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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

#221

Post by dotnet00 »

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…

That'd almost definitely turn me off from using that project. Whenever I'm assessing if a project is good enough to use, the first thing I check is the issues to see what bugs/missing features there are and what things users commonly need help with.

If I had to waste time digging through their discord to understand that when the issues page can give a quick overview, I wouldn't bother with the project unless it was something extremely unique and important enough to me to deal with such a mess.

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

#223

Post by petee »

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.

I'm one of the silent ones -- I see Discord and my reaction is not to let them know I dont like it, I will simply go elsewhere.

The people who have choosen to use Discord rarely care that others abhor it. And it really sets the mood: this is not a community I am welcome in.

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

#224

Post by throw0101b »

trvz wrote: post #202
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…

> 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. Have you ever seen the GitHub issues of a halfway popular repo? Once a project is big enough to attract all the low quality users, the same question/problem will be asked/reported over and over again. The maintainers will have to deal with a mess either way. They might as well choose…

> Once a project is big enough to attract all the low quality users, the same question/problem will be asked/reported over and over again.

Then set up a mailing list (Google Group?) which will be searchable, and send out a regular FAQ message to it (like in the Usenet days).

Making things easier to find via search is one way to deal with what you describe, and Discord/Slack/IRC does not allow for that.

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

#225

Post by lozenge »

bartread wrote: post #219
david-gpu wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But surely answering questions in a public discoverable website reaches more customers than a discord server. The utility provided is not the same.

I can see a trade off here: effectively we're talking about different strategies for reducing the amount of noise. With GitHub you reduce the noise because people who know how to use Google will find the relevant issue and either contribute to it or find an answer to their question. OTOH everyone else submits issues with no regard to what's already in the issues list. With Discord you do it by putting an auth wall in…

On GitHub the issue count goes up, on discord nobody sees how many questions weren't answered.

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

#226

Post by petee »

Denote6737 wrote: post #98
Operyl wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

This is a great point, especially since its a metric thats extremely difficult to track, if at all

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

#227

Post by smallerfish »

trvz wrote: post #202
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…

> 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. Have you ever seen the GitHub issues of a halfway popular repo? Once a project is big enough to attract all the low quality users, the same question/problem will be asked/reported over and over again. The maintainers will have to deal with a mess either way. They might as well choose…

Then make a (readable) FAQ with the commonly asked questions. Any project that has a large number of commonly asked questions either has major UX problems or poor documentation, or both.

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

#228

Post by toastercat »

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 )

I joined the Bun.sh Discord a couple days ago to ask a question, and it got drowned out a flood of other questions or simply people hanging out making jokes. I think this is what you're talking about.

Same thing happened to the Ripcord Discord (it's basically a stream of memes now).

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

#229

Post by Jarred »

toastercat wrote: post #228
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 )

I joined the Bun.sh Discord a couple days ago to ask a question, and it got drowned out a flood of other questions or simply people hanging out making jokes. I think this is what you're talking about. Same thing happened to the Ripcord Discord (it's basically a stream of memes now).

Sorry about this. You can join the help/help-chat in Bun’s discord to get help and that is more organized

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

#230

Post by rob74 »

numlock86 wrote: post #216
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…

> On discord, I had to log in and join their group to ask about an error message, only to find it’s a common issue and there’s a few troubleshooting steps. > On GitHub, I had to log in and search their thousands of issues to find an error message, only to find it's like three closed issues without any replies and there's one troubleshooting step in chinese. I don't see how this would be an issue exclusive with Discor…

Maybe GitHub issues are bad as a support forum, but the point that OP was trying to make (that Discord is even worse as a support forum) is still valid. On GitHub issues, you at least have a chance to find the solution for an issue yourself, on Discord you basically have to ask and hope that someone is nice (and competent) enough to answer your question.
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