Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

discord.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 234 posts

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#31

Post by MonkeyMalarky »

jhgg wrote: post #14
aliqot wrote: post #3

Are they searchable and indexable? What made PHPBB and all that cool was that it'd turn up in search queries. As a hobbyist, this was an incredible wealth of information for me that has mostly dried up with the advent of walled gardens like slack, discord, etc. Some might point at BBS and IRC and say that those were the same, but I'd argue that they had lower volume, and less rich media, and I'd go one further to say…

There is talk about allowing public/discoverable servers to be indexed. I don't know when those plans might materialize, but it is very much top of mind for us that there is ever growing knowledge on Discord that isn't accessible via search indexes.

This would be a huge boost in adoption!

But how would it rank on google? At first there would be few to any links to content from discord.

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#32

Post by derefr »

tomtheelder wrote: post #11
moepstar wrote: post #5

I wonder why information-heavy communities chose "knowledge storage" in the form of Discord. Example: i'm looking to build a PrintNC - they've got a really good Wiki, however with all the options i'm a tiny bit overwhelmed, especially since for newcomers like me, there's so much to wrap my head around... Anyways, if i could look up the answers to my questions very probably someone has asked before on a forum, i would…

It's because people get a really large amount of value out of real (or near-real) time discussion- in many cases more than they get out of archival reference. Forums slow down the interaction time drastically . I'm plenty old enough to remember using forums and subsequently switching to chat, and the ability to work through things and problem solve increased massively. Not being able to find things later is, well, a…

> Not being able to find things later is, well, a problem for later, so it gets deprioritized vs the problems of now.

Who said anything about finding things later? I want a forum because, for niche topics/questions, slow+indexed is the only way to hope anyone will be able to answer my question at all.

I can ask a question on a forum and maybe be answered a week later, by someone who's looking through older open threads under the expectation that they can still be of help; or I can ask a question in a chatroom and the people who know aren't online, chat continues, when they come online they've missed it, and so I get my response never.

It's a key difference in assumptions, mostly due to different etiquette.

When you solve a problem you asked about in a forum thread, you tend to say that. So a forum thread that remains open with no replies is effectively "left hanging", with the author still likely to be interested in an answer. So, for the people who offer help in such forums, there can be value in looking through old open forum threads / solving "cold cases."

Meanwhile, chat messages are sort of "drive-by" things, where you'll write a thing, and then, if nobody responds, leave and never come back. You were hoping for an immediate response; you didn't get it; so you gave up. There's no expectation of someone ever coming back, or seeing a response given much later; so people don't try to offer them.

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#33

Post by freediver »

aliqot wrote: post #3

Are they searchable and indexable? What made PHPBB and all that cool was that it'd turn up in search queries. As a hobbyist, this was an incredible wealth of information for me that has mostly dried up with the advent of walled gardens like slack, discord, etc. Some might point at BBS and IRC and say that those were the same, but I'd argue that they had lower volume, and less rich media, and I'd go one further to say…

Knowledge being accessible via search engines is the main reason we are sticking to a real 'forum' vs the new Discord feature (despite having a very large Discord community).

There is a lot of sophistication needed for managing a forum so it could mean that this Discord feature is meant to address a different need.

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#35

Post by Dylan16807 »

resoluteteeth wrote: post #7

Didn't they add forum channels several months ago? Is this different? Or was it limited to certain servers and now they're rolling it out to everyone?

They're not even rolling it out to everyone apparently, since you have to be a "community" server.

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#36

Post by capableweb »

Following the guide at https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/6208479917079-... it seems I cannot add a "Forum Channel" to my own Discord channel. I only see the types "Text" and "Voice" when trying to add a new channel. Is this something that is rolling out over the next couple of days or should be possible?

Seems strange to announce something before it completely rolled out to everyone, so thinking something is wrong with my setup.

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#37

Post by Dylan16807 »

whateveracct wrote: post #18
bluetidepro wrote: post #2

I am personally very excited for this. While yes, we have gone full circle (as I'm sure many will point out), I do think this was missing from Discord for various use-cases. I'm excited to see servers I'm in evolve with this new feature.

So Discord displaces forums..and then brings them back in a worse way (walled garden, in a web app, probably no search engine indexing because they aren't actually web pages)

Maybe the next evolution is something that's both good at being a forum and good at being interactive chat.

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#38

Post by wilsonnb3 »

ronsor wrote: post #4
bluetidepro wrote: post #2

I am personally very excited for this. While yes, we have gone full circle (as I'm sure many will point out), I do think this was missing from Discord for various use-cases. I'm excited to see servers I'm in evolve with this new feature.

Since we've come full circle, I'm now wondering what new chat thing will replace Discord later this decade.

Discord voice has finally become available on Xbox and Playstation support is coming soon.

I think this is going to make it pretty difficult for potential Discord challengers to usurp it. Unless the competitor comes from a company with enough clout or money to convince Microsoft and Sony to support it.

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#39

Post by capableweb »

spankalee wrote: post #28

My OSS Project (Lit - at https://lit.dev ) just moved our community chat from Slack to Discord[1] and we couldn't be happier right now. one of the main reasons is the velocity that Discord is moving to add useful community oriented features like this. Assuming this means that Forum Channels are GA now, we're going to us them for our #ask-for-help channel to make them more organized and searchable. I think it's a grea…

Just a curious question: Why Discord instead of something like Zulip?

I myself use both for different projects, but for OSS I tend to gravitate towards Zulip, and for closed-source ones Discord.

Post reply on HN