Pendell

@pendell

Current Hyperfixation: Wizard of Oz

He/Him

I use outdated technology just for fun, listen to crappy music, and watch a lot of horror movies. Expect posts about These Things. I talk a lot.

Check tags like Star Trek Archive and Media Piracy to find things I share for others.

Bluesky

bsky.app/profile/pendell.bsky.social

Mastodon

mastodon.social/@pendell

Bearblog

pendell.bearblog.dev/

Letterboxd

letterboxd.com/aependell/

Pendell @pendell2/11/2023, 1:38 AM

The Pnictogen Wing @pnictogen-wing

gravis again @cathoderaydude7/14/2022, 3:00 AM

"join our discord" is the new "pinterest result on google." anti-information. your pursuit ends here. facts will not be found today. it's like if you asked someone on the street what time it was and they said "come into my church and take communion and I'll tell you"

gravis again @cathoderaydude7/14/2022, 3:02 AM

discord is an organized, focused, hell-bent project to ensure that no! information ever! gets accidentally preserved. the purpose of a system is what it does, so discord's purpose is to lose things. "everything anyone has ever said on a topic" is the goal but they take what they can get

gravis again @cathoderaydude7/14/2022, 3:03 AM

it used to be terrifying when the support / faq / help link on a website went to a forum. then they started going to wikis, and we all turned around and screamed at springy the spring sprite to take it back, we didn't mean it. we love zinc.

then they turned into discord links, and when we looked back at springy, we saw only satan

gravis again @cathoderaydude7/14/2022, 3:09 AM

it's just an incredible one-two-three punch of "did you just tell me to go fuck myself?"

because you get part A: "almost everything we've ever said about our software project is in, basically, a 10 gigabyte text file spanning 8 years of conversations, many off-topic. here's a fulltext search. it replaces near-homonyms, so your search for the exact keyword 'CLOUT' will be silently altered to 'CLOUD'."

and part B: "you can't even look at it without loading it up in a separate program, possibly getting punted into a Welcome To Our Server process, having everyone on the server see your name (hope you weren't investigating something made by people who hate you!) and then having four people @ you the millisecond you join with generic welcomes (hope you don't have social anxiety!)"

and then part C: "if you gather up the courage to actually ask us for help after the fulltext search fails, we will insult you until you cry, even if you don't have social anxiety."

gravis again @cathoderaydude7/14/2022, 3:11 AM

the best advice i can possibly give anyone is "every time one person joins your discord, one thousand people decide your project is off-limits to them and leave the page, never to return."

#computers #the decline #gravis-mediumposts

Coolstation SS13 @coolstation2/7/2023, 6:59 PM

Sorry! This post has been deleted by its original author.

The Pnictogen Wing @pnictogen-wing2/7/2023, 7:26 PM

hoo boy, "self-documentation" rears its unwelcome head

forgive me for saying but I feel that a very unhealthy spirit breathes through this entire post of yours, @coolstation — but a spirit that's so commonplace in the programmer-geek community that it's accepted as normal even though (in my opinion anyway) it's really unhealthful.

"but when you're one fucken jabroni working on a hellscape project wit barely enough time to keep up with demand" is bad. nobody should be working like this at all — disgorging code and nothing but code at top speed constantly, not bothering to stop and think about anything – and then treating documentation like it's some luxury to be tacked on at the end if there's time.

I'm going to be blunt here: if you're too busy spewing out code to bother with pausing to explain why any of it works to another person, then I'm not sure that I can trust your code. "but the code documents itself!!" is the weakest of weaksauce excuses.

~Chara

#programming

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in reply to @cathoderaydude's post:

genuine surmounter of obstacles @droqen7/8/2024, 1:47 AM

lately i've been thinking about how the very Internet fantasy of "everything accessible to everyone" is kind of breaking. there's stuff like discord but i feel like it's succeeding on the waves of "holy shit there is so much trash everywhere." internet pollution. in a sense my argument is that losing things is a positive because of an underlying vibe that people aren't yet even consciously acknowledging they are feeling, and effectively that discord's success is in part a result of people subconsciously WANTING THINGS TO GET LOST, not in a privacy way, just a, like, you know, this other way.

p.s. not saying this is good (or bad), just noting that perhaps the fashionableness of the thing may in fact be related to your stated purpose of discord

in reply to @cathoderaydude's post:

Xoey @CandyCorvid3/9/2023, 3:21 PM

I have to ask, what is springy?

「Ｂｅｈｅｍｏｔｈ」@Behemoth3/26/2024, 9:03 PM

A reference to this MST3k short https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le2eB2xtvBQ

Cybird @thecybird3/26/2024, 9:50 PM

And "zinc" is a simpsons reference to the same film.
https://youtu.be/jWpPrWHBHcQ?si=vaGhE0DjMQhHt2i-

Xoey @CandyCorvid3/27/2024, 3:09 PM

Oh, thank you both!

The Fru Fru Brigade~@Fru-Fru-Brigade4/12/2024, 5:19 AM

Well,it's not originally from MST3K, but it's probably where most people Gen X or younger know it.

(Also, as something that's usually a clockwork doll, that short is kind of terrifying? Instantly dying because some guy gets annoyed repairing a sofa. FUN!)

in reply to @cathoderaydude's post:

colin @vogon7/14/2022, 3:26 PM

anecdote: finding stuff on our internal corporate discord with the search feature is always a 5-10 minute affair despite the fact that there are literally four active users on it, and we've had to start using separate topic-specific channels as an adjunct tagging system

gravis again @cathoderaydude7/14/2022, 3:33 PM

the whole thing positively screams "stop using me! stop using me!"

gravis again @cathoderaydude7/14/2022, 3:35 PM

chat programs are for Fucking Around. giving one a job is Democrat behavior

~@modulusshift7/14/2022, 5:05 PM

it was 100% a mistake to make chat any more complicated than irc IMO

Talen Lee @TalenLee7/15/2022, 4:46 AM

christ, this is perfect

Millie(let)@Gyro2/7/2023, 8:10 PM

Discord is great for Fucking Around and simultaneously is the worst knowledgebase

invertigo hayfever @the-doomed-posts-of-muteKi2/8/2023, 12:17 AM

Finally a program where you can fuck around forever and find out approximately nothing

Rena @RenaKunisaki8/15/2024, 5:30 PM

I get the impression that there's a Dark Pattern at play with some of these big Apps (especially YouTube), in which they deliberately make the UI as awful as possible, to discourage anyone with half a brain from using it more than necessary, leaving only the least intelligent users, who happen to also be the ones most easily manipulated.

Decker 🌝@JustDecker2/7/2023, 10:52 PM

You're right on every point. And the search thing is maddening. Attempting to find solutions to a 3d printing problem known as "ringing". You know what else comes up in search results? O-rings. Ring filters. Ring terminals. Ring bearings. "Ringing" is this context is rarely referred to with "Ring" so I could cut out so much cruft if discord had a functional search. But it don't, so I'm still troubleshooting.

Plum @plumpan3/26/2024, 8:55 PM

discord mascot waving atop a notification ping color background

Jack @MrNuclearMonster3/26/2024, 10:07 PM

from the part of a project runner, it's incredibly frustrating that if I don't choose to run a discord then someone else will. There's gonna be one if I want it or not, and now I have an incredible moderation burden to deal with and the knowledge that information will just get trapped in it to be even more lost when Discord inevitably shuts down/becomes unusable.

count swagula @clip3/26/2024, 10:27 PM

the search thing is absolutely maddening. i can't imagine how much effort went into making it actively hostile.

gravis again @cathoderaydude3/26/2024, 10:49 PM

tbh i would guess none, and that that's the exact problem; they just lifted some prerolled fulltext search feature, plugged it in, dusted their hands off and went for beers

count swagula @clip3/26/2024, 11:28 PM

idk something about them not even respecting quotes for exact matches makes it feel like a choice

gravis again @cathoderaydude3/26/2024, 11:31 PM

that's the thing though, there are multiple modern prerolled search engines that just Do That. i think with like fucking elasticsearch you can just tell it "do everything in soft mode ^_^" and then it ignores all literals. it sucks ass

wild sage growing in the weeds @rabbittrack3/26/2024, 10:31 PM

IME, Part C is just as often, "Once you finally muster the courage to ask, literally no-one will answer or even acknowledge your question, leaving it to be swept away by the chatroom system that is inherently not meant to make past conversations easy to find."

Also, shoutout to that time I joined a community discord for advice and I literally could not speak to other users. It was 100% for status updates about the game. The dev team had other social media accounts, but most were inactive or only had part of the newsfeed, which I can only take to mean they decided Discord should be the priority.

Queen Sunflower @QueenSunflower3/27/2024, 1:43 AM

tried to join a discord for information and they asked to verify my phone number first. i am too poor to afford a phone plan and they didnt accept voips, so that information is permanently barred from me

meow_d @meow-d3/27/2024, 6:38 AM

wow. i never thought something as innocuous as turning on the spam prevention can turn into gatekeeping knowledge from poor people.

Queen Sunflower @QueenSunflower3/27/2024, 10:19 AM

are you a troll or just incredibly stupid

meow_d @meow-d3/27/2024, 10:50 AM

No. I was vaguely aware of a feature like that in discord, but i never needed to touch or think about it because I don't own a discord server. So I'm leaving a comment as a way to thank the other user, and now the other user is being an asshole for some reason.

Queen Sunflower @QueenSunflower3/27/2024, 11:18 AM

okay i thought the first reply was passive aggressive as a way to invalidate my issues with discord. it literally didnt even occur to me you were being genuine, i think online dicourse has poisoned my brain into assuming everyone is speaking with bad faith automatically. apologies for jumping there right away 😅

meow_d @meow-d3/27/2024, 1:58 PM

😮🥺

fish @fiish3/27/2024, 12:27 PM

a subreddit i use doesn't allow asking for help and tells you to use the discord instead but the discord requires you to verify your phone number. i sent a message to the mods and they basically said "we don't care lol"

Bullethell Mothgirl @GenesisMoth3/27/2024, 1:50 AM

we need to collectively abandon discord. building infrastructure on it is a recipe for fucking disaster. (moth says, all of their gamedev history, documents and photos on a discord server)

Bullethell Mothgirl @GenesisMoth3/27/2024, 1:59 AM

yknow what?? fuck it. two replies. you wanna know what pisses me the fuck off?? the fucking SERVER MENU "oh yeah lets put a biiiiiig stupid fucking thin clustershit of server. nevermind that there is 90% of unused screenspace, you just go up and down! whats that?? you have a lot of servers??? lol gofuckyourself if you fuck with the api to make an accessible server menu your discord account will be permanently banned. goddess forbid we have a large, readable server rack using skeumorphism or any of the foundational groundwork that has been set... THIN STUPID LINE. you are absolutely going to lose track of your servers lol!! oh and btw dms are a wholly separate nightmare.

discord is a nightmare for my adhd and i hope we learn that widely relying on a stupid piece of software as one of the primary highways for mass communication is oh my god.

KelliKow @Bovine3/27/2024, 5:57 AM

"We made folders! Anyways, good luck organizing anything"

@rainwolf3/27/2024, 2:25 AM

and there's also the fun problem of only being allowed to join a hundred Discord servers so your list ends up getting quite full quickly if you say join the servers of your favorite games/mod to ask support questions

Ezequiel @Matytoonist3/27/2024, 3:33 AM

Joined a server to troubleshoot an open source driver for my drawing tablet. After someone sent me a config file that made it work, everyone stopped responding to me when i ran into issues when trying to resize the input area.

Holly Wednesday (Dr.)@doctorwednesday3/27/2024, 4:42 AM

"I'll be at the Comedy Store all this week"

holds the phone @breakfastcowl3/27/2024, 9:24 AM

How fitting this continues to make the rounds a year later, Discord compounding its faults. Another awful trend/development is when servers just go kaput and take whatever info they ever had with them.....

in reply to @cathoderaydude's post:

@lexi7/14/2022, 6:19 AM

100% this. as someone with social anxiety and a passionate hate for electron apps id rather use another app/lib/whatever than join their discord server. discord, or in general any social app, should never ever be the primary source for infos

Glen the Fossa @glenthefossa7/14/2022, 12:58 PM

It's funny as someone in the OSR/NSR scene how losing G+ was this calamitous event that has left entire blacked out portions of writing never to be seen again, and then what happens? Everyone moves to individual discords ensuring the exact same thing will happen again eventually.

Ezra @ezra7/14/2022, 2:16 PM

it's so terrible. make it stop.

Zuki @zuki7/15/2022, 4:13 AM

thank you all for screaming about this

Lapis the Nevrean @lapisnev2/7/2023, 4:28 PM

I have a Discord and am in a dozen servers but I only regularly check a single channel in one of them for news and the rest is an unmanageable mess.

My job has a Slack but doesn't pay for it so it has all of the drawbacks of Discord with the added horror of knowing exactly when information will be lost forever!

Jama @Jama2/7/2023, 4:36 PM

"How do I do this thing? Join a discord... No. I'll either live with this or figure it out or just delete it" has happened to me several times and it's very frustrating. It's just so stupid! Give me something that a search engine can index so I don't have to deal with discords bullshit search.

@Janet2/7/2023, 4:58 PM

why are u all so sensible while everyone else is like... this?

kata 🌊 aqua!@kadybat2/7/2023, 5:15 PM

i'm necrocommenting on this post but fwiw a lot of people internally care about this problem and i'm optimistic it'll be addressed at some point in the near future

PolarBair @polarbair2/7/2023, 9:14 PM

I agree with 90% of this but am kinda confused about how forums were better than wikis lol

Yeah, most wikis now are under Fandom (fuck them) but it wasn't always that way, and the ones that aren't now are very useful.

gravis again @cathoderaydude2/7/2023, 9:33 PM

That's a point I'd be willing to concede since it's partly based on speculation, but my perspective is this: A well-run wiki needs to consider itself an authoritative source of information. Very few, other than the main Wikipedia project, actually bother with making or verifying external references, but still, there is some impedance to just putting "whatever" on a wiki; you are expected to add things that are certainly true.

On a forum? Open season. Press new thread, type whatever nonsense you think of, who cares. Your post will not get deleted unless you've written something harmfully wrong (or, you know, you're just being a troll.) So forums end up being these swirling confluences of raw user input.

A wiki is good for subjects on which there is authoritative, unambiguous truth, like "the lego mindstorms v1 requires such-and-such driver software," but they aren't built for things like "so my mindstorms V1 quit working, and I opened it and found that a FET blew out and the part number was impossible to source, so I replaced it with this other one and it works fine." That sort of edge case just doesn't fit into a wiki format, usually.

Also, a wiki is like a forum where anyone can delete your thread just because they don't like it. Oh sure, it's in the history page, but that history doesn't get indexed by google, isn't searchable, etc. so it might as well be gone unless you know it's there to look for it. Forums are just piles of crap that people wrote, dumped in one place, and the value of that for esoteric subjects is tremendous.

And, finally, call this one subjective but: I really feel like forums attract a wider variety of people. A LOT of forums are full of people in their sixties and seventies, many of which are not particularly computer-oriented. There are gobs of posts along the lines of "well I can't figure out how to post an image, but here's how I rewired my vacuum tube radio," and I think wikis are probably substantially more intimidating, since even making a new page requires significant contextual knowledge.

PolarBair @polarbair2/7/2023, 9:47 PM

Thanks for responding, there's definitely a lot to consider here. I chalk it up to me missing forums' "prime", only getting into them in the 2010s through gaming. Stuff like GameFAQs and Smashboards were still chugging along at that point.

My POV is also from working on fighting game wikis, where there's a void where forums use to be. You get discords or you get wikis, and usually people use discord to resolve disputes over the wiki contents. It's far from ideal.

@DieselBrain2/8/2023, 6:27 PM

sorry to hop on this but yeah, from a fighting game player POV, wikis do a lot of heavy lifting nowadays. Lots of really obscure titles have shockingly in depth wiki pages that are, thankfully, easy to find in search indexes (usually cuz there's only a handful and theyre mostly non-fandom. Mizumi wiki, SuperCombo, Dustloop, DreamCancel etc)

but the idea of jumping onto a new discord for every game, knowing any knowledge there is functionally ephemeral is just..... ECH. Fuck-around-with-friends fighting game discords are one thing but dedicated knowledge source discords are hell holes.

gravis again @cathoderaydude2/8/2023, 7:11 PM

Yeah, that's again a subject where there is lots of objective fact to be documented, vs. one where subjective / empirical info is important. I think we've done a great job of outlining the pros/cons of wikis and forums for different purposes and how they can have wildly different value depending on what your subject matter is. What I think we can all agree on is that Discord doesn't do anything well other than "ask a question and then dip immediately," which is... not the primary use case for The Internet In General, lol

PolarBair @polarbair2/9/2023, 6:32 AM

Oh yeah I totally forgot to reply to this. No worries. I don't have the social anxiety a lot of people do around discords, but they do become a pain in the ass to join.

On the other hand, I feel like I've spent a bit of time fighting people on the usefulness of wikis in the FGC. People have this weird image that the wiki is a work of an elite few and not just something anyone with a little game experience can add to. It leads to a lot of clowning on twitter instead of, y'know, working as a community. At this point as much as people say they want forums back, it doesn't feel like there's enough people that'll actually use them. It's gonna take a big cultural shift for them to catch on again. Would be nice, tho.

@DieselBrain2/9/2023, 7:04 PM

legit: twitter needs to die. at this point, im a "twitter death accelerationist". Twitter's core draw i feel is "there's a chance you could get your tweet/take seen by EVERYONE" while engaging in things like wikis/forums is comparatively smaller fish in smaller ponds and people's inner monkey-brain tells them its not worth the time.

also just... the amount of fighting game tech thats posted to twitter and nowhere else and is virtually unsearchable.... (shudders)

Jess🌺@CyanSorcery2/8/2023, 8:08 AM

the part about "you join and the server announces you and everyone sends you a generic welcome" is the main reason I ended up just getting rid of my welcome/introduction channel lmao

now people can come and go as freely as the wind. come to my chatroom like a phantom, seek the information you wish to find, and abscond without anyone knowing you were even there

in reply to @pnictogen-wing's post:

erysdren @erysdren2/7/2023, 7:38 PM

honestly i completely agree with this post. made me stop and think about all the repositories on github i've left undocumented, with the hopes that "someone could find it useful". just went and added some (hopefully) well-written documentation to my current project. thanks for the heads up

The Pnictogen Wing @pnictogen-wing2/7/2023, 7:59 PM

ah! glad to have been a spark of inspiration. this is an issue that we worry about ourselves—we haven't coded seriously in a long time but when we did, we did it in the usual hectic unexplained style, and now I feel like that was always a really bad habit.

honestly I feel like maybe it's inverted—maybe the documentation ought to precede the code?

~Chara

erysdren @erysdren2/7/2023, 8:02 PM

honestly not an unheard of method - i recall this tidbit that Foone dug up about BRender:

"When Sam Littlewood designed BRender, he didn’t write the code. And then document it. The way most things were built at the time. First, he wrote the manual. The full documentation That served as the spec. Then the coding started."

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