Many of you have already joined out Discord server, as it has proved to be much more popular and active than the Slack server.
This post is just letting everyone know that the development slack server has been officially shut down.
We hope many more of you can join our discord server Meshtastic
With all due respect to the people who decided this, and with no intention to start a flame, I am struggling to make sense of this decision. (From what Iām hearing, since I couldnāt even log in) Discord looks like an awful service.
Other than popularity, is there any unique quality of this service that makes it preferable to other Internet chatroom systems that are more reputable, more open, more inclusive and less disrespectful of their usersā privacy?
@fixFinish
Originally we were looking for an alternative due to the increasing restrictions placed on non-paying slack accounts, many of the alternatives discussed lacked either platform availability and/or lack of uptake/popularity.
Accessibility is key to having whatever we chose thrive, and so far Discord appears to have been a good choice.
I cannot speak from your experience with regards to being unable to login (happy to help if you want). You mentioned hearing that it is an awful service? Would you mine elaborating as there may be things we can do on our end to mitigate some of these.
Thank you for the clarifications.
Much of the awfulness of Discord is captured in this analysis by RMS: Reasons not to use Discord
Really grateful for your offer, unfortunately it would be a wasted effort. Thereās a significant misalignment between the target demographic of Discord and that of Meshtastic, and I am simply not part of the overlapping set.
But hey, being banned on Discord never stopped me from contributing to the projects I like, and less chat means more time to work so itās all good 
Probably a moot point at this stage, but unlike social networks, where being discoverable by as many people as possible is important, in selecting a web chat platform for an open project I donāt think the size of its existing userbase is as much a key factor as inclusiveness, ethics or security.
What about all the open-source federated systems like IRC, Matrix, Jabber, Mattermost, Jitsi and so on? Have any of these been considered?
As you have said, Discord is not a privacy first platform, but I can assure you it is quite capable in terms of features.
While it would be nice goal to eventually setup a custom Matrix server (which Meshtastic is actually slated to gateway into eventually), that takes a fair amount of infrastructure to setup. It has to be hosted somewhere, and it needs to be maintained by someone. There are also Matrix hosting services available, but either a custom server or a managed service will cost time and money. Discord is free and functional, and we switched because we outgrew Slackās free plan. If anyone is willing to take on the effort of setting up and / or hosting a Matrix server, I think it would make sense to switch, but for now, the convenience and availability of a free service gets the job done.
The fact that many people hope to use Meshtastic on iOS and Android, and even Windows devices makes the privacy and open source argument null. Our FIRST goal is to create an amazing project. Already Discord has been used far more than Slack (which also has serious privacy/security issues). Sorry to say it but IRC, Matrix, Jabber and all of those solutions, while wonderful that they are open source and more privacy friendly, are never going to be as good as Discord, as proven by Discordās popularity. Weāre aiming for practicality, not privacy.
Thanks @thebentern, @charminULTRA for the extra information.
@charminULTRA, Iām not quite clear on a few points in your message and I just want to make sure weāre on the same page.
Iām sorry, from your post history itās unclear what group, organization or business youāre speaking on behalf of, and whether youāre speaking in personal or official capacity. Who is WE?
How is this different from saying, for example: āThe fact that many people eat satay every day makes the peanut allergy argument nullā.
More to the point, how does your comment apply to the people living in IT-hostile shitholes like China, India, Australia, Myanmar, Belarus, even Russia to a degree.
There are highly competent people out there, for whom one single security slip may mean loss of liberty or even loss of life. Are you suggesting that they should be required to downgrade their security posture to the lowest common denominator (Windows users) in order to be allowed to participate in project discussions?
This may be because I havenāt even made the open source argument yet!
After reading the answers above, I decided to not open that particular can of worms just now.
So, can you please let me know which āopen source argumentā you had in mind?
Thank you
Well, after lots of crinching because of their phone number requirement, I registered at Discord with the number of the SIM card of my tablet which is not published anywhere and a day or so later, I started getting phone calls on that card by Windows Tech support Scammers. Not a single call happened in the 6 years I have this card before the discord reg. So far about not being privacy firstā¦
There also isnāt any need to host a dedicated matrix server for project communication. Matrix.org works just fine and Matrix is federated. That means, the user can have their account at whatever Matrix server they feel is their favorite and still participate in channels in other Matrix servers. I believe, the fact that Gitter moved from a proprietary platform to the Matrix platform is a testament to the suitability of the Matrix platfom for development.
Yes, Discord has many features. Itās nice, shiny, colorful. Itās made for the average Joe who doesnāt know anything about computers. Not for geeks. And just be honest - unless you come out with an IP-/MILSPEC-rated turnkey device like the GoTenna, Meshtastic will always be for geeks only.
I didnāt read all the messages in this thread but feel like I read enough.
All I can really offer is if you have concerns about Discord or other āchat servicesā is to keep using this site.
Or, as one of my favorite characters might say:
Bonus points to anyone that knows what Bender usually says next.
Is there a full archive of past Discord conversations, and if yes, how can I search it for keywords relevant to my issue: error messages, hardware types, chip numbers etc?
Is the room/server history not complete in discord? Iāve always had good luck using the search feature on discord and finding what I need.
But I honestly donāt know if it goes back to the beginning of the server. I assumed it did, seems to go back pretty far. Does anyone else know?
Sounds great, could you post a direct link please? Both Google and Duck return zero results.
From the top of the thread:
Thanks @jdstroy, but thatās not it. Your link just takes me to the Discord paywall, which doesnāt even work from my network. What Iām asking for is a public Internet link to the chat logs, if such thing exists.
@ayrton , it looks like youāre on Tor. The error message is intentionally ambiguous to waste your time, but thatās no innocent error, nor is anyone working to fix it - itās just their Tor rejection page.
See the advice above:
Keep posting your questions here and on Github and rest assured you will be heard.
EDIT: I donāt think your request for a ādirect linkā was understood, but expect the chat logs are most likely walled.
EDIT 2: I donāt want to give wrong advice - can someone with knowledge of the matter please confirm that the Discord chat logs are walled, i.e only accessible by logging in to the service?
oh I see. It was not clear to me that @ayrton was asking for a chat log available without logging into discord.
pretty sure everything is just contained inside discord.
it would be cool if there was a bot or something that published the chatlogs elsewhere.