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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

#131

Post by tacocataco »

codetrotter wrote: post #65
muzani wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I probably wouldn't use it because signing in is too much effort What if the forum offered the following three options for sign in: - Sign in with GitHub - Sign in with Apple - Sign in with Google

Can I sign in as a guest/anon user?

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

#132

Post by skelpmargyar »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #116
alchemio wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely. At least less likely compared to discord and reddit!

discord makes bank, but not my point. who cares about reddit. microsoft has all the motivation to lock down developers. they already got most by the balls with vscode and copilot.

[dead]

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

#133

Post by RadiozRadioz »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #51
Operyl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So like IRC? It's not like this was a new problem, we've had this problem in the past. Not everybody liked mailing lists/forums 20 years ago either.

Sure, like IRC but with a better interface,

Better? Sure, for you maybe.

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.

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

#134

Post by another_story »

BanazirGalbasi wrote: post #115
kynetic wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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?

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

#136

Post by tacocataco »

spankalee wrote: post #29

This article (and the comments here so far) don't mention Discord Forum Channels which solves the two actual usability/discoverability concerns listed Forum Channels FAQ: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/6208479917079-... Forum Channels are a type of channel that's structured as a more traditional forum. It's similar to channels that tried to enforce that everything is a thread, but much better. * The to…

I'm pretty sure this feature is in beta and only available to bigger communities at the moment.

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

#138

Post by RadiozRadioz »

codetrotter wrote: post #65
muzani wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I probably wouldn't use it because signing in is too much effort What if the forum offered the following three options for sign in: - Sign in with GitHub - Sign in with Apple - Sign in with Google

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.

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

#139

Post by xigoi »

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.

> If someone is wanting to reanswer a question for the nth time, I have no problem with that

But I do have a problem with having to ask a question that has already been answered a hundred times, instead of being able to search for the answer.

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

#140

Post by xigoi »

langsoul-com wrote: post #6
postpawl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discourse is open source: https://github.com/discourse/discourse You could hook it up to a mail provider and can host it yourself for less if you wanted.

Nobody wants to do that self hosting for a Q&A forum for a side project. Discord is free and is omega easy to setup. Low friction, low cost, that's the real competition

Discord is not free, just “free”.
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