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I used Discord for support at my last company. It was amazing. It takes a while to bootstrap the community, but once you do, it becomes a huge asset. Here are t

by rcme 3y ago

I used Discord for support at my last company. It was amazing. It takes a while to bootstrap the community, but once you do, it becomes a huge asset. Here are the biggest benefits: 1. Real-time user feedback. Discord is conversational. If someone gives feedback on your product, you can quickly have a conversation about the exact issue they're facing and you can propose solutions to see how they feel. 2. User retention. When users have such immediate access to the product's developers, it makes their opinions feel helpful and useful and drives user retention. 3. User collaboration. Once your community gets big enough, users start to collaborate together. This might be directly in the product (if it's a collaborative product), but can also take the shape of brainstorming improvements and feedback. 4. Community help. Over time, members of your community becomes experts in your product and they help newer users onboard. This frees up a lot of dev time that would have been spent providing support. Personally, I find the opinion that "it's not indexable" a little silly. How many times have you searched an arcane error and been brought to a mailing list? More often than not, the indexed email never received a reply. If it did, the answer is unlikely to solve your problem. Combing through conversations is not an efficient means of documentation. We use our community feedback to get a lot of signal about what's missing from our documentation and then update it accordingly. 10 users came in this week asking about feature X? That means we need to update our documentation, etc.

isoprophlex 3y ago
The "its not indexable" used to be a lot less silly but I'm afraid you're entirely right. We have a web that has itself become almost unsearchable (due to SEO spam, google shitting the bed with their search quality in general, everything becoming a walled garden, everyone jacking up API prices/hoarding their data against LLMs) I think that the death of the searchable web in general is to blame, and is driving this shift to Discord. Not so much the individual developers, for them its a net win as you say. We need the "ozempic web": 2023 scale but lighter, indexable, un-walled, with less bullshit filler and attention grabbing monetization. Until that happens, we can hate the players all we want but it's the game itself that is crooked.
kaycebasques 3y ago
There are two key differences between what you're describing and what Terence Eden is describing: 1. You have succeeded at integrating Discord into documentation processes. You get feedback on X and then make sure to update the docs to discuss X. Eden is saying that a lot of projects just answer about X in Discord and then never get around to updating the docs to discuss X. 2. Your team responds to Discord messages promptly. A lot of teams drag their feet or don't respond whatsoever.
asynchronous 3y ago
Sure, maybe for straight support items or collaboration but for actual _documentation_ if it only lives on your Discord that is a straight sin
Salgat 3y ago
For support? Absolutely. For documentation? Absolutely not.
donmcronald 3y ago
> Personally, I find the opinion that "it's not indexable" a little silly. How is that silly? I know there’s threading now, but it has to be used by everyone. If you find someone that asked the same question you have, but without a reply, is it unanswered or answered out of the thread 1000 messages down the page? Without threading it’s a disaster. > How many times have you searched an arcane error and been brought to a mailing list? Tons, but forums were even better. I never get answers, or at least good answers, via Discord or Slack. It barely takes anything for my question to get pushed up the page and then no one sees it. If someone does answer, it’s often a naive, enthusiastic person that doesn’t even understand the problem I’m having. I used to post a lot on forums. I’d post well tested, reproducible examples that exactly demonstrated my problem. I’d also take an “ask a question, answer a question” approach where I’d skim the first page or two of unanswered questions and leave a reply if I knew something off the top of my head. Almost every Discord or Slack “support” channel I’ve tried is terrible. They’re a way for companies to reduce support by shifting the expectations towards ignoring users. Drone (CI) did this recently. Their Slack channel is nothing but users asking questions (at least for the several days I saw before unsubscribing from emails). I think the real reason Discord, etc. are popular is because it’s low effort. No one expects you to come in with a fully baked example. It’s a conversation. So instead of the old expectation that you’d come prepared with a concrete example of your problem, you just blurt out some half-assed question and wait for someone to prompt you and hold your hand through the whole issue. The price for that is the loss of people that want to participate in a high effort community rather than an emoji filled meme-fest with content splattered at mile-5 on the 1k mile continuous scroll. At least that’s my opinion.
- rcme 3y ago
  > Tons, but forums were even better. I never get answers, or at least good answers, via Discord or Slack. It barely takes anything for my question to get pushed up the page and then no one sees it. If someone does answer, it’s often a naive, enthusiastic person that doesn’t even understand the problem I’m having. People on forums were free to ignore your posts as well, but they didn't, because they cared about their users. Discord isn't the cause of indifferent dev teams.
- alwaysbeconsing 3y ago
snthd 3y ago
>How many times have you searched an arcane error and been brought to a mailing list? More often than not, the indexed email never received a reply. If it did, the answer is unlikely to solve your problem. Combing through conversations is not an efficient means of documentation. Usually it's a stackoverflow post or an issue on a bug-tracker. Discord redirects information away from those open venues. Sometimes the answers are how I discover the project. On the other hand I care about FLOSS and not startups with proprietary code, so it may just be a different thing (mainly customer focus).
Buttons840 3y ago
This seems like a matter of perspective. As the product owner, having an active Discord would be amazing--easy dopamine hits everywhere. It's selection bias. Of course the conversations the owner participates in turn out well. What about the other conversations? What about that question that just nobody responded to and 3 hours later people start talking about something else and buried the question? Well, the company never saw that question. The company does not see what it does not see--selection bias.
- rcme 3y ago
  Why would we miss a message?
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Everytime I am in a remotely active discord this always happens. 502 new messages since 9am. Then if you scroll while reading the app it scroll jacks as it fetches new messages.
    - rcme 3y ago
      Is this activity across all the servers you're a member of or is it a social Discord? Just my personal experience, but there isn't too much chatter on product-focused Discord servers so it's easier to get to every message. I also have a totally separate Discord account that I use and make sure every message to the server ends up as a push notification to my phone.
      - kjkjadksj 3y ago
        If its that slow then you might as well just run a mailing list instead. More of your current and potential users know and understand email than discord.
        rcme 3y ago
        I can confidently say our users would be 100x less likely to sign up for a mailing list. From a user perspective, Discord is much better than email. When you give out your email, it's basically giving an entity carte blanche to spam you. With Discord, the user is more in control of when and how they interact with your community.
Zak 3y ago
> How many times have you searched an arcane error and been brought to a mailing list? When I search an error message, I'm usually brought to a mailing list, forum, Reddit, or Stackoverflow - often all of those. More often than not, one of them has either a solution or a clue that gets me closer to a solution. My problem gets solved and I don't have to waste someone else's time.

by rcme 3y ago

isoprophlex 3y ago

The "its not indexable" used to be a lot less silly but I'm afraid you're entirely right. We have a web that has itself become almost unsearchable (due to SEO spam, google shitting the bed with their search quality in general, everything becoming a walled garden, everyone jacking up API prices/hoarding their data against LLMs) I think that the death of the searchable web in general is to blame, and is driving this shift to Discord. Not so much the individual developers, for them its a net win as you say. We need the "ozempic web": 2023 scale but lighter, indexable, un-walled, with less bullshit filler and attention grabbing monetization. Until that happens, we can hate the players all we want but it's the game itself that is crooked.

kaycebasques 3y ago

There are two key differences between what you're describing and what Terence Eden is describing: 1. You have succeeded at integrating Discord into documentation processes. You get feedback on X and then make sure to update the docs to discuss X. Eden is saying that a lot of projects just answer about X in Discord and then never get around to updating the docs to discuss X. 2. Your team responds to Discord messages promptly. A lot of teams drag their feet or don't respond whatsoever.

asynchronous 3y ago

Sure, maybe for straight support items or collaboration but for actual _documentation_ if it only lives on your Discord that is a straight sin

Salgat 3y ago

For support? Absolutely. For documentation? Absolutely not.

donmcronald 3y ago

> Personally, I find the opinion that "it's not indexable" a little silly. How is that silly? I know there’s threading now, but it has to be used by everyone. If you find someone that asked the same question you have, but without a reply, is it unanswered or answered out of the thread 1000 messages down the page? Without threading it’s a disaster. > How many times have you searched an arcane error and been brought to a mailing list? Tons, but forums were even better. I never get answers, or at least good answers, via Discord or Slack. It barely takes anything for my question to get pushed up the page and then no one sees it. If someone does answer, it’s often a naive, enthusiastic person that doesn’t even understand the problem I’m having. I used to post a lot on forums. I’d post well tested, reproducible examples that exactly demonstrated my problem. I’d also take an “ask a question, answer a question” approach where I’d skim the first page or two of unanswered questions and leave a reply if I knew something off the top of my head. Almost every Discord or Slack “support” channel I’ve tried is terrible. They’re a way for companies to reduce support by shifting the expectations towards ignoring users. Drone (CI) did this recently. Their Slack channel is nothing but users asking questions (at least for the several days I saw before unsubscribing from emails). I think the real reason Discord, etc. are popular is because it’s low effort. No one expects you to come in with a fully baked example. It’s a conversation. So instead of the old expectation that you’d come prepared with a concrete example of your problem, you just blurt out some half-assed question and wait for someone to prompt you and hold your hand through the whole issue. The price for that is the loss of people that want to participate in a high effort community rather than an emoji filled meme-fest with content splattered at mile-5 on the 1k mile continuous scroll. At least that’s my opinion.

rcme 3y ago
> Tons, but forums were even better. I never get answers, or at least good answers, via Discord or Slack. It barely takes anything for my question to get pushed up the page and then no one sees it. If someone does answer, it’s often a naive, enthusiastic person that doesn’t even understand the problem I’m having. People on forums were free to ignore your posts as well, but they didn't, because they cared about their users. Discord isn't the cause of indifferent dev teams.
alwaysbeconsing 3y ago

snthd 3y ago

>How many times have you searched an arcane error and been brought to a mailing list? More often than not, the indexed email never received a reply. If it did, the answer is unlikely to solve your problem. Combing through conversations is not an efficient means of documentation. Usually it's a stackoverflow post or an issue on a bug-tracker. Discord redirects information away from those open venues. Sometimes the answers are how I discover the project. On the other hand I care about FLOSS and not startups with proprietary code, so it may just be a different thing (mainly customer focus).

Buttons840 3y ago

This seems like a matter of perspective. As the product owner, having an active Discord would be amazing--easy dopamine hits everywhere. It's selection bias. Of course the conversations the owner participates in turn out well. What about the other conversations? What about that question that just nobody responded to and 3 hours later people start talking about something else and buried the question? Well, the company never saw that question. The company does not see what it does not see--selection bias.

rcme 3y ago
Why would we miss a message?
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Everytime I am in a remotely active discord this always happens. 502 new messages since 9am. Then if you scroll while reading the app it scroll jacks as it fetches new messages.
  - rcme 3y ago
    Is this activity across all the servers you're a member of or is it a social Discord? Just my personal experience, but there isn't too much chatter on product-focused Discord servers so it's easier to get to every message. I also have a totally separate Discord account that I use and make sure every message to the server ends up as a push notification to my phone.
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      If its that slow then you might as well just run a mailing list instead. More of your current and potential users know and understand email than discord.
      - rcme 3y ago
        I can confidently say our users would be 100x less likely to sign up for a mailing list. From a user perspective, Discord is much better than email. When you give out your email, it's basically giving an entity carte blanche to spam you. With Discord, the user is more in control of when and how they interact with your community.

Zak 3y ago

> How many times have you searched an arcane error and been brought to a mailing list? When I search an error message, I'm usually brought to a mailing list, forum, Reddit, or Stackoverflow - often all of those. More often than not, one of them has either a solution or a clue that gets me closer to a solution. My problem gets solved and I don't have to waste someone else's time.