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Hey folks, for voice chat, we're going to be migrating from Ventrilo to Discord.

Discord's pretty much better in every way anyhow, and it's free.

Here's an invite link to the HalForums Discord server. All you gotta do is click that, and if you don't already have a discord account, sign up. You can connect to the server either in a browser, or download the application/app for windows/mac/linux/IOS/Android.

If you want systemwide push-to-talk (as in, you intend to play games using this for voice chat) you will need to use the application, not just the browser version.

Once you've signed up with the above link, you'll always be able to get to the HalForums Discord server from either the apps or simply by going to http://discordapp.com .

Yay for modernization!

--Patrick
(have had Discord acct for...a year now?)

But I don't like change

Terrik said:

But I don't like change

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You can set up your own Vent if you want.

--Patrick

Lol old man dave and i made one back in the day. I dont even know if its active atp

Terrik said:

But I don't like change

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I'm amazed the Ventrilo server still works at all. Apparently it expired in June and they stopped charging my credit card. It was supposed to stop working July 4th

Terrik said:

But I don't like change

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All I knew about discord was from r/wow. Mostly from people complaining about getting banned from their class discord. I thought it was some toxic subreddit or *chan type thing. I was wrong. Quite wrong.

And I'm in.

Ok, Vent is gone from my computer.
So is Teamspeak.
Of course, we all know the reason you really switched, @Gas:



For @Eriol: The character pictured is the goddess "Discord" from the Hercules & Xena television show/universe. The reference was to @GasBandit's (admittedly secondary) predisposition towards women in goth getup.

--Patrick

Call me the paranoid one, but how does Discord make money? Advertising? Or what? Basically, there are other solutions that people can self-host, or make yet another login to a SaaS site where our information (and even our conversations now) are... theirs? Or whom?

So yes, this is paranoia, but why is this a "go to a 3rd party" situation and not a "set up our own server" one?

Eriol said:

Call me the paranoid one, but how does Discord make money? Advertising? Or what? Basically, there are other solutions that people can self-host, or make yet another login to a SaaS site where our information (and even our conversations now) are... theirs? Or whom?

So yes, this is paranoia, but why is this a "go to a 3rd party" situation and not a "set up our own server" one?

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Here's their answer:

Wondering how we’ll make money? In the future there will be optional cosmetics like themes, sticker packs, and sound packs available for purchase. We’ll never charge for Discord’s core functionality.

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The main reason for using a third party is resources, cost is part of it, but time is an even bigger factor. It's not free to set up, run, and maintain any server, particularly not in today's hostile internet environment. My experience with game/chat servers is that if a group is constantly using them (more than 40 hours a week), and someone is pretty dedicated to keeping up with problems that crop up, when the crop up, then the majority of users have a great experience.

Conversely, those servers set up to support a community that only uses them 5-10 hours a week or less, with one person kind of in charge but not really dedicated and on-call during all usage sessions, the users quickly grow frustrated because even if there's an outage only once a month or every two months, it seems like it's happening every 3rd or 4th session, which in many users' minds equates to a 75% up time, ie, crummy service. Further, with chat/voice if you have downtime more than 10-15 minutes at the beginning of a session (when it's first discovered, since a lot of time these things are scheduled and otherwise the service is unused) it really puts a damper on the session if it even continues. That's not a small amount of time to lose in people's schedules. With a forum it's annoying to have it down, but since it's not real time it's not really a huge impediment to the group.

A self hosted server would probably be fine if someone were to step up and donate the time and resources to running it, maintaining it, and made sure it was never down or hacked.

Fair points from both @stienman and @DarkAudit on this one. I guess I'm just "worried" about what we're giving up. If we're giving up control over how the server is run, I'm OK with that (works to a benefit in fact). I'm less OK with giving up control over my personal information and/or the information I put INTO the service itself, like my voice, text, etc. There is of course some degree of that by virtue of participating in a forum at all, but it feels different to give it up to a larger entity.

As I alluded to above, this is more about feelings (ie: paranoia) than anything else. Not questioning from a technical perspective.

Eriol said:

Fair points from both @stienman and @DarkAudit on this one. I guess I'm just "worried" about what we're giving up. If we're giving up control over how the server is run, I'm OK with that (works to a benefit in fact). I'm less OK with giving up control over my personal information and/or the information I put INTO the service itself, like my voice, text, etc. There is of course some degree of that by virtue of participating in a forum at all, but it feels different to give it up to a larger entity.

As I alluded to above, this is more about feelings (ie: paranoia) than anything else. Not questioning from a technical perspective.

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You don't have to use it either, it's mostly an issue to people who regularly use voice chat, which was 4 or 5 of us. If you didn't ever use Vent, you can also continue to not use Discord.

Eriol said:

Fair points from both @stienman and @DarkAudit on this one. I guess I'm just "worried" about what we're giving up. If we're giving up control over how the server is run, I'm OK with that (works to a benefit in fact). I'm less OK with giving up control over my personal information and/or the information I put INTO the service itself, like my voice, text, etc. There is of course some degree of that by virtue of participating in a forum at all, but it feels different to give it up to a larger entity.

As I alluded to above, this is more about feelings (ie: paranoia) than anything else. Not questioning from a technical perspective.

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I agree that is worth considering, and as you allude to, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. We are most certainly "paying" for this service by providing these things. If this is too high a cost, someone will have to step up and provide the resources for something better with more privacy.

I'd guess you should start with their terms of service to find out exactly what they can collect, record, and how they might use it and distribute it. If you read it and provide a cliff notes version here it might help everyone understand what the costs really are.

Dei said:

You don't have to use it either, it's mostly an issue to people who regularly use voice chat, which was 4 or 5 of us. If you didn't ever use Vent, you can also continue to not use Discord.

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While I don't generally disagree with the sentiment, it's worth having a discussion and finding out if more people would participate with stronger guarantees, then we can decide if we can better accommodate everyone, rather than restricting it to those who have lower privacy requirements.

If we tried to do it all in house and/or just foot the bill, that's all but demanding that life kick the person responsible for that in tender areas. Sometimes repeatedly.

DarkAudit said:

If we tried to do it all in house and/or just foot the bill, that's all but demanding that life kick the person responsible for that in tender areas. Sometimes repeatedly.

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So....We're looking for someone with the technical skill and knowledge to set up and host a voice chat server...who can take a couple of groin kicks and is willing to do so for the amusement of a few...with plenty of free time...invested in the community...perhaps a bit of a masochist....Gee, I wonder where we're ever going to find someone like that.

stienman said:

While I don't generally disagree with the sentiment, it's worth having a discussion and finding out if more people would participate with stronger guarantees, then we can decide if we can better accommodate everyone, rather than restricting it to those who have lower privacy requirements.

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My point is really more one of, if you weren't using voice chat before, when we paid for a Vent server every month, why does switching to another service suddenly affect you? I don't imagine there will be a sudden surge in the amount of people actually using it (that will last more than a few days), but maybe I'm wrong.

You know, it's funny, I tried to get most of my friends to switch to Discord a couple years ago instead of continuing to pay for our aging WoW-guild-era Vent server, but somehow it never took.

stienman said:

I'd guess you should start with their terms of service to find out exactly what they can collect, record, and how they might use it and distribute it. If you read it and provide a cliff notes version here it might help everyone understand what the costs really are.

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My "cliff's notes" are from directly reading Discord's Privacy Policy: https://discordapp.com/privacy

Also, IANAL.

Information You Provide: We collect information from you when you voluntarily provide such information, such as when you register for access to the Services or use certain Services. Information we collect may include but not be limited to username, email address, and any messages, images, transient VOIP data (to enable communication delivery only) or other content you send via the chat feature.

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Translation: We collect absolutely every piece of data you send us in text, but your audio isn't processed speech-to-text or kept at all, we just use it to forward along to the other clients. (The "to enable communication delivery only" part says they don't record your audio. There is a Rebuttal to this analysis on Reddit from the company, but even if they're not doing this now their "Privacy Policy" would allow them to do it if they wanted IMO)

Data We Collect Automatically

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Translation: We know where you are, and what people are connecting to what sites/forums and how they associate with each other

Aggregated Information

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Translation: Oh ya, in aggregate, we share everything we have with anybody in our advertising networks. (Note: THIS is where they get their money right now, not from "optional add-ons" as their features page says IMO)

Info through other Services

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Translation: If you connect your other social networks to us, we scrape those and associate that with your internal profile to keep better track of what you like/dislike

Cookies: ... In addition, we use technologies such as web beacons and single-pixel gifs ...

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Translation: Like many companies, we track you EVERYWHERE you go on the web through beacons, and if you keep our cookies we can still probably track you even if you're logged out.

Advertisements

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Translation: If you sign up, you will get more spam because of what we share with our advertising partners. You can try and opt out at the links provided, but that will probably just confirm your email information, making you get even more spam as then your email address is triple-confirmed as correct.

The Company and its subsidiaries and affiliates (the “Related Companies”)

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(Keep an eye on this definition below...)

Our Disclosure of Your Information

The Company is not in the business of selling your information. We consider this information to be a vital part of our relationship with you. There are, however, certain circumstances in which we may share your information with certain third parties, as set forth below:
...
Related Companies: We may also share your information with our Related Companies for purposes consistent with this Privacy Policy.

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Translation: We're not going to sell your information! Really! Except... all these places where we'll sell your information. Our "Related Companies" means anybody we have a contract with, therefore anybody! (This is kind of like "Free Trade" agreements, where the first line is "There will be free trade between Countries A, B, C... H except for... and then there are 300 pages of exceptions.)


While this privacy policy is probably no worse than Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc, it's not better either. They ARE (or want to be) selling the information in aggregate, or else there wouldn't be any need to have the "advertising partners" and "Related Companies" language all over the place.

Is that the Cliff's Notes version you wanted @stienman?
X

Bubble181 said:

So....We're looking for someone with the technical skill and knowledge to set up and host a voice chat server...who can take a couple of groin kicks and is willing to do so for the amusement of a few...with plenty of free time...invested in the community...perhaps a bit of a masochist....Gee, I wonder where we're ever going to find someone like that.

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We already know GBs office falls apart if he's away for longer than a weekend. Sometimes over lunchtime. What happens if the owner ODs on fukitol and shuts down the entire operation? Or decides to (yeah, right) expand and ships GB off to, say, Welch?

Not just him. With any of us running it in their spare time, we're at the mercy of job, family, and general life demands that could shut the entire operation down before it gets started. Better to have a team whose entire reason for being is the voice chat system, and where one person's drama doesn't send the whole thing crashing to the ground.

DarkAudit said:

We already know GBs office falls apart if he's away for longer than a weekend. Sometimes over lunchtime. What happens if the owner ODs on fukitol and shuts down the entire operation? Or decides to (yeah, right) expand and ships GB off to, say, Welch?

Not just him. With any of us running it in their spare time, we're at the mercy of job, family, and general life demands that could shut the entire operation down before it gets started. Better to have a team whose entire reason for being is the voice chat system, and where one person's drama doesn't send the whole thing crashing to the ground.

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I was being sarcastic, to be clear.

Bubble181 said:

I was being sarcastic, to be clear.

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Doesn't mean I don't want them to try to ship GB off to Welch.

I'm with Dei on this one. It was mostly meant to move the people who were in ventrilo every night. People who weren't are free to join-or-not as they see fit according to their level of comfort. But as I see it, if you have a facebook/google account you regularly log into, you're already exposed as much (or more) as Discord would have you be. At least Discord doesn't have access to your GPS coordinates

If Discord starts pushing ads or something, then we can burn that bridge when we come to it.

DarkAudit said:

Doesn't mean I don't want them to try to ship GB off to Welch.

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I think putting him in charge of a Welsh station in Texas would also be amusing.

GasBandit said:

I'm with Dei on this one. It was mostly meant to move the people who were in ventrilo every night. People who weren't are free to join-or-not as they see fit according to their level of comfort. But as I see it, if you have a facebook/google account you regularly log into, you're already exposed as much (or more) as Discord would have you be. At least Discord doesn't have access to your GPS coordinates

If Discord starts pushing ads or something, then we can burn that bridge when we come to it.

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The text chat has wound up replacing the IRC channel on Slashnet as well.

I would like to say that I would've been in the IRC channel...if I'd bothered to set up any IRC clients SINCE NINETEEN NINETY-TWO.

--Patrick

As a side note, I get the impression that, when it comes to Discord, the concept of having a "server" is entirely virtual - scratch that, entirely PERCEPTUAL. Even on ventrilo, I'm sure our "server" wasn't its own box but rather one of umpteenbajillion virtual "servers" running on a physical machine. It seems to me that Discord takes it even a step further, where each "server" doesn't even require its own separate virtual space. Really, the concept of a discord server is just a filter that controls who gets what communications, when really everybody who uses discord anywhere are all connected to the same server cluster, and they swap out the word "channel" for "server," and then let you break up your channel into rooms for text and voice chat.

Thus, the entire thing is instantly and effortlessly scalable with no human action required on Discord's end, which I imagine saves them a lot of money. All they have to do is check up on the server cluster every now and again, and when it's getting toward the top end of its capacity, stick another one in the cluster. This topology would mean that physical boxes don't go to waste with one box getting hammered by all the busy users and another box being in charge of 30 "servers" that do nothing but idle for months. Very efficient.

When discord first came out, I, too, was leery of adopting it, but as it's been out a while now (launched in 2015) and I haven't heard any instances of walls bleeding and chains shooting out of puzzle boxes, I'm comfortable giving it a try and moving over. Everything is subject to change, though, if we have issues or find it unsatisfactory, we can explore other options, including going back to a paid ventrilo server. But so far, I'm liking discord a lot more than Ventrilo - and I really liked ventrilo.

I especially like that it comes with its own overlay and the thing just goddamn works Looking at you, teamspeak, ya shitheel.

PatrThom said:

I would like to say that I would've been in the IRC channel...if I'd bothered to set up any IRC clients SINCE NINETEEN NINETY-TWO.

--Patrick

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You know, it was never clear to me how people who ran IRC servers profited, either

GasBandit said:

As a side note, I get the impression that, when it comes to Discord, the concept of having a "server" is entirely virtual - scratch that, entirely PERCEPTUAL. Even on ventrilo, I'm sure our "server" wasn't its own box but rather one of umpteenbajillion virtual "servers" running on a physical machine. It seems to me that Discord takes it even a step further, where each "server" doesn't even require its own separate virtual space. Really, the concept of a discord server is just a filter that controls who gets what communications, when really everybody who uses discord anywhere are all connected to the same server cluster, and they swap out the word "channel" for "server," and then let you break up your channel into rooms for text and voice chat.

Thus, the entire thing is instantly and effortlessly scalable with no human action required on Discord's end, which I imagine saves them a lot of money. All they have to do is check up on the server cluster every now and again, and when it's getting toward the top end of its capacity, stick another one in the cluster. This topology would mean that physical boxes don't go to waste with one box getting hammered by all the busy users and another box being in charge of 30 "servers" that do nothing but idle for months. Very efficient.

When discord first came out, I, too, was leery of adopting it, but as it's been out a while now (launched in 2015) and I haven't heard any instances of walls bleeding and chains shooting out of puzzle boxes, I'm comfortable giving it a try and moving over. Everything is subject to change, though, if we have issues or find it unsatisfactory, we can explore other options, including going back to a paid ventrilo server. But so far, I'm liking discord a lot more than Ventrilo - and I really liked ventrilo.

I especially like that it comes with its own overlay and the thing just goddamn works Looking at you, teamspeak, ya shitheel.

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I love how "easy" you think it is to scale multi-server applications. Oh how I wish that were true!

Hint: it isn't. This has been and still is part of my business I do for "real money." Even if your users have a seamless front-end, it's NEVER as simple as you say. It's a great idea though. Wish it worked like that in practice.



And as I said above, I'm not meaning to crap on Discord. It's just that I want to KNOW what's being sold, and/or what I'm giving away to get something "free" rather than just not knowing. Then it's a choice to participate IMO. For example, I'm "in" to the Google ecosystem. I know how much they track, but that's my cost for getting the value I see from it. Is it worth it for Discord? Probably is, I just wanted to do the research ahead of time is all and not assume it's "free" like Mumble is.

Eriol said:

I love how "easy" you think it is to scale multi-server applications. Oh how I wish that were true!

Hint: it isn't. This has been and still is part of my business I do for "real money." Even if your users have a seamless front-end, it's NEVER as simple as you say. It's a great idea though. Wish it worked like that in practice.

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I didn't say "easy," I said "efficient" though I did also say effortless and that's probably a bad word for what I meant, as I didn't mean it to say "easy" but instead meant it to say "does not require human administrator intervention."

But yeah, the backend software is definitely going to be way more complicated than I can grasp, but the point I was making was that it was probably more efficient for hardware outlay, thus keeping the bottom line lower, and letting them run at overall lower costs because they're not having to overprovision machines, and underutilized discord "servers" don't stake claim to resources that don't get used.

Thus, with lower overhead, they need less capital, and have more freedom in determining income streams.

GasBandit said:

I didn't say "easy," I said "efficient" though I did also say effortless and that's probably a bad word for what I meant, as I didn't mean it to say "easy" but instead meant it to say "does not require human administrator intervention."

But yeah, the backend software is definitely going to be way more complicated than I can grasp, but the point I was making was that it was probably more efficient for hardware outlay, thus keeping the bottom line lower, and letting them run at overall lower costs because they're not having to overprovision machines, and underutilized discord "servers" don't stake claim to resources that don't get used.

Thus, with lower overhead, they need less capital, and have more freedom in determining income streams.

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Long discussion not needed for here, but even what you say here isn't accurate for the VAST majority of even how virtualized environments work. But it's quaint how easy you think it is. It's a testament to how easy engineers like me and others who work in these realms make it look to the end users.

And that's probably a good thing.

Eriol said:

Long discussion not needed for here, but even what you say here isn't accurate for the VAST majority of even how virtualized environments work. But it's quaint how easy you think it is. It's a testament to how easy engineers like me and others who work in these realms make it look to the end users.

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Well, I'm happy to have provided you the opportunity to be smugly condescending then.

GasBandit said:

Well, I'm happy to have provided you the opportunity to be smugly condescending then.

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Ya pretty much. I'm getting into DM mode for @Dirona, @Squidleybits, and @HCGLNS tonight!


That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

Yes... DM mode... that's it....

GasBandit said:

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For those that didn't know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web

On 6 August 1991, Berners-Lee published a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the newsgroup alt.hypertext.[15] This date is sometimes confused with the public availability of the first web servers, which had occurred months earlier.

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GasBandit said:

Well, I'm happy to have provided you the opportunity to be smugly condescending then.

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It's only fair you spend some time on the other end of the discussion now and again.

--Patrick

as senior staff on one of the largest discord servers, its been hilarious watching their software crash and burn trying to keep up with our user numbers.

I finally got around to uploading the forum's ratings as emoji to the discord server, so now they can be used in discord chat as well as reactions to others' chat entries.

Hey, so I've been thinking about coordinating Pokemon Go raids through the Halforums Discord. Already done a couple in the general channel, and would continue to do so provided there's no opposition to it. Is that all right?

drifter said:

Hey, so I've been thinking about coordinating Pokemon Go raids through the Halforums Discord. Already done a couple in the general channel, and would continue to do so provided there's no opposition to it. Is that all right?

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I made a separate chat channel for it.