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Every time the idea of using discord for support comes up, I like to retell this story: I was trying to get support for a commercial product which I paid for.
by jedberg 3y ago
Every time the idea of using discord for support comes up, I like to retell this story:
I was trying to get support for a commercial product which I paid for. They only offered support through Discord. They had set up their channel to require phone number verification.
I put in my phone number that I've had for the last 24 years and it said it was invalid. I messaged support, and instead of fixing their system, they suggested that I just borrow a phone from someone who doesn't use discord to verify my phone number. They told me "it's ok we only do it that one time so it doesn't matter".
This was from their official support. What exactly is the point of phone number verification if they officially encourage you to circumvent it?
I never did get support on that product. And it never worked again.
- pierat 3y agoWhat is this product, so we can avoid them?
- jedberg 3y agoYou're going to laugh, but I can't post the name. I think there is a bot that downvotes any mention of it, because every time I mention it, I literally get two instant downvotes. It's a piece of hardware that hooks into your car to make it self driving using software that is open source. If you google that sentence you'll probably find it. That being said, I'm not entirely mad at the company for it -- discord is the one you should be mad at for their terrible policies, security, and support.
- defrost 3y agoBeing ever curious I followed your suggestion which returned OpenPodcar. Let's see how this response pans out. Addendum: Perhaps it was Comma.ai instead? Mind you that proves nothing unless there's a bot that tracks edits to old comments .. so ..
- jedberg 3y agoInteresting, that wasn't it. C o m m a . a i
- defrost 3y agoGood catch, I should try Comma.ai and see how I fare. Addendum: 10 minutes in and no apparent bot activity; might be timezones, might be limited to a follow bot that's on your tail seeing as you're kind of a bigger name than I am.
- jedberg 3y agoYeah I haven't mentioned Comma.ai and OpenPilot in a while. Let's see what happens! Edit: So far so good 17 minutes later. Perhaps the bot is dead! Or it was a person doing it who is sleeping. :)
- defrost 3y agoI've not mentioned OpenPilot at all .. so let's ANOVA test this puppy. Edit: Ditto, 22 minutes and no up or down activity. Clearly we're dealing with bots that can pass the Turing Test :/
- nottorp 3y agoEh, it was just some fanatic that got tired / found a new religion.
- INGSOCIALITE 3y agomust be one of those new nexus 9 models
- verisimi 3y agoI think what you say about downvotes is true. Eg a comment will be popular one minute, and then suddenly it's not. I also get the issue that my overall karma goes down, while recent comment values stay the same - which could be malicious downvoting of historical comments. So, I think something odd goes on. I comment a lot, generally thoughtful comments, and yet my total karma over the past year is way down. I'm interested to hear what you think it could be. As users we have no visibility of downvotes, who gave them etc. You say bots or people - do you have any reason for thinking this? I'm interested to hear more info, if you have any thoughts.
- pierat 3y agoThank you for the heads up. Always figured a console-hacker turned semi-rogue AI car hardware maker was sketch, but this is garbage scow class. So, comma.ai is a "NO PURCHASE".
- nicetryguy 3y agoGosh, of all people, i'm interested in your thoughts particularly on using a subreddit as an official support / forum alternative.
- jedberg 3y agoWell, we did consider that use case when we added the ability to make private or restricted Reddits. I think it's a great way to do it, except for one thing -- you have to make a reddit account to get help. That would probably be barrier for some. Also given that the reddit sorts prioritize newness, it may not be the best resource for support since there is a good chance some old posts might cover a common problem. Overall there are probably better support platforms. But using a private reddit for an internal support forum would probably work really well!
- PUSH_AX 3y agoReddit search is even worse than discord.