this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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I fucking hate Discord. It's a walled garden. You need an account to see the content and you can't google shit. It might be great for real time communication, but I can't grasp how its usage has evolved beyond any of that.
Lexical (rich text editor by Facebook) recently "migrated" their Github discussions to Discord... I have a question that I can see was asked on the discussion, as it appears in my search results on DDG, but I get a 404 when I try to open it. The fuckers deleted the discussions!
Of course, Discord only has poor-quality answers to that questions as it gets asked every week and maybe gets answered in a different way every time. Quality of discussion is much lower.
This is a very Facebook-like thing to do. They are openly hostile towards everyone, including their users and advertisers. Shit stain of a company that constantly makes the worst decisions.
I fucking love Discord and use it for as much communication as possible...
...but I also agree with everything you say here
All those reddit communities who migrated to Discord are in for a shock when they pull the exact same shit in a few years.
I use it, but it's basically "Free Ventrilo but not as shit." I have nothing of any value on it. It can be yoinked behind a paywall at any time.
It's because a traditional forum has to be hosted by the project maintainer and then appeal to users enough for them to create an account there.
Compare that to Discord. Most users already have a Discord account and it's relatively easy to set up a server on there. Plus it happens to be the communication tool for young people.
It makes sense, but it's sad nonetheless.
The problem is discoverability. And that's where I don't get why anyone in their right mind would use Discord for stuff like that.
Say, you have Github, a forum or even a subreddit for your project.
Somebody asks a question, you answer it.
Somebody else has the same question. Either they are intelligent enough to find it themselves or they ask and you just link your old answer. Done.
On Discord, it's basically impossible to find an answer that is more than two screens full of posts ago. So you have to keep answering the very same questions all the time.
That's the exact point. It's not only that you can't google shit, even within Discord itself it's incredibly hard to find the relevant information. BTW, did I already say that I fucking hate Discord?
I love discord... For my group of friends and communicating with other developers (internal project communication, not user communication.) It's ass for literally everything else.
I'm starting to get the feeling that you don't approve of Discord.
It's great for real time discussion. It's terrible for anything else.
It's IRC, not a forum.
Fuck Discord! They're named after an argument because their very existence is offensive.
It's also an issue with Reddit/Lemmy though, there's a good reason why old forums have long, in depth discussions and all alternatives don't, people have to keep recreating discussions on subjects because they don't get bumped to the top even if they're popular.
Which might be seen as a positive by some people (not me).
It encourages social interaction. Every answered question becomes a valid option to ask again just a short time later. And to answer again.
It also takes the burden to search from those who have questions. Just keep the chat flowing.
Maybe it's a bit like asking people on the street for directions, instead of using your phone. Less efficient and accurate, but you might get a smile in the process.
Or you might get a "Just use your phone, you idiot. I've been answering the same question all day."
This is at least what happens a lot on these discord channels...
I apparently am not most users.
No desire to use discord in the slightest honestly.
Now that it has threads and features for communities I think it's pretty decent.
The search tool works pretty well that's usually what I use, or just check the pinned messages that links you to a GitHub or something with a FAQ