14 ms·

I don't know, a lot of the people that interact with my projects _want_ discord. They don't want a forum, they don't want Matrix. It's a matter of knowing your

by Operyl 3y ago

I don't know, a lot of the people that interact with my projects _want_ discord. They don't want a forum, they don't want Matrix. It's a matter of knowing your audience. I've been working on ways to better archive support/question threads, and the discord search isn't that terrible.

eddythompson80 3y ago
I found that part of it is the informality of it all. There is no expectation that someone will search the chat history for an answer. When you don’t get an answer, but someone after you does, you can ping on it maybe once more. Those who don’t know the answer might chime in with “hey, I don’t know but look there” In general it has a much lower barrier of entry. With all the good and bad that brings. For the record I think it’s a miss in general. But YMMV.
- Operyl 3y ago
  So like IRC? It's not like this was a new problem, we've had this problem in the past. Not everybody liked mailing lists/forums 20 years ago either.
  - eddythompson80 3y ago
    Sure, like IRC but with a better interface,
    - TylerE 3y ago
      And no netsplits/nickserv insanity.
      - Operyl 3y ago
        Or people purchasing a holding company and proceeding to take over the entire volunteer ran network a few years later. :)
        eddythompson80 3y ago
        Luckily since there is no expectation of an archive, migration is fairly straightforward if there is an alternative. If there are no alternatives, I guess they can try IRC ;)
    - RadiozRadioz 3y ago
      Better? Sure, for you maybe. Overwhelmingly the word I'd use to describe Discord's interface is "one". There is one interface. It's an interface that most people seem to like, but we've lost an important freedom there. It's against the EULA to modify your client or use an alternative one. If with IRC one can have any interface, I would not call Discord's better.
      - eddythompson80 3y ago
        Maybe it changed, but how do you share a screenshot on IRC?
        RadiozRadioz 3y ago
        Use Pidgin or The Lounge and do it like normal. Whether we should be using text chat clients as FTP clients is another issue, XMPP is better for multimedia messaging.
        voyagerfan5761 3y ago
        Some modern clients (or clients-as-services) build in image/file sharing.
  - Forgotthepass8 3y ago
    IRC had a higher barrier to entry and a lot more common expectation of kickbans for various reasons (justified or not). Plus the concept of +v doesn't really exist on discords. Sometimes you'd be stuck lurking while only a select few could speak. And frankly being able to embed images/videos degrades the seriousness in various ways as it can become a bit of a meme/comedy competition (and they scroll disproportionately more text off. And avatars mean less space is actually text.. <[@+]?shortnick>: <text> is pretty much the optimal format for information density, which is ironic that twitch chat uses it (to mostly spam emotes)
- TylerE 3y ago
  Some degree of informational amensia is a good thing. We've all hit the "I need to do X, but every page on google tells me how to X in Version N-1, and it doesn't work like that any more".
  - bmacho 3y ago
    I don't understand your example. How does "informational amnesia" help against "I need to do X, but every page on google tells me how to X in Version N-1, and it doesn't work like that any more"? If you can't find a solution, you should ask on the Q&A channel, regardless of informational amnesia or not.
- RHSeeger 3y ago
  > There is no expectation that someone will search the chat history At least part of that is that the search in Discord is horrifyingly bad, and isn't available via search engines. I don't mine Discord as a place to ask questions / discuss; but it's far less dysfunctional when combined with a wiki.
bsder 3y ago
What people want is a forum that doesn't require another blasted login and yet another inscrutable navigation system. What forum owners want is to not have to deal with idiotic user logins and spam. Both sides think Discord is good enough even though it isn't. The problem is that everything else is so much worse.
- Operyl 3y ago
  I try not to argue against my users for "what is best for them." If they overwhelmingly want Discord, I'll give them Discord. The goal is to be ready to jump ship if need be, and there's a few ways to do that.
  - bsder 3y ago
    Your users don't want Discord, in particular. They want something better. Unfortunately, "user login" is an expensive cesspit of failure. Discourse would probably be doing better if they actually ran a login provider rather than outsourcing it all.
    - Operyl 3y ago
      Discourse has either integrated logins and OAuth2 third party login. I implemented both. Honestly I’m rather enjoying everybody telling me they know my users better than I do. I polled pretty extensively and got a good amount of non power user and power user responses.
      - bsder 3y ago
        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 ...
        3y ago
muzani 3y ago
Could be a bias too. I really dislike Discord. I'm on too many discords. It's just one of those network effect things that I wish wasn't everywhere. I'm happy with searchable public chat support. Unfortunately, discord seems to be the best way to do this. I think I do want a forum, but I probably wouldn't use it because signing in is too much effort. Maybe if forums had shared profiles and better mobile support, they'd be used more.
- Operyl 3y ago
  I tried launching a forum, I spent a _lot_ of time setting up Discourse and proper CDN/uploads etc. I didn't go all out, only a few categories based on what was commonly needed (like 5?). I did this _before_ I resorted to Discord as the only point of help. People begrudgingly used it... It got to the point where I was asked "why aren't you using Discord like everyone else in this space?" enough that I asked my power users on the forum, and the broader internet via other channels, and most people overwhelmingly wanted Discord. In particular, of note, my power users on the forums wanted it. After switching, the number of people asking for help significantly increased, and we gained a fair number of new power users willing to help those people out too.
  - Denote6737 3y ago
    Here is the thing. You may be seeing more people seeking help because they are repeating the same questions again. Where as before they found the thread with the answer. To me this is the biggest drawback for discord over forums.
    - Operyl 3y ago
      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.
kobstrtr 3y ago
You could get help automating support with tools like awesomeqa or kapa.ai
muchwhales 3y ago
"Where your audience is, go you must" - Master Yoda, probably
0xpgm 3y ago
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 message describing the problem clearly and what you have tried to do and still failed. Well, good luck finding any thread from discord on Google. The chat interface also wants you to post one liner chats without taking the time to properly describe the scenario. Chat platforms can exist but should not be the official support channels.
- kynetic 3y ago
  Woah this is an incredibly good point I hadn't even considered before now. After years of finding solutions to problems in obscure threads on forums I'd never have visited otherwise, I had never even considered the fact that the only way to do similar with discord is to not only have an account, but be a member of the specific discord guild, and then search that specific guild for specific keywords. That's actually mind-blowingly horrifying.
  - BanazirGalbasi 3y ago
    This is one of the most common reasons I've seen people use to push back on Discord for support, and the article somewhat brings it up in points 3 and 4. It's not publicly scrapable or anonymously accessible, nor can you archive it and host the information elsewhere if it goes down. Even the forum channels they introduced aren't useful in those regards.
    - another_story 3y ago
      You're allowed bots, so why can't we archive it and make it more easily searchable? Those programming channels with QA style threaded answers would be great to log and make searchable. Is it against Discord's ToS or something?
Karrot_Kream 3y ago
HN has a particular culture that dislikes social media and due to the nature of these sites, once a culture is established, it attracts more of the same since everyone upvotes the dominant cultural position. Discord is social media, so it's bad, not like the good old days of forums/mailing lists/newsgroups/IRC/whatever. Listen to your users. My personal fear with Discord is the audience. Discord has a lot of kids and the likelihood of having kids come into your server and troll you or ask low-effort questions is much higher than Slack. But if your users want Discord, then you should use Discord. There's nothing gained by telling your users what to like.
- rexf 3y ago
  Sure if your customers want to use discord and you're ok with putting your community there, then go for it. I don't think you can assume everyone wants to be on discord. I certainly loathe adding yet another discord or slack community that frankly I don't check. Nobody has time to keep up with dozens or hundreds of discord communities (it's very easy to join one). I prefer any online community that is searchable (via Google, site search, etc) so that I can find answers and past discussion without having to ask the same question for the 100th time in the channel.
- hunter2_ 3y ago
  > Discord is social media, so it's bad, not like the good old days of forums/mailing lists/newsgroups/IRC/whatever. How is Discord more social than the other systems you mentioned? I consider something to be social (social media, social network, etc.) when the primary utility manifests as a function of establishing friends, followers, or whatever similar jargon. That is: if the content presented to me is primarily generated by users who I've selected, while content generated by users I haven't selected is unavailable or relegated to lower tiers of functionality, then it's a social network/medium. In other words, it's the product of subscribing primarily to people (regardless of what they might discuss) rather than to topics (regardless of who participates). I don't see Discord in this way. Isn't it more about subscribing to topics than to people? I realize you're not speaking for yourself, but for the HN hivemind; my question remains.
  - 3y ago
roenxi 3y ago
There are a lot of contextual questions raised by that though - are the people who interact with the project the community? How many people are being interacted with? What are the goals of said community? 2-3 people can seem like a huge crowd and a complete consensus in the right context. It is still a handful of people. And the fact is that Discord (and Slack) is long-term-toxic to building up knowledge in a community. There isn't an available body of records to figure out what the history of the community is and what topics have been considered in the past. It is completely unsuitable for recording Q&A. It isn't terrible as a support forum, but even then anything that can be crawled by a search engine has some serious advantages if the community cares about people who are in the silent majority.
Dudester230602 3y ago
Vocal minority dominating silent majority.
- Operyl 3y ago
  Unlikely, see my other comment on the matter: > I tried launching a forum, I spent a _lot_ of time setting up Discourse and proper CDN/uploads etc. I didn't go all out, only a few categories based on what was commonly needed (like 5?). I did this _before_ I resorted to Discord as the only point of help. People begrudgingly used it... It got to the point where I was asked "why aren't you using Discord like everyone else in this space?" enough that I asked my power users on the forum, and the broader internet via other channels, and most people overwhelmingly wanted Discord. In particular, of note, my power users on the forums wanted it. After switching, the number of people asking for help significantly increased, and we gained a fair number of new power users willing to help those people out too.
- petee 3y ago
  I'm one of the silent ones -- I see Discord and my reaction is not to let them know I dont like it, I will simply go elsewhere. The people who have choosen to use Discord rarely care that others abhor it. And it really sets the mood: this is not a community I am welcome in.
Forgotthepass8 3y ago
Is it possible to somehow bridge discord and, say issues on GitHub or another forum so that people can use discord but the information is just pulled from other sources and they're redirected there?
toastercat 3y ago
It's popular because it's familiar, but also people because are so impatient they want real-time and fast responses to their questions. But then you get a flooded channel of questions being drowned out by memes. So then you use the Discord forum feature to solve that problem. But then you may as well have used Discourse.
GhostWhisperer 3y ago
survivorship_bias.BMP if all you have is discord that's what you'll see if you have a forum/gh-issues there are a lot of visitors who won't bother you but will get their answer

by Operyl 3y ago

eddythompson80 3y ago

I found that part of it is the informality of it all. There is no expectation that someone will search the chat history for an answer. When you don’t get an answer, but someone after you does, you can ping on it maybe once more. Those who don’t know the answer might chime in with “hey, I don’t know but look there” In general it has a much lower barrier of entry. With all the good and bad that brings. For the record I think it’s a miss in general. But YMMV.

Operyl 3y ago
So like IRC? It's not like this was a new problem, we've had this problem in the past. Not everybody liked mailing lists/forums 20 years ago either.
- eddythompson80 3y ago
  Sure, like IRC but with a better interface,
  - TylerE 3y ago
    And no netsplits/nickserv insanity.
    - Operyl 3y ago
      Or people purchasing a holding company and proceeding to take over the entire volunteer ran network a few years later. :)
      - eddythompson80 3y ago
        Luckily since there is no expectation of an archive, migration is fairly straightforward if there is an alternative. If there are no alternatives, I guess they can try IRC ;)
  - RadiozRadioz 3y ago
    Better? Sure, for you maybe. Overwhelmingly the word I'd use to describe Discord's interface is "one". There is one interface. It's an interface that most people seem to like, but we've lost an important freedom there. It's against the EULA to modify your client or use an alternative one. If with IRC one can have any interface, I would not call Discord's better.
    - eddythompson80 3y ago
      Maybe it changed, but how do you share a screenshot on IRC?
      - RadiozRadioz 3y ago
        Use Pidgin or The Lounge and do it like normal. Whether we should be using text chat clients as FTP clients is another issue, XMPP is better for multimedia messaging.
      - voyagerfan5761 3y ago
        Some modern clients (or clients-as-services) build in image/file sharing.
- Forgotthepass8 3y ago
  IRC had a higher barrier to entry and a lot more common expectation of kickbans for various reasons (justified or not). Plus the concept of +v doesn't really exist on discords. Sometimes you'd be stuck lurking while only a select few could speak. And frankly being able to embed images/videos degrades the seriousness in various ways as it can become a bit of a meme/comedy competition (and they scroll disproportionately more text off. And avatars mean less space is actually text.. <[@+]?shortnick>: <text> is pretty much the optimal format for information density, which is ironic that twitch chat uses it (to mostly spam emotes)
TylerE 3y ago
Some degree of informational amensia is a good thing. We've all hit the "I need to do X, but every page on google tells me how to X in Version N-1, and it doesn't work like that any more".
- bmacho 3y ago
  I don't understand your example. How does "informational amnesia" help against "I need to do X, but every page on google tells me how to X in Version N-1, and it doesn't work like that any more"? If you can't find a solution, you should ask on the Q&A channel, regardless of informational amnesia or not.
RHSeeger 3y ago
> There is no expectation that someone will search the chat history At least part of that is that the search in Discord is horrifyingly bad, and isn't available via search engines. I don't mine Discord as a place to ask questions / discuss; but it's far less dysfunctional when combined with a wiki.

bsder 3y ago

What people want is a forum that doesn't require another blasted login and yet another inscrutable navigation system. What forum owners want is to not have to deal with idiotic user logins and spam. Both sides think Discord is good enough even though it isn't. The problem is that everything else is so much worse.

Operyl 3y ago
I try not to argue against my users for "what is best for them." If they overwhelmingly want Discord, I'll give them Discord. The goal is to be ready to jump ship if need be, and there's a few ways to do that.
- bsder 3y ago
  Your users don't want Discord, in particular. They want something better. Unfortunately, "user login" is an expensive cesspit of failure. Discourse would probably be doing better if they actually ran a login provider rather than outsourcing it all.
  - Operyl 3y ago
    Discourse has either integrated logins and OAuth2 third party login. I implemented both. Honestly I’m rather enjoying everybody telling me they know my users better than I do. I polled pretty extensively and got a good amount of non power user and power user responses.
    - bsder 3y ago
      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 ...
      - 3y ago

muzani 3y ago

Could be a bias too. I really dislike Discord. I'm on too many discords. It's just one of those network effect things that I wish wasn't everywhere. I'm happy with searchable public chat support. Unfortunately, discord seems to be the best way to do this. I think I do want a forum, but I probably wouldn't use it because signing in is too much effort. Maybe if forums had shared profiles and better mobile support, they'd be used more.

Operyl 3y ago
I tried launching a forum, I spent a _lot_ of time setting up Discourse and proper CDN/uploads etc. I didn't go all out, only a few categories based on what was commonly needed (like 5?). I did this _before_ I resorted to Discord as the only point of help. People begrudgingly used it... It got to the point where I was asked "why aren't you using Discord like everyone else in this space?" enough that I asked my power users on the forum, and the broader internet via other channels, and most people overwhelmingly wanted Discord. In particular, of note, my power users on the forums wanted it. After switching, the number of people asking for help significantly increased, and we gained a fair number of new power users willing to help those people out too.
- Denote6737 3y ago
  Here is the thing. You may be seeing more people seeking help because they are repeating the same questions again. Where as before they found the thread with the answer. To me this is the biggest drawback for discord over forums.
  - Operyl 3y ago
    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.

kobstrtr 3y ago

You could get help automating support with tools like awesomeqa or kapa.ai

muchwhales 3y ago

"Where your audience is, go you must" - Master Yoda, probably

0xpgm 3y ago

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 message describing the problem clearly and what you have tried to do and still failed. Well, good luck finding any thread from discord on Google. The chat interface also wants you to post one liner chats without taking the time to properly describe the scenario. Chat platforms can exist but should not be the official support channels.

kynetic 3y ago
Woah this is an incredibly good point I hadn't even considered before now. After years of finding solutions to problems in obscure threads on forums I'd never have visited otherwise, I had never even considered the fact that the only way to do similar with discord is to not only have an account, but be a member of the specific discord guild, and then search that specific guild for specific keywords. That's actually mind-blowingly horrifying.
- BanazirGalbasi 3y ago
  This is one of the most common reasons I've seen people use to push back on Discord for support, and the article somewhat brings it up in points 3 and 4. It's not publicly scrapable or anonymously accessible, nor can you archive it and host the information elsewhere if it goes down. Even the forum channels they introduced aren't useful in those regards.
  - another_story 3y ago
    You're allowed bots, so why can't we archive it and make it more easily searchable? Those programming channels with QA style threaded answers would be great to log and make searchable. Is it against Discord's ToS or something?

Karrot_Kream 3y ago

HN has a particular culture that dislikes social media and due to the nature of these sites, once a culture is established, it attracts more of the same since everyone upvotes the dominant cultural position. Discord is social media, so it's bad, not like the good old days of forums/mailing lists/newsgroups/IRC/whatever. Listen to your users. My personal fear with Discord is the audience. Discord has a lot of kids and the likelihood of having kids come into your server and troll you or ask low-effort questions is much higher than Slack. But if your users want Discord, then you should use Discord. There's nothing gained by telling your users what to like.

rexf 3y ago
Sure if your customers want to use discord and you're ok with putting your community there, then go for it. I don't think you can assume everyone wants to be on discord. I certainly loathe adding yet another discord or slack community that frankly I don't check. Nobody has time to keep up with dozens or hundreds of discord communities (it's very easy to join one). I prefer any online community that is searchable (via Google, site search, etc) so that I can find answers and past discussion without having to ask the same question for the 100th time in the channel.
hunter2_ 3y ago
> Discord is social media, so it's bad, not like the good old days of forums/mailing lists/newsgroups/IRC/whatever. How is Discord more social than the other systems you mentioned? I consider something to be social (social media, social network, etc.) when the primary utility manifests as a function of establishing friends, followers, or whatever similar jargon. That is: if the content presented to me is primarily generated by users who I've selected, while content generated by users I haven't selected is unavailable or relegated to lower tiers of functionality, then it's a social network/medium. In other words, it's the product of subscribing primarily to people (regardless of what they might discuss) rather than to topics (regardless of who participates). I don't see Discord in this way. Isn't it more about subscribing to topics than to people? I realize you're not speaking for yourself, but for the HN hivemind; my question remains.
- 3y ago

roenxi 3y ago

There are a lot of contextual questions raised by that though - are the people who interact with the project the community? How many people are being interacted with? What are the goals of said community? 2-3 people can seem like a huge crowd and a complete consensus in the right context. It is still a handful of people. And the fact is that Discord (and Slack) is long-term-toxic to building up knowledge in a community. There isn't an available body of records to figure out what the history of the community is and what topics have been considered in the past. It is completely unsuitable for recording Q&A. It isn't terrible as a support forum, but even then anything that can be crawled by a search engine has some serious advantages if the community cares about people who are in the silent majority.

Dudester230602 3y ago

Vocal minority dominating silent majority.

Operyl 3y ago
Unlikely, see my other comment on the matter: > I tried launching a forum, I spent a _lot_ of time setting up Discourse and proper CDN/uploads etc. I didn't go all out, only a few categories based on what was commonly needed (like 5?). I did this _before_ I resorted to Discord as the only point of help. People begrudgingly used it... It got to the point where I was asked "why aren't you using Discord like everyone else in this space?" enough that I asked my power users on the forum, and the broader internet via other channels, and most people overwhelmingly wanted Discord. In particular, of note, my power users on the forums wanted it. After switching, the number of people asking for help significantly increased, and we gained a fair number of new power users willing to help those people out too.
petee 3y ago
I'm one of the silent ones -- I see Discord and my reaction is not to let them know I dont like it, I will simply go elsewhere. The people who have choosen to use Discord rarely care that others abhor it. And it really sets the mood: this is not a community I am welcome in.

Forgotthepass8 3y ago

Is it possible to somehow bridge discord and, say issues on GitHub or another forum so that people can use discord but the information is just pulled from other sources and they're redirected there?

toastercat 3y ago

It's popular because it's familiar, but also people because are so impatient they want real-time and fast responses to their questions. But then you get a flooded channel of questions being drowned out by memes. So then you use the Discord forum feature to solve that problem. But then you may as well have used Discourse.

GhostWhisperer 3y ago

survivorship_bias.BMP if all you have is discord that's what you'll see if you have a forum/gh-issues there are a lot of visitors who won't bother you but will get their answer