Switch to Discord for realtime official communications

[Fishrock123]

So... switching off of IRC has been discussed in like a 20 threads over probably like 5 or 6 repos.

I think it might finally be time to make a move, and I strongly suggest that we use Discord.

Some reasons we might want to switch:

• We only have two real irc channels, #node-dev and #node.js, one of which is 'unofficial-ish'.
  • Specific conversations often overlap, adding new channels is difficult without owning the irc server.
• IRC spams join/disconnect messages because IRC.
• Moderation tools require arcane commands that are difficult to remember.
• No notifications, requires a bouncer.
• Horrible web interfaces.

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Here's a little tools comparison:

IRC:

• Is capable of supporting every feature everyone would ever want except voice
• Those features will never exist because it all basically needs to be built from scratch and will never get done
• Requires a bouncer for chat history
• Mobile clients exist but are not great (in my experience)
• Horrible web interfaces

Gitter:

• Has awful moderation support
• Limited feature set
• Has mobile clients, web interface
• Can be connected to via an irc client

Slack:

• Not technically public
• Has poor tools for being used as a public channel (i.e. moderation tools)
• Great notifications system
• Has mobile clients, web interface
• Can be connected to via an irc client

Discord:

• Literally built for large-scale open communities
• Has public-space moderation and management functionality
  • No built-in temp bans / muting, but can be done through user roles
• Has voice channels for meetings
• Has mobile clients, web interface
• A middleware thing exists to connect via IRC
• Notification system not has good as Slack

All of these require an account because we also require freenode registration on IRC.

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Here's a more detailed run-down of what Discord supports, relevant to us:

Public invite / join links

• Discord has a built-in system for sharing joinable links.
• Permanent links are available.
• The ability to create new links is completely configurable.
• There is support for levels of verification an account must have to be able to join (such as email, 2fa) in order to reduce spam / bots.

Text channels

• Support for markdown-style text input like Slack, emojis, embeds, etc.
• Has pinned message functionality, channel topics.
• Channels have individual full configurability for restrictions, including the ability to limit embeds, links, files, @everyone mentions, and more.
• Channel can be grouped by category.

Voice channels

• Also have individual full configurability for restrictions.
• May be removed altogether.
• Can be restricted to certain users.

Server roles

• Allows multiple administrators .
• Permissions for moderators, including kick, edit nicknames, bans.
• Full configurability of text / linking / attachments / etc permissions.
• Full voice configuration including connect / speak / mute members / move members.
  @mentions for channel role groups.
• Online member lists for roles groups.

Moderation tools

• Configurable server-wide explicit content filter.
• Support for server kicks / bans (account + ip by default) / lower-role editing.
• Ability to do member muting / temp-banning via role changing.
• Bans list.

Other stuff

• Is free for what we want, uses an account-subscription based model for extra, shiny, per-user features: https://discordapp.com/nitro
• Support for webhooks.
• Has support for custom integrations we could potentially make use of.
• Has an audit log.
• Has an embeddable server widget. (We could embed a chat into some Node.js website page if we wanted to.)
• Private messages from server users can be disabled.
• Typical notifications muting / only @mentions / suppress @here & @everyone / mobile notifications settings / overrides.

---

Other projects using Discord:

• React / Flux (~2k online users): https://reactjs.org/community/support.html#reactiflux-chat
• http://package.community/
• Yarn (top right https://yarnpkg.com/en/)
• Vue.js (ecosystem > chat https://vuejs.org/)
• And if you want to see discord at a ~10k online users scale: https://www.vrchat.net/discord (and a widget!)

[bnb]

For what it's worth we've been discussing this again in the Community Committee and are seemingly pushing forward on enabling discussions like this.

I am generally +1 to Discord, and think it is probably the best platform for the sake of openness and extensibility if we want to centralize on a specific platform. I have also moderated two Discord groups, and have been pretty comfortable with the tooling they provide–it's not really limited at all.

If we do have any objections to the platform itself, it may be worth reaching out and asking maintainers of the other projects you linked and how to see how it's worked out for them and what the successes/hurdles have been.

[WaleedAshraf]

I'm using slack for 20+ communities including (Trace/Ember/Codecov/Sumologic/Postman)
Each of these has public-link on their site to join the community. So joining public slack community should not be a problem for anyone.

Moderation: How many times you guys (owners/admin) have to delete some content or remove someone? Or would need IP level restriction? I think there would only a few cases.
Also now slack provides these level of roles for moderation:

This might be one-time migration. Choose wisely!
Never used Discord :(

[ljharb]

(I really dislike discord’s UX, fwiw)

adding new channels is difficult without owning the irc server.

This doesn’t seem true; to create a new (available) channel you just join it; it requires no coordination with freenode.

[mhdawson]

@Fishrock123, one thing I like about slack is that if it sends you an email with a summary of messages that you have not read after X amount of time. Does Discord have something like that ?

@mhdawson Nope.

[hackygolucky]

I'm +1 to supporting Discord. I'm meh on subscribing to a single platform as The Communication Tool of Node.js.

I've appreciated the conversations we've had over the years around this(I especially formally thought that we should centralize to a single place). I think it's unlikely due to various user requirements around the world that a single tool will work for everyone, having been given a lot of feedback on this subject. I know you have, too.

As an example, the Slack community/communities need to be more easily discoverable, but they are good, active groups. I don't foresee everyone giving up the platforms they are interacting on for the One on Discord, but I could definitely see them also participating there.

Though I could be wrong on all of this. If a Discord is created and everyone sees how energetic and thriving it is, maybe we'd all be more likely to be excited and +1ing it as the primary tool?

[mhdawson]

I agree that we don't need one tool for all situations. At the same time, it is hard to follow/participate in a large number of different ones. It would be nice if there was only one that was used for 'most' of what needs to be followed for day-to-day Node.js core work.

[ChALkeR]

@Fishrock123 I will unpack this a bit later, but for now, I have one question: if we switch to Discord now, and will have to switch to something else in ~2 years from now, how tricky would that be? I mean the negative effect from switching back and forth, i.e. now — to Discord, in 2 years — from Discord.

[mcollina]

What are "official communications"? That does not seems clear.
Is a place for collaborators (#node-dev) or is it general public? Or is it both?

[Trott]

Seems like this can be closed, at least for now. Feel free to comment or re-open if you think this should still be an active conversation.

[ryzokuken]

I would like to request reopening and reconsidering this. Looking through the thread, I found a ton of criticism that I'd like to address, apart from that @Fishrock123 has done an amazing job of explaining how discord is just perfect for our needs.

@ljharb

(I really dislike discord’s UX, fwiw)

I don't think I can offer too much regarding this, I guess. I personally believe that the UX of the desktop app and the mobile app seem much more seamless than the web app, but apart from that I think we'd just have to deal with it. (P.S. It's not that bad, after all, it does look better than Gitter/an average ugly IRC client).

@mhdawson

@Fishrock123, one thing I like about slack is that if it sends you an email with a summary of messages that you have not read after X amount of time. Does Discord have something like that ?

It doesn't, but I really like that they have a really decent support for bots and such. We'd probably need a bot for automoderation and the likes, and we could definitely make it do this if it's really important.

@ChALkeR

@Fishrock123 I will unpack this a bit later, but for now, I have one question: if we switch to Discord now, and will have to switch to something else in ~2 years from now, how tricky would that be? I mean the negative effect from switching back and forth, i.e. now — to Discord, in 2 years — from Discord.

Umm, could you care to unpack this now? I don't think there's bound to be a lot of overhead about it, but I definitely haven't tried migrating away from Discord yet.

@mcollina

What are "official communications"? That does not seems clear.
Is a place for collaborators (#node-dev) or is it general public? Or is it both?

It's both, and many more. Discord allows us to keep in place a very complicated system of user levels, labels and roles (think GitHub teams) and allow us to make chatrooms that have customized rules regarding viewership and ownership. This means that we could even shift our private communications to discord along with any public communications (#node-dev + #node.js) to discord with virtually zero overhead.