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I use Discord quite a bit in the Elixir community and find it quite useful. Messages are persisted. There's a wonderful forum feature now built into the platfor

I use Discord quite a bit in the Elixir community and find it quite useful. Messages are persisted. There's a wonderful forum feature now built into the platform; and it's all searchable with a pretty robust filtering mechanism. And with an active server, there's typically always someone around to help you chat through a problem almost immediately. I understand the sentiment, but it does seem misinformed. Slack, on the other hand. Absolutely! Stay away for anything related to knowledge-base.

Nevolihs 2y ago
A single example of it being done well doesn't have any bearing on all the issues stemming from the use of Discord as knowledge bases, wikis and documentation. Out of curiosity, is any of that useful information on the Elixir Discord available to be searched for with Google or any other search engine?
- barkerja 2y ago
  > Out of curiosity, is any of that useful information on the Elixir Discord available to be searched for with Google or any other search engine? It is not, and that is the one major knock against Discord. But see my response above about that.
moooo99 2y ago
I don’t think the sentiment is misinformed. I understand your position and I’ve had pleasant experiences on discord in the past with people being very willing to help. However, the help I received for my problem is basically impossible to discovered for anybody else (in fact, I have a hard time finding this thread myself). Discord is really great for realtime interactions, wether that be chatting or talking. But it absolutely sucks at retrieving information generated in the past. It’s not search engine indexable and the discord search itself usually isn’t of any help either. On conventional forums on the other hand, I have learned so much from reading threads from the past. Recently I’ve been diving a bit deeper into construction and I’ve found a forum in my native language. There are so many treasures there: experts from the field sharing experiences and advising on issues, people linking relevant threads, people asking questions and whole threads evolving from that. Sure, there is quite a bit of „toxic“ forum interaction as well, but there are so many gems that would absolutely be undiscoverable if the same interactions would happen on discord
- codingcodingboy 2y ago
  I am already distracted enough and now you are getting me interested into construction!
  - moooo99 2y ago
    Yeah I apologize, I fell into that rabbit hole purely by accident, but it is really really interesting and considering the current prices to get a home built, maybe even practically applicable some day :D
- barkerja 2y ago
  > On conventional forums on the other hand, I have learned so much from reading threads from the past. I agree, this is a great value. I don't argue against forums, they need to exist. I was just pointing out that Discord, in my experience, has not been a place of disdain like the original post claims. Discord has done a lot of work to help foster a good community for all types, especially for the software development communities. If you haven't yet experienced Discord's forum feature, it's worth at least exploring. Here's an example from the Elixir community: https://share.barkerja.dev/4o8Ozk.png https://share.barkerja.dev/4o8Ozk.png If Discord ever did decide to make this content SEO, what then becomes the major point _against_ something like Discord and your traditional forum?
thefz 2y ago
> I use Discord quite a bit in the Elixir community and find it quite useful. Messages are persisted. There's a wonderful forum feature now built into the platform; and it's all searchable with a pretty robust filtering mechanism. Still have to register though and the content is not indexed by a search engine.

Nevolihs 2y ago

A single example of it being done well doesn't have any bearing on all the issues stemming from the use of Discord as knowledge bases, wikis and documentation. Out of curiosity, is any of that useful information on the Elixir Discord available to be searched for with Google or any other search engine?

barkerja 2y ago
> Out of curiosity, is any of that useful information on the Elixir Discord available to be searched for with Google or any other search engine? It is not, and that is the one major knock against Discord. But see my response above about that.

moooo99 2y ago

I don’t think the sentiment is misinformed. I understand your position and I’ve had pleasant experiences on discord in the past with people being very willing to help. However, the help I received for my problem is basically impossible to discovered for anybody else (in fact, I have a hard time finding this thread myself). Discord is really great for realtime interactions, wether that be chatting or talking. But it absolutely sucks at retrieving information generated in the past. It’s not search engine indexable and the discord search itself usually isn’t of any help either. On conventional forums on the other hand, I have learned so much from reading threads from the past. Recently I’ve been diving a bit deeper into construction and I’ve found a forum in my native language. There are so many treasures there: experts from the field sharing experiences and advising on issues, people linking relevant threads, people asking questions and whole threads evolving from that. Sure, there is quite a bit of „toxic“ forum interaction as well, but there are so many gems that would absolutely be undiscoverable if the same interactions would happen on discord

codingcodingboy 2y ago
I am already distracted enough and now you are getting me interested into construction!
- moooo99 2y ago
  Yeah I apologize, I fell into that rabbit hole purely by accident, but it is really really interesting and considering the current prices to get a home built, maybe even practically applicable some day :D
barkerja 2y ago
> On conventional forums on the other hand, I have learned so much from reading threads from the past. I agree, this is a great value. I don't argue against forums, they need to exist. I was just pointing out that Discord, in my experience, has not been a place of disdain like the original post claims. Discord has done a lot of work to help foster a good community for all types, especially for the software development communities. If you haven't yet experienced Discord's forum feature, it's worth at least exploring. Here's an example from the Elixir community: https://share.barkerja.dev/4o8Ozk.png https://share.barkerja.dev/4o8Ozk.png If Discord ever did decide to make this content SEO, what then becomes the major point _against_ something like Discord and your traditional forum?

thefz 2y ago

> I use Discord quite a bit in the Elixir community and find it quite useful. Messages are persisted. There's a wonderful forum feature now built into the platform; and it's all searchable with a pretty robust filtering mechanism. Still have to register though and the content is not indexed by a search engine.