• Kayn@dormi.zone
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    45
    arrow-down
    10
    ·
    1 year ago

    It’s because a traditional forum has to be hosted by the project maintainer and then appeal to users enough for them to create an account there.

    Compare that to Discord. Most users already have a Discord account and it’s relatively easy to set up a server on there. Plus it happens to be the communication tool for young people.

    It makes sense, but it’s sad nonetheless.

    • Square Singer@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      70
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      The problem is discoverability. And that’s where I don’t get why anyone in their right mind would use Discord for stuff like that.

      Say, you have Github, a forum or even a subreddit for your project.

      Somebody asks a question, you answer it.

      Somebody else has the same question. Either they are intelligent enough to find it themselves or they ask and you just link your old answer. Done.

      On Discord, it’s basically impossible to find an answer that is more than two screens full of posts ago. So you have to keep answering the very same questions all the time.

      • hardypart@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        40
        ·
        1 year ago

        That’s the exact point. It’s not only that you can’t google shit, even within Discord itself it’s incredibly hard to find the relevant information. BTW, did I already say that I fucking hate Discord?

          • Serinus@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            16
            ·
            1 year ago

            It’s great for real time discussion. It’s terrible for anything else.

            It’s IRC, not a forum.

        • AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          I love discord… For my group of friends and communicating with other developers (internal project communication, not user communication.) It’s ass for literally everything else.

      • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        1 year ago

        Live chat is a good choice for friend and making urgent decisions in software. I’ve been watching projects more and more use it for their discussions, issue trackers, and Q&A solutions and it just makes me sad. Live chat isn’t good for anything that will need to be revisited in the future. But still I see more and more communities moving to live chat solutions for their whole community.

        And that’s not to get into any of the problems with Discord specifically. I don’t love giving control over community hosting to any individual company. We’ve already seen the results several times. Google groups? Facebook groups? Reddit subreddits? All have demonstrated the problems with hosting your communities on a singular platform. Google groups is straight up gone. Facebook groups require you to sell a small part of your soul to participate. Reddit has been outright abusive towards their user base lately. Discord is vulnerable to all these problems

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        1 year ago

        It’s also an issue with Reddit/Lemmy though, there’s a good reason why old forums have long, in depth discussions and all alternatives don’t, people have to keep recreating discussions on subjects because they don’t get bumped to the top even if they’re popular.

        • Square Singer@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, discoverability is a huge issue on Lemmy, but it’s much better on Reddit.

          When I google some topic, there is a big chance that the first few results will be Reddit. Doesn’t really happen with Lemmy (yet). Hopefully they find the time and budget to work on this in the future.

        • agnosticians@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I think part of that is that most forums have terrible search functionality.

          Searching reddit via google is a meme for a reason.

          • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Sure, that’s an issue with all forums.

            What I’m talking about is on Reddit and similar platforms unless you already replied to a discussion and someone replies to you directly you don’t know that the discussion keeps going.

            On forums you see the discussion getting bumped and if you ask a question by creating a new thread and it’s already covered in an existing thread, people will refer you to it and you can continue adding to an ongoing discussion instead of the Reddit solution of being referred to a previous discussion that can’t be expanded because no one will know if you ask for more info in it.

            Just look at ADVRider for example, thousands of pages of discussion on motorcycle models that haven’t been in production for over 10 years, that’s a shit load of knowledge all in the same place!

      • Spzi@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Which might be seen as a positive by some people (not me).

        It encourages social interaction. Every answered question becomes a valid option to ask again just a short time later. And to answer again.

        It also takes the burden to search from those who have questions. Just keep the chat flowing.

        Maybe it’s a bit like asking people on the street for directions, instead of using your phone. Less efficient and accurate, but you might get a smile in the process.

        • Square Singer@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          1 year ago

          Or you might get a “Just use your phone, you idiot. I’ve been answering the same question all day.”

          This is at least what happens a lot on these discord channels…

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      1 year ago

      Subreddits and GitHub discussions exist and don’t require accounts to view nor do they require hosting anything.