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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

#171

Post by apatheticonion »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #167

I recently found a repo for an Xbox wireless controller kernel driver where the GitHub issues page was turned off and instead they used discord. I asked why they don’t have GitHub issues turned on and they said they “didn’t want it to become a support forum”. I couldn’t believe it. If there is a common issue, one person will ask about it on the issues page and then everyone else can benefit from that discussion. On d…

100% this.

IMO for projects that need a place for support questions but don't want to use issues, they could use the Github "discussions" board feature.

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

#172

Post by Forgotthepass8 »

Operyl wrote: post #35
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…

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.

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..

:

is pretty much the optimal format for information density, which is ironic that twitch chat uses it (to mostly spam emotes)

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

#173

Post by barrkel »

aleksandrm wrote: post #91

New World, an MMORPG game by Amazon Game Studios, have recently shut down their forums and migrated completely to Discord. It has been a complete disaster, including all the forum posts that show up in Google search are now just 404. Reporting bugs is a crap shoot into the void.

Presumably this is a feature, not a bug. The forum posts will age out of the search corpus, and negative feedback - evidence of low quality - will gradually disappear.

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

#174

Post by Dudester230602 »

spankalee wrote: post #45
PaulHoule wrote: post #27

One trouble w/ things like Discord and IRC for support or community building is that frequently you get somebody with nothing better to do who "leans in" and spends more time (all the time) logged in and ends up being the face of your forum for new users. (Full disclosure, I've been that guy )

This is a real problem. My project dealt with someone who dominated discussions and frequently responded with outright false information. We tried very hard to work with them, but they wouldn't change, and after asking a lot of other maintainers how they would handle it, and giving many warnings, we eventually banned them despite them not really breaking rules per se. What ultimately convinced us banning was appropri…

At least there is some punishment for you Discord-peddling lot.

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

#175

Post by Dudester230602 »

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.

Vocal minority dominating silent majority.

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

#176

Post by [deleted] »

personjerry wrote: post #125

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…

[deleted]

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

#177

Post by OJFord »

PaulHoule wrote: post #27

One trouble w/ things like Discord and IRC for support or community building is that frequently you get somebody with nothing better to do who "leans in" and spends more time (all the time) logged in and ends up being the face of your forum for new users. (Full disclosure, I've been that guy )

That is presumably what they want though when they say they don't want (better options) getting bogged down in support - they mean they don't want to be the ones dealing with it, surely?

And I do understand, I know from experience how much basic third-party tooling/OS support questioning you can get from people not even getting as far as actually running your thing successfully.

I'm not defending Discord as a solution though.

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

#178

Post by poulpy123 »

another "dark web" I discovered few month ago is facebook. until then I was thinking that FB was just a social network for connecting people or companies but there are a crazy amount of forum-like groups with a lot of subscribers, and it's almost as invisible and unarchivable than discord

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

#179

Post by Operyl »

Dudester230602 wrote: post #175
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.

Vocal minority dominating silent majority.

Unlikely, see my other comment on the matter:

> 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.

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

#180

Post by jiofj »

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.

>You’re taking away a community from someone, and in my experience, usually it’s someone who doesn’t have many other social outlets.

This is not your problem.

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