Or maybe just stop?!? [LWN.net]

Or maybe just stop?!?

Posted Feb 21, 2026 17:07 UTC (Sat) by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
In reply to: Or maybe just stop?!? by Cyberax
Parent article: Open-source Discord alternatives

> They're not indexed and any knowledge you put there _will_ get lost.

It is very annoying when people reference Discord/etc. discussion in some forge issue without summarizing it; you have a point there. But as Josh just wrote, that "loss" is a feature, not a bug. Often enough you do want "instant" messaging to be ephemeral - by design. Different types of tools for different use cases. Would you want all your _oral_ conversations to be systematically recorded and archived? Some yes, most not.

I see unfortunately not much besides education to stop people from confusing ephemeral discussions with permanent ones. C'est la vie. Maybe some sort of recurring warning/reminder when using an ephemeral tool that it is ephemeral? In other words: education...

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Or maybe just stop?!?

Posted Feb 21, 2026 17:12 UTC (Sat) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link] (3 responses)

> But as Josh just wrote, that "loss" is a feature, not a bug. Often enough you do want "instant" messaging to be ephemeral - by design. Different types of tools for different use cases.

Except that the "use case" is often not known in advance. You can't know whether the conversation you are going to have will constitute an exchange of knowledge worth preserving for future reference.

> Would you want all your _oral_ conversations to be systematically recorded and archived? Some yes, most not.

Perhaps don't use public project spaces for those conversations that you wouldn't want to be systematically recorded and archived?

Or maybe just stop?!?

Posted Feb 21, 2026 17:31 UTC (Sat) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (2 responses)

> Except that the "use case" is often not known in advance. You can't know whether the conversation you are going to have will constitute an exchange of knowledge worth preserving for future reference.

Yes: communication is not an exact science. Never has been. Must still keep trying!

> Perhaps don't use public project spaces for those conversations that you wouldn't want to be systematically recorded and archived?

This is not really an issue. When in a public space, most people nowadays are aware there is a good chance they can be recorded and archived for some unknown amount of time, possibly infinite.

The real issue raised by Cyberax was the other way round: users wrongly expecting public discussions to be recorded and available. This is the only issue I was referring to.

> > Would you want all your _oral_ conversations to be systematically recorded and archived? Some yes, most not.

What I meant here: ephemeral discussions are a common and valid use case, so it's not a surprise that tools for ephemeral discussions exist. It's not just about privacy, it's about being ephemeral by design.

Or maybe just stop?!?

Posted Feb 21, 2026 17:37 UTC (Sat) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link] (1 responses)

> Yes: communication is not an exact science. Never has been. Must still keep trying!

This is inconsequential. I demonstrated a specific reason why "use right tools for right use-cases" is not a solution to the problem Cyberax raised.

> The real issue raised by Cyberax was the other way round: users wrongly expecting public discussions to be recorded and available. This is the only issue I was referring to.

Well, what *I* meant was that it is not a wrong expectation. It is a correct expectation.

Or maybe just stop?!?

Posted Feb 21, 2026 17:53 UTC (Sat) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> I demonstrated a specific reason why "use right tools for right use-cases" is not a solution to the problem Cyberax raised.

There is no other solution and it solves the issue the majority of the time. It will never be 100% of the time because communication is not an exact science.

> > users wrongly expecting public discussions to be recorded and available.

> Well, what *I* meant ...

I assumed you were answering the bit you quoted.

> ... was that it is not a wrong expectation. It is a correct expectation.

Back to reality, the need for ephemeral discussions will always exist and "incorrect" tools for them will too. I'm sorry but the world will never get rid of those "incorrect", ephemeral tools just because you don't like them. At best you can dictate and inconvenience the projects you have a strong influence on. Merely inconvenience because people will find and use other ephemeral channels.

Here's a typical example:
- I couldn't figure how to do X, does anyone know?
- Did you check page Y?
- Ha! No I missed Y, thanks. How come it's not linked from Z that I did fiund?
- Good idea: Z should link to Y. Can you send a pull request?
- Will do! Thanks again.

Projects generally do not want to record and archive these, hence direct them to ephemeral tools. Yes, there will always be collateral damage where some things that should be archived, won't. I'm afraid we can only try to mitigate that collateral damage.

Or maybe just stop?!?

Posted Feb 21, 2026 19:53 UTC (Sat) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

> But as Josh just wrote, that "loss" is a feature, not a bug.

I did not say that. I was talking about the difference between real-time and forum-style communication; I didn't say there's no value in indexing both. As mentioned, Zulip supports indexing the real-time communications that occur on it, if you have them in a "web public" stream; currently that's indirect through zulip-archive, but eventually it can happen directly.

Whether a channel is private or public is something to be determined on a channel-by-channel basis.

Or maybe just stop?!?

Posted Feb 21, 2026 20:02 UTC (Sat) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link]

> Often enough you do want "instant" messaging to be ephemeral - by design. Different types of tools for different use cases. Would you want all your _oral_ conversations to be systematically recorded and archived? Some yes, most not.

In some ways, Discord is the worst of both worlds: all your messages _are_ recorded and archived forever(ish), and anyone who wants to hurt you can join a Discord server and trivially find every message you ever sent there (just put "from:username" in the search box), and find six lines to hang you or uncover personal information you wanted to keep to a limited audience. But also the messages are not indexed in a way that is helpful for people trying to benefit from the knowledge represented in the archive.

Sometimes people manually summarise and organise knowledge in read-only channels full of FAQs and useful links - but that's still only accessible via the Discord client, and will be lost if the Discord server owner deletes the channel or the server, so there's no proper long-term archive.

(Some researchers recently downloaded two billion messages sent across a decade on public Discord servers and published them online with ineffective anonymisation: https://discord-unveiled.niko.lgbt/ . Evidently Discord does not have good protection against scraping, so a long-term archive is possible but only for people nefarious enough to violate the Terms of Service.)

Or maybe just stop?!?

Posted Feb 23, 2026 11:26 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

> Would you want all your _oral_ conversations to be systematically recorded and archived? Some yes, most not.

This would depend entirely on type of archive. Would I want to have them all recorded and made accessible to me? Absolutely. Would I want to have my call to bank support be published on the open web? Probably not.

I don't see how archival makes things worse if it doesn't violate privacy settings.

Yes, sometimes keeping things private is safer by keeping talks “off record”, but if I had a guarantee that what's private would stay private… my memory is not perfect, damn it! Gimme these archives!

Or maybe just stop?!?

Posted Feb 23, 2026 19:44 UTC (Mon) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

This would depend entirely on type of archive. Would I want to have them all recorded and made accessible to me? Absolutely. Would I want to have my call to bank support be published on the open web? Probably not.

There are definitely legal implications to inherently ephemeral means of communication. If you're ever involved in a lawsuit (in the USA, at least), the other party can demand you turn over all communications that might possibly be related to the suit. Your ephemeral media can't be turned over, but there's a good chance some of your ephemeral conversations will be referenced in a permanent medium. Depending on how that happens, it could create the impression that you're deliberately moving sensitive conversations to ephemeral media to avoid creating incriminating records. If the judge thinks you're deliberately hiding something that way, they can apply a variety of penalties, like telling the jury they can assume whatever was said in the ephemeral medium was bad for your case.