Gotta love how informal open source game dev is

That's fine and I understand; and I'm cool if projects have multiple ways to make contributions. What I hate is when open source projects only exist and allow communications on closed platforms.

Gamers 😤 For what it's worth, more users, especially on a gaming-related project probably the effort providing basic support faster than it increases contributions.

The network effect is a real problem tho. Hopefully ForgeFed & Gitlab implementing ActivityPub will help with this. Same with OAuth with GitHub as the SSO provider.

Bridging Matrix seems like the best of both, but takes a lot more work.

I'm a purist, so if I see a project uses Discord, I'll immediately start looking for viable alternatives.

Why not have a mirror on GitHub that makes it VERY clear that the development happens on another platform.

I was talking to a friend recently who was frustrated because they felt like tech support had been treating them like an idiot. They're a reasonably techy person and had gone through all the troubleshooting steps in the documentation, but the person on the phone had them do it all again. I tried to explain the perspective of the tech support guy — the fact that people often refuse to restart their PC because it feels like too simple of a step and they feel patronised by the suggestion, to the extent that people lie about whether they've done a particular troubleshooting step.

I told them that it was valid to feel frustrated with how long the call took when it could've been much quicker and simpler, but that they should attribute their frustration at people who repeatedly refuse to read the docs, rather than the tech support guy. My friend wasn't an idiot, but they were tarred with the same brush because of how many people seeking tech support are belligerent idiots.