To address some things that came up...
Lee: "...you do realise we're using a Descent Rangers mumble channel, NOT A DESCENT CHAMPIONS LADDER MUMBLE CHANNEL."
A valid argument. This would beg the question, do we want the DCL to separate from the Rangers? Typically, the thought has been no because we don't want to break up the community. I chose to use Discord for The Observatory, because I wanted to write a bot, and Discord is a great medium for that kind of thing. Also, it's not really an active community like the Rangers or the DCL, we get together for games 24 days out of the year and that's it. I don't feel The Observatory has "split" the community, or even has the potential to do so.
Maestro: "One of the things that's really a pain with Discord is that you can't have people using voice and people using text in the same channel."
The Observatory resolves this by creating both a text AND a voice channel for games. However, few people - if any - ever use the voice channel, though. That leads me to believe they're either A) on Mumble, or B) not talking. The option is not taken away, it's just not the default option.
Maestro: "Discord works okay for Obs, but that's because nobody ever uses the voice channels (apart from The Booth)."
Well, I think it works more because all the automation is done via a Discord bot. I could theoretically do a Twitch chat bot, but that would be spammy in chat, and a poor use of Twitch chat.
Maestro: "Setting up private conversations is rough too. If I don't want my messages to persist for everyone else to see, I have to (a) pester an admin to make a locked channel and take it down when I'm done, or (b) create a new Discord group for every single conversation. Contrast with Mumble where conversation history isn't stored to begin with, and anyone can actually make a password-protected temporary lobby in five seconds if they want serious privacy."
The Crypt of the NecroDancer community has a server called the Necrobot where you can make private races and invite people in with a command. You could theoretically create a bot that allows you to !createprivatechannel #my-channel-name, then join the channel and do commands like !invite roncli Birdseye Code Lee, and when you're done !removechannel. You wouldn't even have to make it password protected, Discord permissions would just work.
Maestro: "Also yeah, I like having free RAM on my computer for, like, descent and stuff."
Conversation history is NOT stored on your computer. It's stored on the server, and paged in from the server as needed. Discord itself does not use a terribly high amount of RAM, it's currently hovering around 150 MB for me in my 42 servers.
melvin: "i vote for a move to irc"
I usually reserve this line for Morfod, but it seems appropriate here, so here goes.
Ahem.
Hey melvin? GET F***ED.
Birdseye: "Opening Discord feels more like a commitment."
I feel the exact opposite way, because I always have Discord open. Mumble is out of the way for me. I get that this is because we have different experiences with our online communities, so I don't think this is necessarily a pro or a con either way, it's just different ways we use Teh Intarwebz.
Birdseye: "Disconnects (never happens on Discord)"
Sadly, disconnects happen on Discord when their server goes down. It's not as bad as it used to be though, when I first started on Discord it was like a weekly thing, and people in Six Gaming were questioning why we were using it over our old Ventrillo server.
And to be fair, I don't think I've ever DC'd on Mumble without it being an Internet outage on my end.
Birdseye: "Nobody ever voice chats on discord."
In The Observatory, yes. On my Six Gaming server, people spin up voice channels pretty frequently to chat on. It's not on the level of the Rangers Mumble, but then again the Rangers Mumble kind of *forces* you to voice chat, so if you're on the server, you're at least listening to people talk.
Code: "I feel like choosing mumble over Discord is basically Saying Hey, i would primarily use DOS over Windows 10"
Cmon, give Mumble a *little* more credit than that. I'd say Windows 98.
Code: "Another thing about mumble, is that its not updated AT ALL meaning when it comes to voice encoders it's lacking behind by YEARS. Discord is updated literally like 3 times every two weeks, for a big company like that, that's pretty big..."
That's because Mumble is stable, Discord is new. You're also incorrect about the voice encoders... both Mumble and Discord use Opus. Both default to 64 kbps quality.
"That sounds truly awful. I don't want to have to do that."
You don't have to do that. But you *CAN*, and that option being available is a good thing.
Before the seasons, I did Observatories from Mumble, and that experience was very bad. I only had one channel to type in and get people going to their games, and I couldn't use the voice portion for doing commentary because I was forced to hear EVERYONE'S voice if I hadn't muted it.
Let's say you were keeping up with a heated debate in a text channel, but then Jediluke comes in and "I DEMAND A REMATCH NOW!" so you go play him in Wrath x5. Three minutes later, you come back and catch up on the chat instead of having to ask someone "so what happened while I was gone?".
And, if someone needs to get a hold of me on Discord, they can just @roncli me and I will get that notification. If someone needs me on Mumble and I'm not there? That sucks.
Finally, of the 42 Discord servers I'm in, I keep up with very few of them. You don't have to keep up with every text channel you're in. You can even "mute" and hide text channels you don't want to see at all.
But your arguments hit the nail on the head of the issue... moving to Discord *is* a big change, and people don't like change. While I want a move to Discord, I certainly will not be the one to try to force it.
Lee: "Voice chatting in five different groups and typing in another sounds waaaay hectic assuming I'm reading that right. Mumble is far from all singing all dancing but why complicate things."
You're not reading that right.
You can't be in more than one voice channel at a time on Discord.
Lee: "I thought Sirius said there were issues with the admin powers in discord."
I'd love to hear them. Admin powers are pretty awesome in Discord, it may just be a misunderstanding as to how they work.
melvin: "we tried to migrate away to discord, it didnt take. for me that's the number 1 reason against attempting to migrate, regardless of the merits of discord."
Exactly right. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't move the Rangers to Discord. Or something.
Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2018 3:46 pm