Discord/notes

loose notes on Discord eventually to be polished into proper documentation

user/group security

This applies only within Servers (Guilds); DMs, even when multiple people are included, have essentially no security controls.

The security management is fairly sophisticated. Channels can be restricted to selected individuals or "roles" (which are essentially security groups). Channels can also be grouped into "categories", which can be given their own security settings which then become defaults for the channels they contain. The permissions which are assignable to individuals or roles are quite fine-grained.

comparison to IRC

Discord is GUI-oriented rather than text-oriented; almost everything except actual messages is done via menus, icons, and other graphical interface elements, though there are a few text commands.

Some of the graphical elements supported:

• limited rich text formatting
• avatars for users and servers/guilds
• emoji, both inline and as reactions to posts (aka reactji).

Other users can click on already-posted reactji, and Discord will display the number of people who clicked (and their usernames in the hover-over). This can be used for practical things like polling, as well as just expressing feelings about something without interrupting the conversation.