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

Don't use Discord as your Q&A forum

kraktoos.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 355 posts

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

#341

Post by merdaverse »

herbst wrote: post #199
cultureswitch wrote: post #188

It's kind of incredible that this even needs to be said. Discord is a great piece of software for organizing ephemeral communications. Voice chat works well. That's 99% of the value of Discord. It also absolute dogshit as a persistent store of information. Stack Overflow-style Q&A is the definitive good choice for Q&A documentation.

I wouldn't even go that far. There is not a single other popular communication software out there that a) has a pretty shitty client that wastes resources and leaks ram but b) bans account when they use better alternative clients That's the most toxic environment I could imagine to communicate with

Interesting thing is this is a React bug that seems to be trapped in limbo: https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/16087

More details here: https://discord.com/blog/investigating-discords-react-memory...

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

#342

Post by balyedi »

azangru wrote: post #253
throw0101b wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Discord/Slack/IRC does not allow for that Sorry for a stupid question; but does not Discord have full-text search?

Discord search kinda sucks

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

#345

Post by JohnFen »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #257
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…

I guess what I'm wondering is, what are people trying to prevent or protect by moving to Discord? On one hand, I don't see Discords as any different to web forums, except with no personal control and the knowledge barriers removed. In that way, they're not really different from the defunct AOL communities or Yahoo Groups of yesteryear, outside of their inability to be conveniently scraped or archived. Can you port yo…

> I don't see Discords as any different to web forums

A rather huge difference is that you have to sign up in order to use Discord. You usually don't in order to search web forums. Signing up for something is a pretty huge ask.

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

#346

Post by cgriswald »

Pannoniae wrote: post #343
cgriswald wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a pretty singular experience.

All of us have a singular experience, I only shared mine because it wasn't matching with yours. What's wrong with it?^^

To the degree that anything is 'wrong', it's your argument. You haven't experienced a thing even indirectly, therefore, you conclude, anyone else who claims to have experienced this thing must be lying (at least to themselves) to make themselves feel better about bad actions which harm others. This is just cynicism.

Your argument also requires the hidden assumption that the person making the claim you disagree with (specifically me), was the person performing the action rather than the recipient of the action. While it is true I have ended relationships (including permabans), it was by being the recipient of such endings that I came by my knowledge so this assumption in a practical sense is false.

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

#347

Post by dredmorbius »

Fradow wrote: post #157
spankalee wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

A general principle I've used in moderation is that after I admonish someone about a behaviour what I expect is that they will scrupulously seek to keep as far clear of that line as possible.

If they're hovering right over it, they're out, based on the administrative burden principle.

The other rule is that all arguments with moderators are short, and lost.

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

#348

Post by piaste »

azangru wrote: post #253
throw0101b wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Discord/Slack/IRC does not allow for that Sorry for a stupid question; but does not Discord have full-text search?

Discord has the most infuriating search I've ever seen. It's fuzzy by default and you can't turn the fuzziness off - there's no way to search for a literal phrase, or even a literal word.

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

#349

Post by warthog »

jraph wrote: post #100
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.

I'm appalled by the number of people answering this comment very negatively / quickly dismissing the self hosting option with a hostile tone. Guys, it was very common for (side-)projects to self host a forum in the 2000s, what changed since then so that many people find this unreasonable? Or are you a vocal minority? It's not like you have to host a service that needs 5 figures SLA. I understand that people may not l…

So true

If you don't care about the project, why even open up a Discord server you will never look at? The point with open forums is to get feedback and provide customer support

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

#350

Post by bsder »

Operyl wrote: post #340
bsder wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what plans do you or your users have for when Discord enshittifies? As always: nothing. When Discord enshittifies, all your data will go down the drain. Or, if you disappear, all the user data goes down the drain even though Discord will continue to exist. But, hey, logins are easy and nobody needs to learn anything new. And so it goes ...

Please read my other replies, although it is fair to ask me this! Like I have noted, I do have some plans to jump ship if it comes to it. I have the vast majority of my user base on a mailing list for announcements (security related and important administrative, not promotional). If push came to shove I’d use it to make an announcement. I always have a backup for discourse immediately, and I have an archive dump of a…

> Do not assume the worst of posters, some of us are just as smart as you I promise, it isn’t fair to assume I had no plans :).

I will apologize directly to you for my assumptions being incorrect. It is unfair for me to paint everyone with the same brush.

However, sadly, you are the first person I have had to apologize to for this.

Nobody else I have ever interacted with has anything remotely resembling a plan for leaving Discord.

Post reply on HN