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chx

> See what 2,300+ folks in a forum get up to

oh okay

> Join our Discord

sadness. where's the forum?

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It’s funny as I think discord is actually kind of harder to get into than the old irc method. With irc there was no history or permanence so there was a relationship between discussion and what made it into the project as source or docs.

With discord it’s weird because the expectation seems to be on me to wade through hundreds or thousands of messages to find docs because there are people who hang out and read everything.

Discord does have an okayish search feature which gave me a desired answer most of the time I joined a server because of a particular program I had. Enormous downside being that you have to guess the previously used wording if you don't have an error message or something.

Yes, but Discord does not get indexed by search engines, because it’s not an open platform.

So while it is in the interest of the open source project that as many people going forward can benefit from past Q&A, it is in the interest of Discord to require you to install their client to search.

Silos are sad.

In my experience it’s way to aggressive at stemming and rewriting and there’s no way to do a literal search.

I don’t want to join a server to search. It’s kind of an expensive action. And it’s sticky. I don’t like joining things and having more clutter.

So in discord it’s like this:

-join server

-search

-figure out how to leave server

On IRC it’s like this:

-join channel

-ask question

-get directed to wiki or forum

-search forum

-never have to leave anything

-or better yet that wiki or forum is indexed so I just google and find my answer that way

I grew up with (and love) irc but currently use discord. I find it odd someone who knows irc would list "figure out how to leave a server".

Try explaining the steps to irc to someone who has never used irc before. That will be way more difficult than figuring out discord.

irc also has the downside of "ask question - get nothing" because the guy (who you dont know which guy is "the guy") wasnt online to even see the message. Or "ask the question and wait and hope I dont get disconnected losing any responses they might have answered with"

Discords can setup tickets or question areas as well, which greatly helps

All that said, I prefer docs, wiki, or a forum/subreddit over either irc or discord, but no way would I want to go back to irc

I’m already on irc, so I just join a channel. There’s no membership or obligation.

Joining a discord server is a whole mental decision. And each server is organized differently. So when you join a server you have to figure out where to comment and search.

Joining a server is about as much 'commitment' as joining a channel in IRC. i.e. technically very easy, and socially it entirely depends on the server/channel. For a support one, it's not at all unusual or hard to join and leave again.

> Try explaining the steps to irc to someone who has never used irc before.

I mean, with modern web clients, it can be as easy as "open chat link, chat, close page".

Reminds me of Slack as knowledge base in some companies. This area needs some LLM disruption.

Yup I hate discord. Discord is for gaming, not for school or work. They should use something like Mattermost instead.

But J, they don't want to waste their time with hosting a messaging platform!

Well if that's the case, then why would others waste their time hosting their own project management board?

i was burned badly by mattermost when their expert functionality didn't work for months and eventually i missed the archival deadline and lost all of the history for a project.

Its amazing to me that it has become such a default, similarly to Slack before it. At least some Slack communities tried and worked on getting the channels indexed so that it shows up during web searches, now with discord I need an account just to view the content...

A hard pass from me, especially when an answer to a simple question requires me to drink from their firehose of a search...

I always go with discord in newer projects. Why? I feel like most people have discord nowadays and it just works (TM). I rarely have a case where a person said that they can’t join because they don’t have discord or don’t want to create an account because other reasons.

Beside that, money is also a big factor. Slack for example is getting more expensive for communities.

It does not "just work," and you're not going to hear from me because I'm not joining yet another Discord server just to wade through searching through chat. Do a free forum. They've worked for 30 years and I might actually find my answer by Googling and won't need to even making a forum account.

I agree. Search is abysmal. Discord is fine for community chat, but it’s awful as a replacement for customer support forums.

With attitude like this, perhaps it is indeed for the better to not hear from you.

I actually entirely agree with you. Nobody needs to take on accommodations they don't want to. And that was kind of my point; you should be aware that choosing Discord limits your participants and also limits your participants ability to engage with your project.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing; may even be a positive aspect. In a quickly changing project, maybe it's good if your documentation isn't too "sticky" and the solution to a problem isn't low-touch "read the docs" but high-touch "ask me so that I can experience the pain points"

Maybe Discord just works for chat. Not for support.

They claim 150 million monthly active users. Not close to most people.

How would you expect someone to tell you they don't want to create an account? Most maintainers would consider opening an issue inappropriate I think.

Slack doesn't require phone number validation, Discord does. Try to login first time with FF on Linux and with uBlock Origin defaults and then pooof, insta ban! Guess what, your phone number is banned for validation too forever,

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