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Don't use Discord as your Q&A forum

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Re: Don't use Discord as your Q&A forum

#121

Post by _AzMoo »

wodenokoto wrote: post #120

I think there is a culture shift. When I was young all events would be on Facebook. For better or worse that created a source of truth (worse being that obviously we were forcing guests onto a platform that we shouldn't be forcing them on) and a whole structure that kept track of things for you. Now a days, I see events being a post across a few chat groups, with no source of truth for time and place (and those often…

This isn't new though. Before Slack and Discord we were using IRC for this. Facebook serves a different need, and for me, was never the default place for event information. Up until the last 5-10 years we were always using email mailing lists, web forums, usenet, or IRC.

Re: Don't use Discord as your Q&A forum

#122

Post by sublinear »

csnover wrote: post #71
barkingcat wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with banning someone you've asked repeated to change their behaviour while interacting in a space that you host? Nothing!

Right or wrong, it can be a really difficult thing to do when the problem behaviour is not due to malice. You’re taking away a community from someone, and in my experience, usually it’s someone who doesn’t have many other social outlets. It does not feel good to get pleading emails from these sorts of folks, knowing that you have to stand firm and say ‘no’ for the health of the wider community.

> usually it’s someone who doesn’t have many other social outlets

You can always push them to a misc channel and if the community really likes them they'll chat over there?

Re: Don't use Discord as your Q&A forum

#123

Post by hutzlibu »

Operyl wrote: post #119
Denote6737 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Don't use Discord as your Q&A forum

#124

Post by rexf »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #96
Operyl wrote: post #18

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.

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…

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.

Re: Don't use Discord as your Q&A forum

#125

Post by personjerry »

This article looks like it was written by ChatGPT tbh. The arguments are kinda weak, borderline nonsensical.

> Chaos Discord can be a whirlwind of madness. Important stuff you post can vanish into the ether within seconds, drowned by a never-ending stream of messages.

Already it looks like ChatGPT made a formatting mistake, what is "Chaos Discord"? Pretty sure it should says "Chaos - Discord..."

It also concedes that they made threads a thing, so the point is moot. This is followed up with

> TERRIBLE Search and Discovery Trying to find past discussions or solutions in Discord is like trying to locate a needle in a haystack blindfolded and drunk.

Again there is no separation between the title and the content. And actually Discord search in my experience is really good. They can filter by media, link, text, user, and more. And this INCLUDES in threads. In comparison, have you tried searching through FAQs using Algolia or BBPost forum search in general? Those are truly awful.

> The Discord Odyssey Picture this: You encounter a problem with a project that exclusively relies on Discord for support and questions.

Notice the continued formatting failure, a failure of copy-pasting from ChatGPT and not separating the title from the content!

This point is about all the restrictions and actions needed, but fails to address that users are already logged in and often have Discord open, and instead comes with some ? nonsensical example of installing a js library?

And finally

> Waaaay too ephemeral Here’s a curveball for you: what if Discord decides to pull the plug?

This is interesting but, how you can really tell it's ChatGPT is that the examples it provides as solutions below ALSO suffer this problem. Here are the options provided in the article.

> Dedicated Community Forums - Check out platforms like Discourse.

Again I'm pretty sure the search is worse, and it literally doesn't solve any of the other problems.

> Lean on the Pros - Websites like Stack Overflow or communities on Reddit

Yeah I'm not sure how you're going to use Stack Overflow as a Q&A for your own product. And again, WHAT IF THEY DECIDE TO PULL THE PLUG?

> Git It Done - If you’re dealing with code issues, rely on GitHub, Gitlab, Gitea, or any other Git-based issue tracking system

Actually not a bad idea if your audience is technical, but again WHAT IF THEY DECIDE TO PULL THE PLUG?

Finally, nothing is more obvious than when ChatGPT says its signature "REMEMBER, BLAHBLAHBLAH", and lo and behold:

> Remember, Discord is great & all but as a Q&A forum ...

Personally, I'm 90% sure this is a ChatGPT generated low quality article. Even though it sparked some discussion here, I'm flagging this article, and I did not enjoy the article for the content.

Re: Don't use Discord as your Q&A forum

#126

Post by brabel »

kynetic wrote: post #107
0xpgm wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. That's actually m…

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.

Re: Don't use Discord as your Q&A forum

#127

Post by galkk »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #111
Roark66 wrote: post #104

At least IRC is usually logged. However, I've noticed a disturbing trend amongst web shops. It used to be common for a shop to have it's return policy and form linked on the main page/menu. Right along side its terms&conditions, privacy policy etc. Now I noticed a couple of popular shops I interact with replaced it with "chat with us" things(IKEA in Poland, a bunch of very large clothing brands etc). I hate it when I…

And then, those same companies, feign having no idea why everybody and their dog orders on Amazon. I've never had to jump through any hoop or deal with any clueless AI to return a product.

Amazon recently started doing the same.

The "chat" button disappeared from the help & contact us, and to talk to real person you need to go through bunch of jumps.

Re: Don't use Discord as your Q&A forum

#128

Post by bmacho »

TylerE wrote: post #39
eddythompson80 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: Don't use Discord as your Q&A forum

#129

Post by skelpmargyar »

nologic01 wrote: post #117

People forget that there is a fashion and demographic element in these choices that can overwhelm rational argumemts about functionality et al. Discord had certain features that struck a chord with a generation of gaming communities, thats more or less all there is to it. Now people will pick it just to be trendy and in tune with the times. Personally I find its manipulative, over-emojed UI distasteful and it is hope…

[dead]

Re: Don't use Discord as your Q&A forum

#130

Post by galkk »

This is just wishful thinking.

All the alternatives have proven that they barely work too.

1. Dedicated forums - have you seen cesspools that are community.microsoft.com or apple support forums? Or few surviving audio forums, with those long taglines? Also searchability of those forums leaves to be desired too, as they rarely get to first page of google.

2. Stackoverflow quality has degraded severely in recent years. Both from perspectives of someone who wants to ask a question and someone who wants to answer it. Niche stackoverflows are still fine, but general programming ones are just shit, full of obsolete/old accepted answers that nobody cares to update to current year status

3. Get it done. It is obviously to be better healthy and rich than sick and poor

I grown into contrary view. Discords are fine. Based on my personal experience, at least the ones where I tried to find some help (QMK, Bambulab, bunch of gaming ones). The fact that same question is being asked again and again is fine. Somebody will answer it. Or not, and then the search for an answer will continue.

They significantly reduce friction to answer for somebody who is open to help. See example about stackoverflow above. I just left it, as I don't want to deal with mods there.

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