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I wish all software products would do that. Chat applications are like a busy town square where everybody is yelling into the crowd and important information do

I wish all software products would do that. Chat applications are like a busy town square where everybody is yelling into the crowd and important information doesn't survive the moment, while a discussion forum will eventually grow into a public library which preserves information and makes it searchable (assuming that search engines have access to the information of course).

warthog 3y ago
Oh certainly - I go ballistic whenever I see a Discord link for support or community
- mnky9800n 3y ago
  At the very least discord doesn't make threads which get lost in the channel like slack. But both suffer without tools like telegram which automatically catalogs all links, files, images, etc into tabs. But at the end of the day a chat system isn't meant to be documentation. It's meant to be chat. If you and me talk in the hallway, we wouldn't then tell a colleague oh yeah we figured it out in the hallway don't worry. We would try and document it somehow so that it's useful later.
  - georgyo 3y ago
    Discord does have threads, just that they are so heavy weight and even less discoverable that they don't get much use.
  - xp84 3y ago
    “We figured it out in the hallway, go play back the recording from the hallway recording system until you find the bit where we addressed it”
- tchock23 3y ago
  Glad to hear I’m not the only one. It makes me irrationally angry when I see Discord being the support channel for a product.
- JCharante 3y ago
  What next.js does is pretty neat. They have discord but they have a bot that mirrors all the help threads onto a public website so that it can be indexed by search engines
jelling 3y ago
Huh? Have you not used the search feature in Slack or Discord? Whether it's a forum or a chat, the data structure is largely the same, especially with Slack/Discord as they have threads.
- fasterik 3y ago
  It's a bit disingenuous to pretend like they're the same thing. Explicit design for threaded discussion encourages a different style of communication than design primarily intended for real-time chat. Even if the information exists somewhere in Discord/Slack, it's often harder to find, harder to link to, provides less context, requires login and access to a specific community, isn't indexed by search engines, etc.
- wwweston 3y ago
  I have. Sometimes it does its job. The problem with their search is that it’s only their search — no other engine can index it. And then the medium tends to make discussion a ripple in a pond rather than a running discussion.
- n8cpdx 3y ago
  I’ve never succeeded with slack chat. Basically I just have to remember when a conversation happened and go to that time and scroll until I see it. Even if I remember most of the words of a message I’m searching for. Outlook is the reigning champion of terrible search, but don’t Slack is the runner up.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  > Have you not used the search feature in Slack or Discord? I have. Discord, in particular, has the worst search function I've ever seen in my life, or close to it.
- xp84 3y ago
  Come on. Discord or slack is like a forum where you have every post ever made on a topic in a single thread, 92,000 pages long. Sure, you can use search, but the nature of chat means that once you find one message (say, where a question was asked) you have to then skim through other discussions also going on at the time — often many of them — wondering if anyone answered the question, or if the discussion might continue after each interruption. It’s okay for some applications I guess, but it’s the worst replacement for a forum, wiki, or knowledge base I’ve ever seen.
d0mine 3y ago
Both chat & forum have their uses: you help specific person (interactive ephemeral back-n-forth in the moment) in chat. While a forum (/stackoverflow) is oriented more to future readers from google (asynchronous updatable reusable info). Mixing both produces conflicting goals and disappointment due to wrong expectations (e.g., it happens with StackOverflow when some expect it to be the former rather than the latter).
rcxdude 3y ago
Discussion forums often turn into a black hole for information as well. IMO they aren't something to aspire for in terms of storing and organising information, whatever their advantages and disadvantages compared to a chatroom.

warthog 3y ago

Oh certainly - I go ballistic whenever I see a Discord link for support or community

mnky9800n 3y ago
At the very least discord doesn't make threads which get lost in the channel like slack. But both suffer without tools like telegram which automatically catalogs all links, files, images, etc into tabs. But at the end of the day a chat system isn't meant to be documentation. It's meant to be chat. If you and me talk in the hallway, we wouldn't then tell a colleague oh yeah we figured it out in the hallway don't worry. We would try and document it somehow so that it's useful later.
- georgyo 3y ago
  Discord does have threads, just that they are so heavy weight and even less discoverable that they don't get much use.
- xp84 3y ago
  “We figured it out in the hallway, go play back the recording from the hallway recording system until you find the bit where we addressed it”
tchock23 3y ago
Glad to hear I’m not the only one. It makes me irrationally angry when I see Discord being the support channel for a product.
JCharante 3y ago
What next.js does is pretty neat. They have discord but they have a bot that mirrors all the help threads onto a public website so that it can be indexed by search engines

jelling 3y ago

Huh? Have you not used the search feature in Slack or Discord? Whether it's a forum or a chat, the data structure is largely the same, especially with Slack/Discord as they have threads.

fasterik 3y ago
It's a bit disingenuous to pretend like they're the same thing. Explicit design for threaded discussion encourages a different style of communication than design primarily intended for real-time chat. Even if the information exists somewhere in Discord/Slack, it's often harder to find, harder to link to, provides less context, requires login and access to a specific community, isn't indexed by search engines, etc.
wwweston 3y ago
I have. Sometimes it does its job. The problem with their search is that it’s only their search — no other engine can index it. And then the medium tends to make discussion a ripple in a pond rather than a running discussion.
n8cpdx 3y ago
I’ve never succeeded with slack chat. Basically I just have to remember when a conversation happened and go to that time and scroll until I see it. Even if I remember most of the words of a message I’m searching for. Outlook is the reigning champion of terrible search, but don’t Slack is the runner up.
Turing_Machine 3y ago
> Have you not used the search feature in Slack or Discord? I have. Discord, in particular, has the worst search function I've ever seen in my life, or close to it.
xp84 3y ago
Come on. Discord or slack is like a forum where you have every post ever made on a topic in a single thread, 92,000 pages long. Sure, you can use search, but the nature of chat means that once you find one message (say, where a question was asked) you have to then skim through other discussions also going on at the time — often many of them — wondering if anyone answered the question, or if the discussion might continue after each interruption. It’s okay for some applications I guess, but it’s the worst replacement for a forum, wiki, or knowledge base I’ve ever seen.

d0mine 3y ago

Both chat & forum have their uses: you help specific person (interactive ephemeral back-n-forth in the moment) in chat. While a forum (/stackoverflow) is oriented more to future readers from google (asynchronous updatable reusable info). Mixing both produces conflicting goals and disappointment due to wrong expectations (e.g., it happens with StackOverflow when some expect it to be the former rather than the latter).

rcxdude 3y ago

Discussion forums often turn into a black hole for information as well. IMO they aren't something to aspire for in terms of storing and organising information, whatever their advantages and disadvantages compared to a chatroom.