where is the ss2 discord for this site?

[6800f1a28dcb4soniiiety]

I remember being on it some time ago, I can't find it in slider bar nor plus sign.

also I want to play multiplayer with someone

[6800f1a28de36icemann]

Why use discord when you can have a forum? I find them far superior.

[6800f1a28df85Kolya]

Yeah, we used to have a discord channel linked here. But no one from this forum used it. So I removed the link.

[6800f1a28e100voodoo47]

we are a bunch of electronic old men. be glad the forum has a graphical interface.

[6800f1a28e27bicemann]

I use discord daily for work, but I find it very limited in more long term uses. Great as a quick chat method and memes, but for longer threads etc, forums are far superior imo.

Like say you want to find a resource, or discussion on older topics, then a forum is best. I grew up with chat rooms like MIRC, MSN chat etc long ago, and their fine and all, but it's just not the same. Two very different mediums originating from the same starting point. Like Western and Japanese RPGs in a sense.

[6800f1a28e58cJDoran]

Why use discord when you can have a forum? I find them far superior.

Yes. I don't see the advantage of discord over a well ordered forum.

[6800f1a28e6e7ZylonBane]

This is kind of like going on Discord and asking "Where's the ICQ for this site?"

[6800f1a28e9bbRoSoDude]

Where's the SS.org TikTok account? Do you guys have a Snapchat I can follow? OMG are you not even on Instagram?!?

In all seriousness, Discord is a great service, but it requires a certain userbase, and if the regulars here weren't eager to hop on it then pulling it was the right move.

[6800f1a28eb16Kolya]

Video and text chat for anyone interested

Join the meeting: https://meet.jit.si/systemshock

[6800f1a28eca6Nameless Voice]

You might be thinking of my "TTLG Kru" server, which occasionally has some System Shock-related discussion, but none of the main System Shock veterans are there.  They prefer forums.

[6800f1a28edbaicemann]

And some of us don't even prefer TTLG. So you have that as well.

[6800f1a28f23csarge945]

I think the big issue with a discord for a forum is, it's just not as good. Sure, you have chat channels, but you don't have proper threads, so things are harder to find and organize. The only real advantage of Discord is the real time chat, and that would only really be useful for organizing games. Frankly, System Shock 2s multiplayer kind of sucks, so I don't expect enough people to really be interested to actually make running a discord community worth it.

I'm also a crazy old man who thinks Discord and Silicone Valley have too much power anyway. Discord is basically ubiquitous at this point, and that discourages me from wanting to use it.

we are a bunch of electronic old men. be glad the forum has a graphical interface.

Not gonna lie, a lynx compatible version of the forum would be amazing compared to loading literally anything on my barely-usable browser on my slow old laptop. Too bad Lynx is basically useless nowadays because of how bloated and unparseable the modern web is

[6800f1a28f4b7icemann]

Was greeted by this message on the Rock, Paper, Shotgun forums today:

Hi gang,

I am sorry to say that we are going to turn off access to the forum on 1st October 2021.

Traditional forums are no longer a popular place for people to come together to talk, and have been replaced in popularity with more modern community platforms like Discord, Twitter, and Twitch.

Due to this, the forum community has declined to the point where there are only a handful of people left actively using the forum. This makes it difficult for us to spend resources keeping the forum running.

When the forum is closed on 1st October a few things will happen:

The forum domain will redirect to the main site

You won’t be able to view any of your old threads or posts

If you’re looking for a new place to hang out, we recommend that you join the official RPS Discord server:

discord.com

Join the Rock Paper Shotgun Discord Server!
Rock Paper Shotgun is the premiere PC gaming website since 1873. Welcome to the Discord server! | 3,957 members

The decision to close the forums is not based on any external pressure from our parent company or anyone outside of the RPS leadership, so any anger or disappointment should be directed at me.

I’ll be around on this thread for the next month to chat and answer any questions.

Cheers, Craig


Personally I see forums as a completely different kettle of fish to Discord, Twitch etc, which are far more like chat rooms, and places for fast, quick communication and not longer topics. But each to their own.

Related thread there, before their forums are deleted:
https://forum.rockpapershotgun.com/t/closing-the-rps-forum/35615

[6800f1a28f6dfBriareos H]

Yeah forums are vastly different to chat rooms, even modern Slack-likes. Forums usually come with an assumption of data persistence, searchability, categorization and being topic-driven. I'm seeing no such guarantees from Discord.

What's more, Discord is not even a good way to do chat rooms, it's centralized, bloated and has poor management of multiple servers, on top of being a privacy nightmare where you don't know what actors can read what (I always assume anyone can read anything).

I've been dreaming about a self-hosted and easy-to-install matrix + jitsi with federated gaming extensions but I don't think it's happening. Anyway, re. RPS, it's pretty sad to see a major gaming website relinquish so much ownership over their community.

[6800f1a28f822ZylonBane]

I didn't even know RPS had forums.

(clicks link)

Ugh, it's Discourse.

[6800f1a290775icemann]

Pretty decent one overall. Unlike some other places there is actual debate. Not all of it, without someone saying something stupid of course.

And that wasn't aimed about here. I was told there once, that the reason I love the Star Wars originals and not the new trilogy is because I'm white and a gen X-er. Whilst both of those are true, I'd never use that as the basis for where one would stand on a movie series. But I digress.

I hope RPS getting rid of their forums due to Discord is not the start of a trend. I quite enjoy forums overall. Discord can be enjoyable at times for a quick chat, as well as group chats with friends. A bunch of my teacher friends setup a small unofficial teacher chat group, which has been my salvation during all the COVID lockdowns of the past year.

[6800f1a291714voodoo47]

*checks the things-I-give-a-damn-about list, rps forum is nowhere to be found, shrugs shoulders and carries on with the day*

[6800f1a2918c6Kolya]

I agree with everything Briareos said. But they're a company and even if forums are more useful and even if individual RPS employees might prefer to keep their forum, as a company they need to go with the cheapest solution and the maximum reach of users.
As a forum owner I'm inclined to say: Pour your heart into a private forum instead, because they don't have that capitalist imperative. But of course that's not true either, private forums shut down every day. I really wish distributed forums were a thing.

[6800f1a291fdfsarge945]

Yeah forums are vastly different to chat rooms, even modern Slack-likes. Forums usually come with an assumption of data persistence, searchability, categorization and being topic-driven. I'm seeing no such guarantees from Discord.

What's more, Discord is not even a good way to do chat rooms, it's centralized, bloated and has poor management of multiple servers, on top of being a privacy nightmare where you don't know what actors can read what (I always assume anyone can read anything).

I've been dreaming about a self-hosted and easy-to-install matrix + jitsi with federated gaming extensions but I don't think it's happening. Anyway, re. RPS, it's pretty sad to see a major gaming website relinquish so much ownership over their community.

Yeah I originally looked at Friendica, Pleroma and a few other federated systems but most of them seem to be trying to emulate social media like Facebook etc, rather than chats.

Still, federation is the future and ActivityPub is the next big business buzz word. You heard it here first. People, even regular millennials and boomers, are completely done with how broken the modern web is and I feel we're going to see a major explosion in decentralisation. Especially when it comes up politics. But people are still going to want the "one account" and sharing thing between instances. It's the perfect system for that.

Anyway, I generally prefer forums. I tend to find that, as the flow of information and the speed of communication increases, the quality decreases to compensate. Not always, of course, but I just find it much more efficient to go to a forum and see a handful of new, well thought out topics I can catch up on over a few minutes rather than having to trawl through pages and pages of chitchat and memes just to find some useful information. Finding anything on discord is painful to the point where searching discord for information is probably an esoteric torture method used at Guantanamo. I really hope discord (and other similar services) don't become the standard for online communications, because that form of chat is usually awful for anything meaningful.

Speaking of bloated, when I open the discord webpage on my browser, my poor old laptops ram usage immediately goes to about 90%. Electron should be considered a controlled substance because it's destroying our community.

I didn't even know RPS had forums.

(clicks link)

Ugh, it's Discourse.

Could be worse. At least it's not InvisionFree of whatever it was called. The one all the small gaming sites used back in the day. It was slow and horrible.

[6800f1a292120icemann]

I think even this thread alone, is an example of longer more meaningful conversation about a topic over a given time period. On Discord that would be next to impossible, since nothing is filtered into different topic threads. Most you can have is specific rooms for various categories. And good luck finding any of the posts after a given time period has passed.

[6800f1a2922d6Kolya]

I looked around for decentralized/federated forum software again. And the first thing I learned is what I actually want is a distributed system.

I came across Aether which fits this bill and works on a basic level (text only so far). But there doesn't seem to be much going there apart from some loney anti-vaxers.

Regardless I already created a systemshock community on aether, just for fun. Come by and say hello if you try out the app.

Code: [Select]

aether://board/5c9a333da02ffee2c0c336059f8aef5852a67e4d8aaab16d143c8ebeb67ec2e7[centralizedDecentralizedDistributed.jpg expired]

[6800f1a292699sarge945]

Yeah the federated web is going to start with those who have been banned from more traditional social media - antivaxxers, neo-Nazis, people who have red as their favorite color (that's a joke, relax), etc. Strangely not the Taliban though (they are allowed on Twitter but a democratically elected president is not).

But things are going to get worse and worse. As they do, more regular people will start joining these networks.

While I do find it interesting that you've made an aether community, I see it as less important for this site. This is already largely self hosted, and the only way things could really go bad is if we saw extreme mod abuse or somehow the whole site was deleted (either by you or by whatever hosting provider you use). All of these outcomes aren't super likely . If this community was instead, say, a Facebook group, it would definitely make sense to have an alternate host for it, just in case, to avoid Facebooks power creep.

Anyway, I will likely join this when I can. I doubt there will be much activity, so it's mainly as a cool way to explore the fediverse a bit more.

I think even this thread alone, is an example of longer more meaningful conversation about a topic over a given time period. On Discord that would be next to impossible, since nothing is filtered into different topic threads. Most you can have is specific rooms for various categories. And good luck finding any of the posts after a given time period has passed.

To be fair to Discord (not that they deserve it), they do have threads now. But because the focus is still on chatting and less on discussion, threads really serve as an easier way to see replies, not really a way to have long drawn out conversations.

[6800f1a2927f6Kolya]

Aether certainly isn't an alternative to this place, starting with the fact that everything there vanishes after 6 months. Which I like for a chatty forum, but it's not a platform you could build an archive on. The idea of a distributed forum is interesting to me apart from ss.org.