Discord

[carsoncheng]

I was reading the latest wiki news and a link to discord was used.

I object to this practice. Unlike the Life forums, discord is not generally usable by normal users.

I don't mind the power users using discord to communicate results among themselves, but it should not be seen where normal users are required to use it.

If a result is important enough, it should be written as an article as part of the wiki.

I for one refuse to use a site such as discord, and I feel excluded.

David I. Bell

apgoucher has just mentioned on discord that he plans to write a full article once a general-case proof (on the phoenices) has been completed, so perhaps all we can do at this point is wait.

IMPORTANT EDIT: EvinZL has just posted a short summary of the proof on the oscillator discussion thread (https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=175654#p175654)

Meanwhile if you would really like to access the current progress without accessing the discord, you can download very's json file on the main cgol channel on the discord and run confocal's script to convert this into text. There is information about the proof in the json file (though without a good summary of the progress it might not be as easy to navigate)

[dvgrn]

Maybe my country is blocked. It's hard to imagine getting banned from a server I was never able to join.

It turns out that you actually did join the ConwayLife Lounge very briefly, but somebody then made a snap judgment resulting in a ban.

I'm not sure if the Discord mods were maybe dealing with an influx of spammer accounts at the time -- your username might just have happened to look a little too much like an attempt to advertise a game, or something like that.

Try the link again.

[MXMLLN]

Thanks!
I'm in.

Here's how I was banned:
kittytac said "Literally a shill" and banned me as soon as I entered the server. Before I took any action...

[confocaloid]

Meanwhile if you would really like to access the current progress without accessing the discord, you can download very's json file on the main cgol channel on the discord and run confocal's script to convert this into text.

Some way to access the current progress without having to register/login would help. Hopefully people crosspost the interesting/important stuff.
I don't know how likely are updates to the json dump; that could help too. The conversion script could be improved as well.

I'm here crossposting/linking older relevant posts to this thread

[...]
I'm really worried that some of the new oscillators posted on Discord aren't making their way here. I can't go back and check right now but perhaps a daily "roll call" where someone goes through the messages from the past day and posts whatever hasn't gotten here yet would be useful.

For the need of a posting bot, see viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1437&start=3375#p153291
[...]

[AlbertArmStain]

Something more annoying is that some people will only post in the Discord and some things never actually get cross posted. Me and other people have to cross post these things into the forums, taking up time in our day. Some people might not see these uncross posted discoveries until they make an account for Discord, which may not be worth it in terms of privacy policy.

[MXMLLN]

Outsider, objective opinion and suggestion:
Summary - People that post only in the Discord and do not cross-post on the wiki are effectively "choosing" not to "publish" their work. They are implicitly acknowledging that Discord posts, just like on social media or in messaging apps, will be difficult to find and are more or less lost forever.
An alternative solution is to add a bot that drastically reduces the effort it takes for people to cross-post and will integrate into their workflow, eg, copying over a flagged post's content and adding it to their Todo list.

I'm new to the community, both here and in the Discord, so have reservations about suggesting a solution. Sadly, I couldn't resist the compulsion to add two of my cents.

Suggestion 001: Do Nothing
The problem of getting people to post their Discord work in the wiki is analogous to publishing work more generally. People will often write content and post on social media or their blog as a quick way to show their work. However, more professionally and practically inclined people, like myself, have little interest in creating disposable content and will only release work as publications on more widely distributed platforms, like academic publications, news channels, online magazines, &c. Then there are the diligent people that cross-post, doing a huge service to humanity.

From my perspective, this is just the way things are. By identifying these underlying behaviors, we can all set our expectations accordingly and come to terms with the divided state of the content. If we accept these terms, it brings us back to the initial and final question: Should Discord posts be included in Wiki News.

[confocaloid]

Links from the wiki should help readers to get more information and to verify the claims made on the wiki. If a link leads to an opaque message that is not written to be read by people who do not yet know the stuff, requires registration just to view, and might disappear at any time, then the link might as well not be there.

A bot ( viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5857 ) and/or a dump updated from time to time could partially help, if that is implementable. But an explanation/exposition suitable for readers will still have to be written by someone (a bot cannot automagically fix the problem with experts frequently talking to themselves).

[Sokwe]

Something more annoying is that some people will only post in the Discord and some things never actually get cross posted. Me and other people have to cross post these things into the forums, taking up time in our day. Some people might not see these uncross posted discoveries until they make an account for Discord, which may not be worth it in terms of privacy policy.

Absolutely! There is a reasonable danger of interesting discoveries being lost forever because they were posted in a never ending feed of chit-chat. I have asked repeatedly on Discord why people don't cross-post, but I have never received a satisfactory response.

If a link leads to an opaque message that is not written to be read by people who do not yet know the stuff

I'm not sure what you mean by "not yet know the stuff", but if you're talking about not having a certain technical expertise in the subject being discussed, then I disagree. Not everything can be reasonably written in such a way that no background knowledge is needed.

requires registration just to view, and might disappear at any time

This is definitely a big issue, which is why people need to cross-post to the forums.

then the link might as well not be there.

I disagree. A link to the information, even if it is somewhat more difficult to access, is better than no link. It also serves as a bit of note keeping for a platform (Discord) that is very difficult to search. Without the link, the information will get lost. With the link, that's only a possibility.

[confocaloid]

If a link leads to an opaque message that is not written to be read by people who do not yet know the stuff

I'm not sure what you mean by "not yet know the stuff", but if you're talking about not having a certain technical expertise in the subject being discussed, then I disagree. Not everything can be reasonably written in such a way that no background knowledge is needed.

Sorry for confusion. I agree that different topics need different background knowledge, which cannot be always put in a single self-contained article.

What I meant is that the information in the linked posts is in many cases insufficiently well-organized / well-presented, to be of much help to a reader who tries to understand the ideas that are discussed/involved in the linking article. "Work-in-progress" communication between enthusiasts trying to solve some puzzle is different from the communication between an enthusiast and a newcomer/a LifeWiki reader.

[confocaloid]

I suggest to make the forum thread Thread for Discord crossposts pinned in the General discussion subforum.

[iddi01]

8 important reasons why Discord is bad:
1. Due to the easiness to post there (just hit enter), people don't think twice before posting,
causing "bad" stuff to frequently appear there, pushing the high-quality stuff away (if there even has any.)
2. Discussion there are so fast that they are usually over before anyone else could join in, and so fast that you have no time to think,
so you could easily say something that you regret.
3. Discord is really bad at preserving stuff, so you could write out a masterpiece and watch it getting pushed into the void by some chitchat...
4. Unlike forums, Discord servers are not customizable, especially without "boosts". They look exactly the same.
5. At any given time, only about 0.5% of people in the "online" list is actually online.
The rest is active on some other server you might not even have heard about.
6. Does any forum require you to buy a $10 "Nitro" to not limit your choices?
7. In history, Discord made many changes that causes thousands and thousands of people to complain, especially recently, and those changes are never reversed back.
8. Discord is forums' worst enemy. Countless forums are abandoned because of it. A few Discord users even said, "i wonder why forums still exist"

[confocaloid]

I noticed that the json file (that was linked earlier in this thread) is no longer available. The link gives 404.

unrelated, but here's an archive of all messages in the cgol channel, in json format - i've tried formatting it in some better format, to no avail

this doesn't include the attachments either, but hopefully this will at least partially alleviate the "being held hostage by discord" thing

https://github.com/SuffixAutomata/uploa ... n/cgol.zip

[...]
Meanwhile if you would really like to access the current progress without accessing the discord, you can download very's json file on the main cgol channel on the discord and run confocal's script to convert this into text. There is information about the proof in the json file (though without a good summary of the progress it might not be as easy to navigate)

[AlbertArmStain]

Every time I try to click on the invite link, it tells me it’s invalid or expired. Is there a reason for this?

[MXMLLN]

Every time I try to click on the invite link, it tells me it’s invalid or expired. Is there a reason for this?

No, it's a user experience bug on Discord's side.
Invitation links have to be "created" and the default configuration is set for 1 week. It's easy to miss this when creating a link.