New to the scene, why not Discord?

[Ashadori]

Title says it all, new to this group and was wondering why there isn't a Discord yet? It would help keep ALL texture packs and dumps centralized into one place. No need for a million forum posts to sift through. Anyone know why it hasn't been done yet?

 

[kupo-on-gbatem]

Can't speak for others, but I prefer a forum like this. Here I can post my progress reports with screenshots and notes. Everything looks more organized than on discord, where information tends to get lost. Also a forum is open to everyone and you don't necessarily need an account to see content (although nice comments are always welcome). The chat function is actually the only advantage of discord that I can think of, but once again you tend to lose the overview by this.

 

[Ashadori]

Can't speak for others, but I prefer a forum like this. Here I can post my progress reports with screenshots and notes. Everything looks more organized than on discord, where information tends to get lost. Also a forum is open to everyone and you don't necessarily need an account to see content (although nice comments are always welcome). The chat function is actually the only advantage of discord that I can think of, but once again you tend to lose the overview by this.

Being a long term user of Discord and running many of my own servers, It can be very organized (depending on who's running it that is). Although I have seen some very disorganized servers.

 

[linuxares]

Just adding my two cent. Discord is a gatekeep. You lock everything in behind bars that isn't public and a lot of information goes wasted. You're in the hand of a company that any day can nuke all the content without anyway to archive it. A forum is often more open or even open to the public with more ways to archive.

Discord is honestly a plague towards forums and web sites the world over.

 

[Ashadori]

Just adding my two cent. Discord is a gatekeep. You lock everything in behind bars that isn't public and a lot of information goes wasted. You're in the hand of a company that any day can nuke all the content without anyway to archive it. A forum is often more open or even open to the public with more ways to archive.

Discord is honestly a plague towards forums and web sites the world over.

That's an interesting take... Although I would have to politely disagree. Servers are open to everyone as long as they are set up that way, and most people would want to create as large of a community as possible (from what I've seen) and as long as the server is set up correctly and organized no information would go hidden or wasted.

 

[linuxares]

That's an interesting take... Although I would have to politely disagree. Servers are open to everyone as long as they are set up that way, and most people would want to create as large of a community as possible (from what I've seen) and as long as the server is set up correctly and organized no information would go hidden or wasted.

If I try to google ps2 textures for example I won't get up the information that is on a Discord server. Therefore the information is behind a gate. It's impossible to find it without finding a ps2 texture server.

Its also harder to archive the information because website and forums getting scraped by bots and can be used with for example the wayback machine. It's not possible with a Discord. So again, information is locked behind a gate.

 

[InsaneNutter]

That's an interesting take... Although I would have to politely disagree. Servers are open to everyone as long as they are set up that way, and most people would want to create as large of a community as possible (from what I've seen) and as long as the server is set up correctly and organized no information would go hidden or wasted.

You have many issues to consider with Discord.

You can't backup and restore a server. So what happens if an admins account on that server is compromised and everything is deleted? its gone for good, Discord won't care. If GBA Temp was ever hacked the admins can restore a backup and life goes on.

Another problem with Discord is discoverability. You could find this group and all the content on various search engines without having to create an account. No search engine will even index your Discord server, so you massively limit the discoverability of it.

Discord could go bust tomorrow and your server is wiped off the internet without a trace. Even if for some reason GBA Temp ceased to exist, it would still be possible to find content Web Archive for example.

Discord is blocked in some countries, China been a good example. GBA Temp is accessible in such counties from what I gather.

GBA Temp has been around 10 years longer than Discord without locking content behind a gate that could close at any time.

 

[Ashadori]

You guys do make some very great and valid points that I would have never thought of before

 

[SadOrigami]

I could make a Discord for the community! (PCSX2 of course). I have experience putting together organized and clean stuff, just look at the way I've organized a hub for Hd Packs sorting and also serves the purpose to collect dumps for future packs.

We could:

• Share different upscale results and see wich is better.
• Ask permission to use others textures on a pack or do a collaboration together.
• Share tools and tips.
• Make polls.
• Share custom made skins an UI icons.
• Have a black list of users who stole from other creators.
• Get to know the artists from here who can edit UI/Icons so any of us can hire their services.
• Have a public up to date record of what games are gonna be/are being remastered by someone right now

But everything, specially the packs must be on a separate place, since Discord is not reliable as a server. If you can think about more points to make a Discord server usefull for us then I'll create it and we'll see. But as Kupo said, the chat is probably the only thing that a Discord server truly offers

 

[evanft]

Because Discord sucks and is a poor replacement for a forum.

 

[Ashadori]

I could make a Discord for the community! (PCSX2 of course). I have experience putting together organized and clean stuff, just look at the way I've organized a hub for Hd Packs sorting and also serves the purpose to collect dumps for future packs.

We could:

• Share different upscale results and see wich is better.
• Ask permission to use others textures on a pack or do a collaboration together.
• Share tools and tips.
• Make polls.
• Share custom made skins an UI icons.
• Have a black list of users who stole from other creators.
• Get to know the artists from here who can edit UI/Icons so any of us can hire their services.
• Have a public up to date record of what games are gonna be/are being remastered by someone right now

But everything, specially the packs must be on a separate place, since Discord is not reliable as a server. If you can think about more points to make a Discord server usefull for us then I'll create it and we'll see. But as Kupo said, the chat is probably the only thing that a Discord server truly offers

I’d say being able to instantly chat amongst each other, ask for help or tips, hop in voice chat, share screens is worth it enough. But utilize this forum for the textures links for preservations sake. HMU maybe we can get something going.

 

[Chary]

I think keeping the information centralized here is ideal. In a decade's time from now it's going to be impossible to try to preserve all of the files when Discord inevitably goes down/decides emulation is a sin/deletes your server for no reason. Forums are eternal.

 

[Ashadori]

I think keeping the information centralized here is ideal. In a decade's time from now it's going to be impossible to try to preserve all of the files when Discord inevitably goes down/decides emulation is a sin/deletes your server for no reason. Forums are eternal.

Which is why everything will remain the same here. All textures for preservations sake will remain here we simply seek to utilize the convenient features that discord offers. Nobody will be forced to join it. Everyone who’s been on this same forum for 15 years can continue doing their thing, nobody is trying to take that away from them . When I finish my texture pack I will be posting it here so it can be archived.

 

[SadOrigami]

Le Discord Server
I forgot, we have a Discord now! Mainly for chatting, getting quick help, and sharing dumps/savefiles.

The link expires after certain time passes, so it is possible that I may forget to update it.

 

[Necron]

Title says it all, new to this group and was wondering why there isn't a Discord yet? It would help keep ALL texture packs and dumps centralized into one place. No need for a million forum posts to sift through. Anyone know why it hasn't been done yet?

Discord is a bad way of preserving material. Forums are a lot better for long time archiving. Of course, anyone can create anything and also, it's a faster way of sharing info (it's a glorified IRC channel).

 

[Ashadori]

Thanks for your input, very unique.

 

[DarthDarklorD]

I like Archive.org for this very reason.
They find info and data suppression abhorrent, which it is.