Sloga

Sloga is an alternative to discord built from a fork of stoat seeking to improve where stoat also known as revolt lacks. The lead developer Jeff has added features such as voice channels, forum channels with additional functionalities such as viewing modes & auto archive customizable settings, & scheduled post message settings. I appreciate the viewing modes for forums because meta which made threads.com has brainwashed people & forums have lost it's traditional interface look.

Forums today like to show you titles with tags, extra spacing, & a preview of some of the body of paragraph. This type of viewing ruins the traditional ux design which makes it feel less like a forum & more like a timeline wall like the rest of social media. Classic view mode in Sloga brings it back to the almost traditional & standard look where it shows the title, tags, & avatar no extra spacing & no body of paragraph the way forum topics should be displayed in a list.

The developer does seek to improve the app but in it's current state there are some negatives which I will explain that I can only hope will change in the future. For now this is a better alternative then stoat & other discord replica alternatives. With reviews & suggestion we can only hope it improves to be better for everyone.

If you decide to checkout Sloga please use my referral code as we both get perks for you using it.

Referral code: SLOGA-EF6P https://app.sloga.gg/r/EF6P

Negatives

Support Sloga is redundently repeated in multiple areas of the app. We get it's new & you want support but it does not need to be in so many places to remind you like you're gunna forget. It's in your settings under referral, it's repeated again in settings under supporters, it's repeated a third time in settings at the bottom where the about is, & it's repeated a 4th time in your server listings with a money bag icon under discovery. Holy shit dude can you lay off with this once in the about is enough it makes me think seeing it excessively like this is desperate for cash much maybe I shouldn't be here.

Sloga is gatekeeping some appearance features behind a referral system with vague requirements or monthly payment subscription such as changing the font & color of your username. Also adding effects to your username such as a shimmer, outer glow, & rainbow pattern colored where on revolt before it became stoat this was all possible for free.

The referral system to unlock these features is very vague & is not clear on it's requirements all it says is "invite friends to Sloga with your referral code or link. Each friend who sticks around brings you closer to the next reward." When friends use your referral code those referrals are stuck in a pending state which Jeff approves manually by monitoring everyone's logging & engagement on servers by activity. There is no clear explanation on how long this takes before approval & if they are denied no explanation as to why either so you have to assume because they aren't using it enough.

There is a vague "The referral counts once they've used Sloga regularly for a week, chatting on several different days. Pending referrals expire after 60 days." Define regulary as someone who works almost 7 days a week & chats maybe one night a week is regularly for me may not be for Jeff. I've introduced a friend to Sloga who chats one or two messages a day over a week but hasn't created a server because they are just feeling it out to see if there is potential to move from discord using my referral code was denied.

I asked why & I was told they do not meet the requirements. The 60 day expiration is a bad decision in my opinion because there are many alternatives that are discord replicas & people will try them all out. Some people forget their passwords or will just come back in a few months to pick it up again & see if it's better remember Sloga is new just like other alternatives. I recommend there be no expiration on referrals & just give the perks for using the code & stop tracking peoples activity just remove the whole pending state till we see you're on 7 days a week & posting more then 30 messages a day.

Then theres ward points a vague point system with no real description explaining what this is for that you earn from passing referrals. It only says you can spend it on protected channels & servers. Which sounds to me like if you have a private channel that can only be viewed by being in a certain role, or a server that's not listed on discovery with no invite links could gain access to these bypassing the requirements by spending these "ward points" there is no clarification on this.

People don't stick around long just because it's new they want to see improvement first which Sloga can improve. For example it's appearance in customizing the UI is extremely limited your stuck in a material you design which I personally hate & detest because you are stuck to two colors. An accent color which affects all elements of the app & uses similar colors around the color you select & a sidebar color change which follows the same suit.

You have preset choices for "toning" such as reduced, normal, more contrast, & high contrast which these are tied to a second preset selector which can affect the look of these presets with it's choices of Monochrome, neutral, tonal spot, & fruit salad. The bottom line is the appearance settings are horrible. I liked the appearance better the way it was when it was revolt which had full rgb customization of every element of the app including a custom css value which allowed you to extend your customization even further with various techniques. Why the stoat software switched from full customization to limited is beyond me & I would hope anyone who forks it would bring it back.

It's important to me & others that the full customization of a ui is there it makes the app feel like it's yours to have that freedom which creates the incentive in wanting to make it your home for your everyday social atmosphere. When it was revolt I had for example my colors of choice for the background, foreground body, messages mentioning in general, messages with mentions to you, the sidebar, the channel list, & the current selected channel highlight all different colors I could change every piece. I was even able to change the font, resize the text, & even add an image to every single element of the app.

That flexibility should be a standard to all community platform applications. As of current what discord nitro offers in customization of the UI is more then what Sloga has currently. All alternatives seeking to beat Discord should have all customizations free without limitation.

There was mention somewhere which now it seems Jeff deleted the message that supporters who were bringing in people from twitch or youtube videos may get a special platform wide badge that allows them to have their username in purple in any server & when live streaming in channels their name would be at the top of the list automatically before the users of the server. I don't know if this is still being offered or not. If so then this would be another negative as the owners should have full control over their communities where they decide who should be at the top & not have it forced upon them.

Sloga is not open source which may be a contradiction to the open source license agreement going against the terms of the license that all modifications to the original software which is stoat must be made public & must provide instruction to replicate. Revolt also known as stoat went against the open source license agreement originally it's not a good thing that Sloga is copying them in that aspect. Regardless of the reasons whether it's because they don't want others to self host the software creating equal competiton or they don't want their improvements to the code to be public so others can easily replicate regardless is against the open source.

I hope that all of this will change in the future it's important we all express our opinions sharing the good & the bad so we may create a better tomorrow for everyone.

I like seeing more real alternatives to Discord, especially ones that focus on privacy instead of locking key features behind a subscription. The end-to-end encryption and easy Discord server import are the features that stand out to me the most. If Sloga continues to grow its community, I think it has the potential to become a very compelling option for gaming groups and online communities.