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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

#241

Post by PaulHoule »

tapland wrote: post #160
Fradow wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been there. On a Discord I used to moderate, there were a few people like that who did not really break any rule, or not in an egregious enough manner to deserve a ban individually A rule was made for that situation: "If the effort and/or stress associated with moderating you regarding rules or general behavior becomes too much of an issue, we will remove you from the server.". That rule has been used a few time…

Oh, why didn't it strike me to put that rule in writing. Some users waste hours and hours of moderator time per week and it would be nice to have a written rule to point to for a timeout

I use to run a lot of tasks on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and the hardest problem I had was the people I call “Superturkers” who would do a very high volume of work that is just barely acceptable in quality.

On some level they are very hard working and if I banned them it would take longer to get my tasks completed. If they did 5% of the work that they do the low quality wouldn’t bother me because (1) a little of that diluted in the whole is OK and (2) the individuals would not come to my attention.

With some feedback some of those people might get better (I was always open to paying more for quality) but I also didn’t want to get into arguments with those folks.

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

#242

Post by denton-scratch »

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

A support forum is not a "social outlet".

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

#243

Post by twic »

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 immediately thought of volunteer moderator ÆrosTwiceChastened53: https://achewood.com/2005/02/10/title.html

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

#245

Post by ljm »

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…

I think sometimes people want communities rather than projects so they go the whole hog with realtime chat: IRC, slack, gitter, discord, etc.

Personally I find it a barrier to entry since I have no desire to sit around in a chat room where support is typically blended with shitposting, infighting and drama.

At least perhaps consider a middle ground like Discourse or phpBB.

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

#246

Post by dazzawazza »

AeroNotix wrote: post #240

I've noticed this trend with younger developers. I can't help but feel it's related to hustle culture and attempting to foster a community that they can then monetize.

I too have noticed this. I put it down to a generation that has grown up where their entire existence is recorded and critiqued 24x7. Discord offers them a sandbox to express themselves and if they need to, they can delete their account. Effectively anonymizing their indiscretions, mistakes or honest opinions they no longer hold.

The younger generations live a hellish existence where they are locked in time unable to grow as humans, perpetually judged by the mistakes of their younger selves.

Doesn't change the fact that discord support sucks though for all the reasons mentioned this these threads.

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

#247

Post by skydhash »

hutzlibu wrote: post #123
Operyl wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I rather like the approach of editing the original question/solution.

I believe we need the history, especially when dealing with legacy versions. The first thing I usually check is the date or contexts to infer it.

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

#248

Post by saalweachter »

maccard wrote: post #181
Lacerda69 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is absolute garbage, no idea why people praise it so much. Scams all around and garbage products - ill take a bad return policy any day over that.

I've had 0 scams on Amazon in 15(?) Years of using it. I had one "new" product that was clearly opened, and two clicks on their website later I had a pickup ordered from my door the following day and a replacement in the way. That's why people praise it.

So I bought a six pack of socks off Amazon once. Seemed like a low risk purchase. They arrived looking like any other sock. New packaging, didn't see anything wrong with it. Socks looked new.

They didn't feel new. You know that new sock feel you only get fresh from the package, before they've been washed? They didn't have that.

I don't know if these were factory reject socks that failed QC after the fabric softener ran out or some sort of counterfeit sock or just some sort of error that could happen anywhere, but I will never forget my Amazon marketplace betrayal.

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

#249

Post by pjc50 »

echelon wrote: post #165
csnover wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the difference between banning in the aughts versus now. Banning used to come with a lot of consideration and sympathy. Often multiple attempts to outreach were made. In the social media era, not only do we ban without prejudice, we shadow ban (leaving them to think they're talking to people), ban on presumption (banning Redditors based on other subreddits they use), and take joy in shutting down those we dis…

People have got worse, there are far more of them than in the early days, and the online/offline boundary has collapsed. And I think as we've all got older we become accustomed to the sad truth that misbehavior slides seem to rarely be recoverable. People lean in to their awfulness, until something terrible and offline happens.

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

#250

Post by lsaferite »

bgribble wrote: post #214
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…

> 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." Ha…

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.
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