lot of collaboration on the github pages. Nothing these permanent archives would miss, I promise. Things like asking each other git technical questions and rapid feedback. Also, we've told jokes and talked about side topics and generally goofed around in an incredibly refreshing way that has no place on a mailing list. And every time anyone in the server wanted to say something longer winded, they've sent it to the mailing lists. Because that's what mailing lists are good at. Having two tools with two different strengths makes us stronger than using one tool to do everything. Again, I shy away from proprietary. But it shouldn't be binary, it should be a continuum. Discord fills a slot nothing us is filling for us right now. It has a (in my personal opinion) good TOS and good revenue plan, ones which are mostly kind to the user. If we find something that performs a similar roll to it in the future but is open source, I'm all for killing it for that. I don't think we should turn away a good enough tool because it's not perfect. That slowly kills us and alienates us. The fact that I've seen 3 people show up and then disappear in the last few weeks, two of which explicitly complaining about the avalanche of emails and uncertainty about where they can ask questions, should be proof of that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish -- nch Prime Minister, Webmastor, NAX Exchange Manager
