"Chatting on Discord" list

So, I'm sorta wondering why we have the "Chatting on Discord" list at the bottom of the index.

1) I don't think it's very useful; it doesn't show anyone's name, and I don't think I've ever actually used it to check who's on Discord when Discord's own online list is far more functional. Most of the people listed on there as "online" don't actually talk anyway, so a lot of it isn't representative of who's actually "Chatting on Discord". Then, to see the name of who's actually online, you've got to hover over the icon (and afaik there's no way to do this on mobile) which is a pain - and worse, this has to be done for every single person. It's only of use if you've memorised peoples' avatars, and even then it's not really ideal.

2) It's a massive list compared to the (much more relevant) "Who's Online" list above it, and in terms of style contrasts pretty badly with it. It looks quite nice on its own, but the fact that it's so stylistically different to the other online list makes it just look like some sort of 3rd party plugin that was installed without really giving any attention to how it fits in with everything else (if this is actually the case then, in the nicest way possible, it shows).

3) This is just a bit of a shot in the dark, but I noticed that the "Chatting on Discord" list was taking a long time to load its icons earlier. If this is due to the list causing a strain on the server, it's worth considering that the list tries to load every single time someone opens PC, and this probably adds up given how many users and guests can be online at once. Particularly given how it's not particularly functional, as discussed in point 1.

4) This isn't even related but I've posted it in a few places and I just wanna bring it up again - the normal "Who's Online?" list doesn't seem to show on mobile - at least, not for me anyway. Any chance of this being fixed?


tl;dr the "Chatting on Discord" list is kinda pretty, but has problems and isn't very functional at all. Could we consider either refining or removing it?

You can see the person's name if you hold your cursor over it.

The icons take a while to load for me too (I can watch them popping up one by one if I scroll down to the bottom on page load).

I can't remember ever scrolling all the way down the home page to see who is online on Discord - I don't think it adds any real value to the site at all. It's bulky and feels out of place.

Honestly, I've not found it that useful either. It's a nice reminder that we have an active Discord community but there's probably nicer ways to go about it.

There is already a link to the Discord in the top navigation (depending on theme possibly) which is how I figured out that PC had a Discord.

I didn't even notice that huge section at the bottom of the main page for ages, I hardly scroll down that far.

Yeah I feel like it's kinda obsolete at this point, since there's already many areas where the server is advertised.

I kinda agree with this, the thing is the majority of people who are 'Chatting on Discord' aren't actually talking, as a lot of people just don't seem to interact on the server, so the extensive list seems like a waste of space.

Is there a way to make a list a "pulldown" list kind of thing?

I will talk to dev guys about the online list on mobile thing.

Since I don't particularly use the Discord, I've never seen a point to advertising the online list so heavily on our index. I'd much prefer if we modified it to display our online forum members and their avatar, while clicking their name would take you to their profile like The Who's Online list does now.

It's at the very very bottom of the page. I don't see it doing much harm, rather I like more chances to link and collaborate between the Discord server and the forums. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

engineer said:

It's at the very very bottom of the page. I don't see it doing much harm, rather I like more chances to link and collaborate between the Discord server and the forums. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what this list does to collaborate the server with the forums though. It's as useful as a list of people currently on the forums would be in discord - not very imo. Besides, if I ever wondered if someone was on Discord, I would... go on Discord to check, not the forums.

I agree, it seems like a bit of wasted space to me. I'm on Discord quite a bit, and not once has this feature been relevant to me.

I feel like having something more relevant for everyone to take up that used space would be a better idea rather than how it is now.

Hiroshi Sotomura said:

There's a ton of considerations to be made for that list. We'll have something to show for that in due time.

Click to expand...

given that part of the index was just disabled in the interests of loading times and optimisation, perhaps now would be a good time to comment on if the discord list impacts loading times at all?

Also, consider that it's loading 300-400 128x128 images when the user loads the index. Unless I'm missing something, that's the equivalent of one 38400x38400 image. That can't be good for people with data caps. I doubt it's causing strain on PC's servers because the images are hosted on Discord, but there are other reasons to remove it.