I simply do not understand why people are even thinking of moving to another closed platform like Discord. We already have an alternative and I think it's time to embrace it: Matrix
Comparing Matrix to polished apps like telegram or discord is... misplaced to say the least.
We all know how open source Software moves forward. It's us who can put up with little inconveniences of an open source app and maybe even improve it by identifying, reporting and implementing fixes. Those polished apps are polished because they have dedicated teams that get paid hefty $$$ to ensure they do not loose existing user base. In matrix case the user base is very little but I think they have achieved something remarkable: a thriving community that is developing client and server Software required for matrix to work.
I wonder if we had this kind of attitude in starting days of Internet, we probably would not have Internet today. By the way, when did you last use any matrix client?
By not acknowledging the importance of polish, you only push to keep the status quo ... and the status quo is that the masses are not using matrix.
There are very few open source application (desktop or mobile) that are as polished as commercial applications.
This is unlikely to change, but I still think it's worth trying to get as many users to use open source apps, because more users an app has - higher chance of more developers - better app. Not to mention no ads or spying and other crap that commercial apps are riddled with (General opinion not just chat apps)
But to get it into the mainstream, it needs to compete with other messaging apps such as Telegram.
For that, it needs polish. Period. There's no way around it. So if the goal is to get it into the mainstream (and personally, I want it to be), then that is what it needs.
There are loads of ways you can contribute to this:
1. Contribute time, code, designs, general help and volunteering
2. Contribute money via personal means or via work
3. Promote the use of Matrix to individuals
4. Promote the use of Matrix to businesses, eg. at work, or as a backing protocol for messaging where it makes sense etc.
5. Purchase products that make use of or contribute to Matrix
etc. But in order for it to become popular on its own, and acquire a network effect (which it needs, because IM apps are a class of their own), friction to get new users needs to be reduced to near-zero. And for that... polish is needed. That's it.
I came to the same conclusion I have the past four times I tried. The same one as the person you’re responding to.
This tendency to render your project unusable by choosing inappropriate development tools (perhaps for their seeming friendliness towards inexperienced developer - maybe if the same developers were forced to write in C their code would simply crash all the time, whereas as it is it "merely" runs slowly and/or leaks memory) is manifestly not an intrinsic feature of open source. If anything, in the old days, open source projects (such as Linux itself) stood out for being more lightweight and performant than their commercial counterparts. In fact, I think the first time I remember encountering an open source project that was rendered unusable by its bloat was with Diaspora (an early attempt to make a federated Facebook/Google+ replacement, written using Ruby on Rails). Perhaps there is something to the fashionable "fix social media" sector that necessitates making development inclusive to those who are more activists than engineers, even if this comes at the cost of sound engineering decisions.
I still prefer open source. Managed to convince a portion of friends as well.
Also, the UI has improved a lot recently. There are number of matrix clients that have appeared on app stores but I still prefer Element which gets regular updates and features.
Rather seems like a bug.
However, don't see a problem. Why does it matter if they join each channel? you don't need to read a channel in Discord as well despite you are auto joined
Higher friction to visit other channels means that it will mean less people will visit other channels. I've been in a Nix / NixOS room for a while and I had no clue I was in a space and that space had other rooms until you commented that it existed. I never had this issue with discord. It was obvious there were other channels the first time I used it.
sounds like a temporary issue though: first only rooms existed, now Spaces exist, but the room directory still exposes rooms instead of Spaces
At least in the mobile app I didn't even know this existed. To find this directory of rooms you need to open up the spaces drawer. The you need to open a menu for the space by clicking on a stack of three vertical dots. I thought this would have things like settings or something in it, but no this is the way to navigate to important information. Then you need to click on explore rooms. You now can see a list of rooms you can join. You can now join a room with a tap. Then you have to open the room with a tap. This is extremely convoluted and hidden.
Meanwhile Discord doesn't need this whole process since you don't need to manually join rooms yourself.