Publicly Indexed Chat Logs

Slakah

Hi folks,

 

As you might be aware quite a few open source software communities have begun using discord to help support the community of users. One of the features requested by Ross A Baker here https://twitter.com/rossabaker/status/1216173676946739207, is the ability to search the chat logs so people can find solutions to issues which they may have had before.

e.g.

Bob needs some help using some software, he goes to discord and asks for help. Alice knows the solution and posts it to discord. Mariana has the same issue as Bob, and goes to her favourite search engine but is unable to lookup the existing chat record, as it's not available on the world wide web.

 

The two potential solutions that could help with this that immediately spring to mind are:
1) Public chat groups - whereby the chat could be indexed by web crawlers

2) Allow a third party to produce a bot which would scrape messages and provide a web page for channels which use it

 

So assuming that option 1) is unlikely to happen soon. Could anyone provide guidance as to whether it would be acceptable and not contravene the discord developer API terms of use?

 

Thanks for any help!

 

James C

-1

Comments

4 comments

Date Votes
  • donovan_dmc
    • Edited

    (I'm assuming here) If you get consent from *everyone* participating in the server (e.g. by making it a required thing to accept), you could index all messages with a bot. I'm almost positive there are some bots for this already (even though they might not be looking for the consent, it's good to be on the safe side). If everyone involved is consenting, I wouldn't think Discord would have a problem with it.

    3
  • cglong

    If a community server is listed in the Discover page, any Discord user can join it and see all messages posted to its public channels. A search engine should be able to see and index these messages as well.

    Not only would this help improve community server discoverability, it's healthier from an information sharing perspective as well.

    0
  • flarn2006
    • Edited

    donovan_dmc: I don't think express consent is strictly necessary for channels in public servers that are visible to everyone. After all, if someone doesn't want just anyone to see something they're posting, then why would they be posting it in a public chat room visible to anyone who has (or can create) a Discord account? I think consent is implied in this case, because otherwise they'd use something more private.

    0
  • javaJake

    I think this would be a great feature to add to Discord. Existing servers might need to go through some kind of notification process to allow people time to know their messages may go public, but otherwise most forums are already indexed, and would love to see Discord indexed as well, at least when it comes to sharing knowledge!

    0

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