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Also, why would anyone want to use Discord as a forum? It's horrible, not easily searchable, and you need a proprietary app. Nothing good about it.

Tomte 2y ago
You can use your web browser, as well.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  It is still shitty as well. UI/UX are terrible.
  - benatkin 2y ago
    It’s about the same as the desktop app. It doesn’t feel like a web app. The desktop app is better because it doesn’t feel out of place. It’s not a bad UI/UX IMO, but it can take some getting used to. For the notifications I have to check several options such as “silence @everyone and @here”. Sometimes I find the updates annoying. But it’s among the best chat UIs I’ve tried.
    - trilbyglens 2y ago
      Chat is a poor replacement for forums.
    - jacobgkau 2y ago
      It's definitely good UX for a chat app. It was good UX from the beginning, when they had a dark mode before a light mode and made voice chat not require installing anything (which was many peoples' first real-world exposure to WebRTC technology). It's poor UX for a support forum where you want communication to be one-to-many as much as possible (to spread info to the largest number of people with the smallest amount of info producer effort as possible).
      - benatkin 2y ago
        How about the new forum style channels?
        jacobgkau 2y ago
        Those actually are bad UX, imo. In the servers I've seen implement them, they devolve into basically chat anyway. People still re-ask questions because the search functionality is the same as searching chat, which people weren't doing before. The layout still favors short messages over in-depth posts. (I do find Discourse to be among the worst web forum software, and I can see similarities between Discourse and the Discord forum-style channels, so some of this may come down to personal preference. Discourse always felt too recency-biased and ephemeral to me compared to e.g. MyBB or phpBB, for example.) Keep in mind also that it's still behind the walled garden of Discord's authentication and hosting. Imagine if you had to install the Tapatalk app to actually access any InvisionFree/ZetaBoards/Tapatalk/etc forums back in the day. It was annoying enough that mobile users were nagged to, but it would've been unthinkable to require desktop users to. (And being able to launch the app in your browser, while removing friction to "installation," isn't the same thing as actually being on the web-- search engines can't index Discord channels, Discord messages don't have human-readable URLs to share elsewhere, etc.) Edit: Also, very relevantly to this thread, you can't just grab a webpage snapshot to archive a Discord channel like you could with forum threads. You've got to either take a screenshot (while dealing with scrolling) or scrape the data via the API, being careful not to trip bot protections or violate ToS, and then figure out how to present it separately.
    - NikkiA 2y ago
      It feels like an electron app, which I would argue IS bad UI/UX.
      - benatkin 2y ago
        Subjectively it doesn’t feel like one to me.
CSMastermind 2y ago
I'm shocked so many companies use Discord for official purposes.
- arkh 2y ago
  > I'm shocked so many companies use Discord for official purposes. Going back in time you can replace it with: Discourse, forums, website, IRC. New generations of devs / manager decide to use "the current tool" to connect with their users. Too bad they also think it a good idea to nuke the older channels.
  - sirtaj 2y ago
    This time, the "current tool" doesn't allow searching via the web. Most discord forums I'm on are basically black holes in which questions keep getting repeated.
    - reddalo 2y ago
      Exactly, it doesn't even help the owners themselves, because people will keep asking the same things over and over again. It's not like a forum where you can easily search by topic.
      - pavel_lishin 2y ago
        The owners do not care as much, because they're not the ones who answer the questions - a cadre of "volunteers" do.
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  I’ve launched projects that became bigger and discord is just kind of expected when building from the ground up and great for corralling a community I mentally categorize larger established organizations as something different but logically I can’t really see the difference, so I understand why I also understand the negatives of that particular platform for getting information efficiently but I understand why they do it
oblio 2y ago
You can just use the website. Edit: It's <<Discourse>>, not <<Discord>>. Edit 2: Oh, they moved from Discourse to Discord :-)) That is just messed up.

Tomte 2y ago

You can use your web browser, as well.

prmoustache 2y ago
It is still shitty as well. UI/UX are terrible.
- benatkin 2y ago
  It’s about the same as the desktop app. It doesn’t feel like a web app. The desktop app is better because it doesn’t feel out of place. It’s not a bad UI/UX IMO, but it can take some getting used to. For the notifications I have to check several options such as “silence @everyone and @here”. Sometimes I find the updates annoying. But it’s among the best chat UIs I’ve tried.
  - trilbyglens 2y ago
    Chat is a poor replacement for forums.
  - jacobgkau 2y ago
    It's definitely good UX for a chat app. It was good UX from the beginning, when they had a dark mode before a light mode and made voice chat not require installing anything (which was many peoples' first real-world exposure to WebRTC technology). It's poor UX for a support forum where you want communication to be one-to-many as much as possible (to spread info to the largest number of people with the smallest amount of info producer effort as possible).
    - benatkin 2y ago
      How about the new forum style channels?
      - jacobgkau 2y ago
        Those actually are bad UX, imo. In the servers I've seen implement them, they devolve into basically chat anyway. People still re-ask questions because the search functionality is the same as searching chat, which people weren't doing before. The layout still favors short messages over in-depth posts. (I do find Discourse to be among the worst web forum software, and I can see similarities between Discourse and the Discord forum-style channels, so some of this may come down to personal preference. Discourse always felt too recency-biased and ephemeral to me compared to e.g. MyBB or phpBB, for example.) Keep in mind also that it's still behind the walled garden of Discord's authentication and hosting. Imagine if you had to install the Tapatalk app to actually access any InvisionFree/ZetaBoards/Tapatalk/etc forums back in the day. It was annoying enough that mobile users were nagged to, but it would've been unthinkable to require desktop users to. (And being able to launch the app in your browser, while removing friction to "installation," isn't the same thing as actually being on the web-- search engines can't index Discord channels, Discord messages don't have human-readable URLs to share elsewhere, etc.) Edit: Also, very relevantly to this thread, you can't just grab a webpage snapshot to archive a Discord channel like you could with forum threads. You've got to either take a screenshot (while dealing with scrolling) or scrape the data via the API, being careful not to trip bot protections or violate ToS, and then figure out how to present it separately.
  - NikkiA 2y ago
    It feels like an electron app, which I would argue IS bad UI/UX.
    - benatkin 2y ago
      Subjectively it doesn’t feel like one to me.

CSMastermind 2y ago

I'm shocked so many companies use Discord for official purposes.

arkh 2y ago
> I'm shocked so many companies use Discord for official purposes. Going back in time you can replace it with: Discourse, forums, website, IRC. New generations of devs / manager decide to use "the current tool" to connect with their users. Too bad they also think it a good idea to nuke the older channels.
- sirtaj 2y ago
  This time, the "current tool" doesn't allow searching via the web. Most discord forums I'm on are basically black holes in which questions keep getting repeated.
  - reddalo 2y ago
    Exactly, it doesn't even help the owners themselves, because people will keep asking the same things over and over again. It's not like a forum where you can easily search by topic.
    - pavel_lishin 2y ago
      The owners do not care as much, because they're not the ones who answer the questions - a cadre of "volunteers" do.
yieldcrv 2y ago
I’ve launched projects that became bigger and discord is just kind of expected when building from the ground up and great for corralling a community I mentally categorize larger established organizations as something different but logically I can’t really see the difference, so I understand why I also understand the negatives of that particular platform for getting information efficiently but I understand why they do it

oblio 2y ago

You can just use the website. Edit: It's <<Discourse>>, not <<Discord>>. Edit 2: Oh, they moved from Discourse to Discord :-)) That is just messed up.