Element does not provide what Discord provides and should not be advertized as a direct replacement until the community feature gets some serious work done to it.
Yeah, it’s a bit frustrating and when using Matrix you have to just accept that it is not suited for certain uses of Discord, particularly the ones that encourage tightly-knit communities with consistent and seamless moderation + common settings across them.
I manage a “server” that simply would not function without Discord’s systems for channels and moderation / organization. Believe me, I’ve tried to move it to Matrix, IRC, and other places but I’ve never found something which doesn’t require massive sacrifices to what the community is about and how it works. Especially given that these are a bunch of non-techies who for the most part do not care at all about free software and privacy, nothing gets anywhere near a practical replacement.
I wish it was that simple. I wouldn’t mind switching to Element and working around the differences, but I would find it difficult to get anyone else to move off Discord and stick with Element for more than a few minutes if I could get them to sign up in the first place.
Discord “servers” allow you to easily invite people to the community and create rooms for various topics as they come up while still keeping the group together.
With Element if I join a room / community (for example for a software application) I’m quickly overloaded with thousands of messages, all covering a range of topics. You may get a string of messages - some may be people asking for basic support, others may be complex coding topics which are over my head, others may be about design, translation, or just people chatting - all in the same stream. It’s all over the place and difficult to follow. I can’t just jump into the specific topics that I’m interested in.
We can create different rooms and leave it up to individuals to make sure they join all the available rooms and just hope the community stays together and they post to the correct room. But then we have the issue of also seeing the notifications for who has joined and left each room in the every room. It’s overwhelming. At least on Discord these notifications can be secluded to an admin channel and not interrupt the flow of conversation.
On Discord you can join a server, and be sure that even if you step away for a while you’ll have access to any new channels that are created. You can view the channels that are relevant to you, and you’re not bombarded with notifications or forced to read through irrelevant information.
However, the biggest difference is simply the fact that Discord and Element work fundamentally very differently. Element is (still) centered around making single rooms where people can choose to join. Discord on the other hand operates from a “”““server””“”" perspective where everyone joins every room by default unless access is restricted. It’s the complete opposite.
It’s like people really haven’t tried Discord, Element or neither and try to make you push a cube object through a circular hole claiming, “yes it fits just do it”. As it stands, Element is not the answer to Discord specifically and claiming otherwise is only gonna end up with disappointed new users.
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Element does not provide what Discord provides and should not be advertized as a direct replacement until the community feature gets some serious work done to it.
Yeah, it’s a bit frustrating and when using Matrix you have to just accept that it is not suited for certain uses of Discord, particularly the ones that encourage tightly-knit communities with consistent and seamless moderation + common settings across them.
I manage a “server” that simply would not function without Discord’s systems for channels and moderation / organization. Believe me, I’ve tried to move it to Matrix, IRC, and other places but I’ve never found something which doesn’t require massive sacrifices to what the community is about and how it works. Especially given that these are a bunch of non-techies who for the most part do not care at all about free software and privacy, nothing gets anywhere near a practical replacement.
What’s really ironic is that Discord’s model is such a perfect fit for a decentralized system.
But there isn’t even another centralized proprietary silo alternative. That’s how bad the situation is.
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I wish it was that simple. I wouldn’t mind switching to Element and working around the differences, but I would find it difficult to get anyone else to move off Discord and stick with Element for more than a few minutes if I could get them to sign up in the first place.
Discord “servers” allow you to easily invite people to the community and create rooms for various topics as they come up while still keeping the group together.
With Element if I join a room / community (for example for a software application) I’m quickly overloaded with thousands of messages, all covering a range of topics. You may get a string of messages - some may be people asking for basic support, others may be complex coding topics which are over my head, others may be about design, translation, or just people chatting - all in the same stream. It’s all over the place and difficult to follow. I can’t just jump into the specific topics that I’m interested in.
We can create different rooms and leave it up to individuals to make sure they join all the available rooms and just hope the community stays together and they post to the correct room. But then we have the issue of also seeing the notifications for who has joined and left each room in the every room. It’s overwhelming. At least on Discord these notifications can be secluded to an admin channel and not interrupt the flow of conversation.
On Discord you can join a server, and be sure that even if you step away for a while you’ll have access to any new channels that are created. You can view the channels that are relevant to you, and you’re not bombarded with notifications or forced to read through irrelevant information.
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https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/7487 Here’s an issue that tracks the missing features.
However, the biggest difference is simply the fact that Discord and Element work fundamentally very differently. Element is (still) centered around making single rooms where people can choose to join. Discord on the other hand operates from a “”““server””“”" perspective where everyone joins every room by default unless access is restricted. It’s the complete opposite.
It’s like people really haven’t tried Discord, Element or neither and try to make you push a cube object through a circular hole claiming, “yes it fits just do it”. As it stands, Element is not the answer to Discord specifically and claiming otherwise is only gonna end up with disappointed new users.
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Thx!