New Discord To Discuss Nix/NixOS and the Wider Ecosystem

Announcements
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New Discord To Discuss Nix/NixOS and the Wider Ecosystem

Hey everyone! We’re a passionate group of Nix users, and today we are launching a new, unofficial, Discord server to discuss Nix! Our server focuses on Nix, NixOS, and surrounding topics.

We have paid extra special attention to the new-user experience, keeping explosive channel lists under wraps, and using new discord features wherever possible.

Why a new server?

Our mission is to create a space that everyone feels welcome to participate in, and share their ideas. We want our space to be inclusive, respectful, and productive.

There are other Nix spaces for discord, but we believe there is room for a new space that prioritizes:

  1. Inclusivity
  2. Active Moderation
  3. A fresh perspective on community management

Join Us!

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Discord. Just say no.

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I’m happy that Nix might be exposed to a wider audience, but using proprietary solutions for promoting open source software/managing a FOSS-centric community seems very much backwards.

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I’d rather recommend people to join the official Matrix. Many people are already there and it is easy to get into contact with many people. Sure matrix as a software is not perfect and lacks features compared to Discord but it is free and you can participate with ease with the matrix nixos module with your own server.

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@marshmallow Don’t get discouraged by people who won’t be part of your local NixOS group anyway. I’m also here for the open sauce, I also won’t use Discord, and yet: Congratulations to your kick-off and good luck with your community!

Happy to see people enthusiastic about trying new things. Those extra spaces for exchange are really important. Tell us how it goes, and what you learn on the way. Surely we can learn something from it, too.

Just please make sure your server can’t be misunderstood as official. Put something specific, unique, distinguishing in the name; maybe there’s something that you want it to be like or about in particular. Same for using the Nix logo: Make a distinct variant, changing the shape or color, and you’re good.

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I think it’s good to have a choice of platforms, and my experience with Matrix has been pretty awful to be honest

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How does this differ from the existing Discord server with 11k members?

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@Salsa9 “better” moderators I suppose.

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see the bottom of the post:

Though this may not be clear enough for people who weren’t participants in the 11k member discord, it was pretty unwelcoming for new users who didn’t want to be subject to mocking, slurs, porn/gore/crypto bots, etc. - all problems pretty endemic to discord, so I’ve no idea how this server will address them.

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As someone who actively fights with Matrix (although I appreciate the FOSS angle); it’s a struggle to see the answer here is another Discord server.

Could one make a channel in the existent server and employ whatever moderation style you’d like there no?

At the end of the day; I don’t think fracturing is the best approach but also people are free to do what they want.

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That would require the agreement of the existing server admins, would be limited to one channel, and you’d still have to deal with the problems of that server.
fwiw I personally dislike discord and matrix, so I hang around here, but I recognize that some folks want real-time assistance and matrix is a massive entry barrier.

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Good luck with your initiative, but sadly I won’t be using Discord, there’s already an official an very active Matrix community that fits my needs.

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Discord is a very flawed app, technically. I’d take most Matrix clients over it any day of the week.

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Element lacks the very basic feature of having a list of messages that have mentioned you…

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In my experience, people in the existing Discord server were very welcoming for me when I was a new user. No one mocked me or made fun of my questions. My experience with it overall is pretty positive.

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And in some cases being able to receive a message after having received a notification for it…

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That’s lovely. I wish that was true across the board.

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I’m excited to see Nix grow and meet people where they are. We should be encouraging participation in the community in whatever way makes sense for users, and I personally think that one-size-fits-all is inappropriate for a diverse and large community.

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Discord is a very flawed app, technically. I’d take most Matrix clients over it any day of the week.

Flawed is my experience of every single Matrix app.

I don’t like the economic model of Discord, and I don’t like it being silo’ed off from the internet.

But I don’t see Matrix, in practice, being an improvement. Maybe when the client landscape improves.

In my experience, people in the existing Discord server were very welcoming for me when I was a new user. No one mocked me or made fun of my questions. My experience with it overall is pretty positive.

I don’t get mocked easily, so I don’t know.

I can say that the old Discord is highly responsive and very helpful. I’m sure the new one is, too. :person_shrugging:

I prefer to post questions & answers to Nix problems here on Discourse for better searchability.

It just happens that you might get a quicker answer in a live chat system, at the cost of others being able to benefit from any answers given. For example, this conversation would not be available if it were on Discord. (logs.nixos.dev seems to log Matrix channels, but not in a particularly searchable format).

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