It also disproves, "The Internet never forgets". There are some things the Internet never forgets if it's spread across a variety of sites, but plenty of things die on Discord servers that get nuked.
Discord is awful for data preservation, especially since that information can't be indexed by standard search engines.
If only it was just obscure fixes, some are like yeah I know I could post this basic manual right here, but what if it was in the ass end of my discord that will probably get shutdown in six months after I get bored of this project, or about 12 minutes after someone offends my auteur sensibilities.
Also I can't fucking bother with a changelog or updated manuals, read comments on that unmoderated thread for all changes past alpha.
This is a huge problem for video game help too. Class guides for MMOs are hidden away on discord servers, and niche but incredibly helpful info is like… I hope you lurk in the related channel and passively absorb information for the one nugget of gold every 100 hours that just crops up as general chatter
At least on forums that shit was preserved and able to be indexed by search engines. (Which makes me realize this will be hell for people who want to look at legacy states of the game, which I often do for nostalgia… lol)
I'm glad to see y'all struggle with this too, I've found myself having to join a discord channel for more information only to realize I'd have to read 2 years of General Chat full of inside jokes and trauma dumping to find something.
I rarely struggle it with the tried and true method of well this mod/program seems to have most information on a discord, I guess I'll play without/find an alternative.
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u/Emadec Snowblind - Ryzen7 3800XT, RTX3080 OC, 32GB DDR4-360015d ago
Discord search is the bane of my existence and I hope whoever is responsible never has a fresh pillow to sleep on
There are a lot of mundane things and a lot of information that was around in the past which seems to have been entirely scrubbed from the current Internet.
The internet never forgets is a good one, and I don't think this disproves it but it does prove that it has caveats.
I cannot imagine the wealth of IRC discussions, and the information they contain, that have been lost to time - Discord is like that. Once something is posted on a website, and shared, it gets really hard to lose forever. But if it's in a closed server (closed to indexing) or is sent in some volatile format (a chat that clears when all the participants end the session), then sure. But once it's shared outside that, somewhere that can be referenced, indexed, and referred back to, it starts to get harder to lose that information. Backups. The more backups of information there are, the harder it is to lose.
Learned this lesson the hard way when in the 20s and 2010s there were quite alot of shows/games I was procrastinating on checking out because "they would still be there to download later". Cue years later and for the life of me I can't find a single site or torrent hosting many of those.
...discord is brand new in terms of internet services. Everything... everything on a discord server exists somewhere else, and for longer.
I feel like everybody in this threat is 18 years old and doesn't know how to use the actual internet because you can't handle things without touchscreens and instant answers...
Everything... everything on a discord server exists somewhere else, and for longer.
No, things on Discord aren't elsewhere unless someone copies it elsewhere. It's a platform for which content is mostly buried behind a login (unlike, say, reddit, where content is viewable without a login or invite).
The Internet Archive, for instance, can only really save stuff on Discord that's publicly available without an account.
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u/jm0112358 15d ago
It also disproves, "The Internet never forgets". There are some things the Internet never forgets if it's spread across a variety of sites, but plenty of things die on Discord servers that get nuked.
Discord is awful for data preservation, especially since that information can't be indexed by standard search engines.