I don't know, a lot of the people that interact with my projects _want_ discord. They don't want a forum, they don't want Matrix. It's a matter of knowing your audience. I've been working on ways to better archive support/question threads, and the discord search isn't that terrible.
Of course, yet another way for the new generation of programmers to relearn the hard way the lessons of the older generation, like happens a lot in software.
When I started out, it was pretty clear to me that to solve problems, first read the error message clearly and try understand it, then search the relevant forum or google for someone in the past who experienced the same error. Finally, if unable to solve, post a message describing the problem clearly and what you have tried to do and still failed.
Well, good luck finding any thread from discord on Google. The chat interface also wants you to post one liner chats without taking the time to properly describe the scenario.
Chat platforms can exist but should not be the official support channels.
Woah this is an incredibly good point I hadn't even considered before now. After years of finding solutions to problems in obscure threads on forums I'd never have visited otherwise, I had never even considered the fact that the only way to do similar with discord is to not only have an account, but be a member of the specific discord guild, and then search that specific guild for specific keywords.
This is one of the most common reasons I've seen people use to push back on Discord for support, and the article somewhat brings it up in points 3 and 4. It's not publicly scrapable or anonymously accessible, nor can you archive it and host the information elsewhere if it goes down. Even the forum channels they introduced aren't useful in those regards.
> nor can you archive it and host the information elsewhere if it goes down
some communities do, for example the webots discord i'm in. They have a mirror of all chat logs indexed and searchable on their docs website. I don't know how they do it, I can ask if you like.
You're allowed bots, so why can't we archive it and make it more easily searchable? Those programming channels with QA style threaded answers would be great to log and make searchable. Is it against Discord's ToS or something?
And if you somehow are able to find an archive of the chat somewhere, you have to try to piece together the conversation because there are six other conversations going on at the same time. Not to mention, all of the valuable information/insights that was never shared in that particular discussion because no one with that knowledge was online at the time.
I just can't understand why anyone would think using a chat app for support is a good idea.
Say what you will of StackOverflow, but they completely solved this problem nearly a couple of decades ago. Answers may be getting outdated depending on what you're looking for, but new answers are always welcome and the site tends to always have the "current" best answer - and very search engine friendly.
> first read the error message clearly and try understand it,
Derail, but this right here is the key to debugging superpowers. I can't even count the number of times I have amazed juniors with my genius when all I did is read them the error message and ask them under what circumstances could that be true.
A corollary that's just as important is "believe the error messages - they are telling you the literal truth." Hard to believe how often we implicitly disbelieve what the compiler or runtime is telling us.
I know this and do this, but I would add, make sure you _actually_ read the error message and don't _think_ you read it. This bit me just yesterday as I was encountering an issue and spent a good 30 minutes trying to solve a problem I thought I'd been having. When I re-read the error message it was clear that I'd been too careless and not fully understood the issue. It happens from time to time and then I'm more cautious for a while until I get _just_ complacent enough to have it happen again.
I found that part of it is the informality of it all. There is no expectation that someone will search the chat history for an answer. When you don’t get an answer, but someone after you does, you can ping on it maybe once more. Those who don’t know the answer might chime in with “hey, I don’t know but look there”
In general it has a much lower barrier of entry. With all the good and bad that brings.
For the record I think it’s a miss in general. But YMMV.
Some degree of informational amensia is a good thing. We've all hit the "I need to do X, but every page on google tells me how to X in Version N-1, and it doesn't work like that any more".
I don't understand your example. How does "informational amnesia" help against "I need to do X, but every page on google tells me how to X in Version N-1, and it doesn't work like that any more"? If you can't find a solution, you should ask on the Q&A channel, regardless of informational amnesia or not.
IRC had a higher barrier to entry and a lot more common expectation of kickbans for various reasons (justified or not).
Plus the concept of +v doesn't really exist on discords. Sometimes you'd be stuck lurking while only a select few could speak.
And frankly being able to embed images/videos degrades the seriousness in various ways as it can become a bit of a meme/comedy competition (and they scroll disproportionately more text off.
And avatars mean less space is actually text..
<[@+]?shortnick>: <text>
is pretty much the optimal format for information density, which is ironic that twitch chat uses it (to mostly spam emotes)
Overwhelmingly the word I'd use to describe Discord's interface is "one". There is one interface. It's an interface that most people seem to like, but we've lost an important freedom there. It's against the EULA to modify your client or use an alternative one.
If with IRC one can have any interface, I would not call Discord's better.
Luckily since there is no expectation of an archive, migration is fairly straightforward if there is an alternative. If there are no alternatives, I guess they can try IRC ;)
Could be a bias too. I really dislike Discord. I'm on too many discords. It's just one of those network effect things that I wish wasn't everywhere.
I'm happy with searchable public chat support. Unfortunately, discord seems to be the best way to do this.
I think I do want a forum, but I probably wouldn't use it because signing in is too much effort. Maybe if forums had shared profiles and better mobile support, they'd be used more.
I tried launching a forum, I spent a _lot_ of time setting up Discourse and proper CDN/uploads etc. I didn't go all out, only a few categories based on what was commonly needed (like 5?). I did this _before_ I resorted to Discord as the only point of help. People begrudgingly used it... It got to the point where I was asked "why aren't you using Discord like everyone else in this space?" enough that I asked my power users on the forum, and the broader internet via other channels, and most people overwhelmingly wanted Discord. In particular, of note, my power users on the forums wanted it. After switching, the number of people asking for help significantly increased, and we gained a fair number of new power users willing to help those people out too.
Here is the thing. You may be seeing more people seeking help because they are repeating the same questions again. Where as before they found the thread with the answer.
To me this is the biggest drawback for discord over forums.
From my experience it happens just as much on forums. Hell, just take a look at Stack Overflow! If someone is wanting to reanswer a question for the nth time, I have no problem with that, and the helpers in my community don't either. As another poster said, as well, sometimes "repeat questions" age out after a certain point, where a newer method is actually more appropriate than an older one anyway.
"As another poster said, as well, sometimes "repeat questions" age out after a certain point, where a newer method is actually more appropriate than an older one anyway."
I rather like the approach of editing the original question/solution or posting the latest solution there as otherwise this just creates fragmention.
Editing is somehow even worse than doing support on Discord, where at least there is a history and the (bad!) search or one of the regulars might remember something to find it.
> I think I do want a forum, but I probably wouldn't use it because signing in is too much effort. Maybe if forums had shared profiles and better mobile support, they'd be used more.
Reddit basically stole all of traditional forums' thunder and removed their weaknesses as the same time. Setting up, maintaining and moderating a forum takes time and money. It takes less of the former and maybe none of the later. And for users creating an account is quick and doesn't even need an email so they can quickly reply even if they just blundered in from google.
Reddit definitely demands an email to register. It's unclear to me whether they verify it (I didn't bother to check), but it's the first thing they ask for.
I explicitly avoid all of those and am willing to do the extra two clicks to get a real account.
I have no idea how long these random companies will keep providing auth services, I don't want to be part of the mess when they inevitably stop the service or start charging. It barely solves the account fragmentation problem because every website supports a different random combination of providers. It centralizes everything more than it already is, further increasing your dependence on these companies. Not to mention the tracking.
But the biggest thing is that with a native account I know that I'll be getting all the features of the app and everything will work normally. There have been too many times where I've experienced "your account does not support this feature" because of a botched external auth integration. Remember when Spotify users with Facebook sign-in couldn't change their name from the default string of random characters?
No thanks, the "effort" is more than worth it for me.
Specifically signing in with a consistent persona. All of these link to an actual "work" identity. Sometimes I want some customer support. Other times, it's a gaming identity, or a writer identity.
Part of the problem is that communities can get really nasty, worst case going as far as writing bad reviews at the place you work at. So it's useful to containerize your identity.
Sign in with Apple allows you the opportunity to generate unique email address aliases per service when you use Sign in with Apple to log in to third parties.
Say for example that your “real” iCloud account is muzani at iCloud dot com.
You browse to my hypothetical forum and choose Sign in with Apple. Then Apple lets you choose if you want to use your “real” mail address or if you want to make a new alias specific to this service. You make an alias an it will look something like emperor_virginia.9p at iCloud dot com.
It’s super convenient and easy to use, while at the same time doing a great job of keeping your identities separate between separate services.
HN has a particular culture that dislikes social media and due to the nature of these sites, once a culture is established, it attracts more of the same since everyone upvotes the dominant cultural position. Discord is social media, so it's bad, not like the good old days of forums/mailing lists/newsgroups/IRC/whatever. Listen to your users.
My personal fear with Discord is the audience. Discord has a lot of kids and the likelihood of having kids come into your server and troll you or ask low-effort questions is much higher than Slack. But if your users want Discord, then you should use Discord. There's nothing gained by telling your users what to like.
Sure if your customers want to use discord and you're ok with putting your community there, then go for it.
I don't think you can assume everyone wants to be on discord. I certainly loathe adding yet another discord or slack community that frankly I don't check. Nobody has time to keep up with dozens or hundreds of discord communities (it's very easy to join one).
I prefer any online community that is searchable (via Google, site search, etc) so that I can find answers and past discussion without having to ask the same question for the 100th time in the channel.
> Discord is social media, so it's bad, not like the good old days of forums/mailing lists/newsgroups/IRC/whatever.
How is Discord more social than the other systems you mentioned? I consider something to be social (social media, social network, etc.) when the primary utility manifests as a function of establishing friends, followers, or whatever similar jargon.
That is: if the content presented to me is primarily generated by users who I've selected, while content generated by users I haven't selected is unavailable or relegated to lower tiers of functionality, then it's a social network/medium. In other words, it's the product of subscribing primarily to people (regardless of what they might discuss) rather than to topics (regardless of who participates).
I don't see Discord in this way. Isn't it more about subscribing to topics than to people?
I realize you're not speaking for yourself, but for the HN hivemind; my question remains.
Oops, I didn't consider that it was sarcasm. I thought it was mocking the actual average HN perspective (which I'm dissenting from, challenging that average user to explain themself).
It was not intended to be sarcasm. It was indeed a criticism of the average HN perspective which I find far removed from the perspective of a given user.
I do, but I don't think a lot of people on HN consider them as such, which is a fun jab at the hivemind. You'll see a lot of threads where people deride social media but say "HN is the exception." Maybe that's what you meant by sarcasm, and if so you're on the nose.
I try not to argue against my users for "what is best for them." If they overwhelmingly want Discord, I'll give them Discord. The goal is to be ready to jump ship if need be, and there's a few ways to do that.
Discourse has either integrated logins and OAuth2 third party login. I implemented both.
Honestly I’m rather enjoying everybody telling me they know my users better than I do. I polled pretty extensively and got a good amount of non power user and power user responses.
And what plans do you or your users have for when Discord enshittifies?
As always: nothing.
When Discord enshittifies, all your data will go down the drain. Or, if you disappear, all the user data goes down the drain even though Discord will continue to exist.
But, hey, logins are easy and nobody needs to learn anything new.
Please read my other replies, although it is fair to ask me this! Like I have noted, I do have some plans to jump ship if it comes to it. I have the vast majority of my user base on a mailing list for announcements (security related and important administrative, not promotional). If push came to shove I’d use it to make an announcement. I always have a backup for discourse immediately, and I have an archive dump of all threads and chat data from discord. I have a plan to make a simple import script for all “forum” threads in discord to discourse and release that at some point for others to use for their communities.
Do not assume the worst of posters, some of us are just as smart as you I promise, it isn’t fair to assume I had no plans :).
There are a lot of contextual questions raised by that though - are the people who interact with the project the community? How many people are being interacted with? What are the goals of said community?
2-3 people can seem like a huge crowd and a complete consensus in the right context. It is still a handful of people. And the fact is that Discord (and Slack) is long-term-toxic to building up knowledge in a community. There isn't an available body of records to figure out what the history of the community is and what topics have been considered in the past. It is completely unsuitable for recording Q&A. It isn't terrible as a support forum, but even then anything that can be crawled by a search engine has some serious advantages if the community cares about people who are in the silent majority.
> I tried launching a forum, I spent a _lot_ of time setting up Discourse and proper CDN/uploads etc. I didn't go all out, only a few categories based on what was commonly needed (like 5?). I did this _before_ I resorted to Discord as the only point of help. People begrudgingly used it... It got to the point where I was asked "why aren't you using Discord like everyone else in this space?" enough that I asked my power users on the forum, and the broader internet via other channels, and most people overwhelmingly wanted Discord. In particular, of note, my power users on the forums wanted it. After switching, the number of people asking for help significantly increased, and we gained a fair number of new power users willing to help those people out too.
It's popular because it's familiar, but also people because are so impatient they want real-time and fast responses to their questions. But then you get a flooded channel of questions being drowned out by memes.
So then you use the Discord forum feature to solve that problem. But then you may as well have used Discourse.
Is it possible to somehow bridge discord and, say issues on GitHub or another forum so that people can use discord but the information is just pulled from other sources and they're redirected there?
