Yes! Discord is such a black holes for good knowledge, it’s a crime
Got this issue with the Voron 3d printer project. They claim RepRap open source heritage but then hide most of the discussion behind discord’s doors.
I fucking hate Discord. It’s a walled garden. You need an account to see the content and you can’t google shit. It might be great for real time communication, but I can’t grasp how its usage has evolved beyond any of that.
All those reddit communities who migrated to Discord are in for a shock when they pull the exact same shit in a few years.
I use it, but it’s basically “Free Ventrilo but not as shit.” I have nothing of any value on it. It can be yoinked behind a paywall at any time.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I’m starting to get the feeling that you don’t approve of Discord.
It’s great for real time discussion. It’s terrible for anything else.
It’s IRC, not a forum.
Fuck Discord! They’re named after an argument because their very existence is offensive.
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.
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.
Now that it has threads and features for communities I think it’s pretty decent.
This hits home. Discord is a terrible product I don’t know why anyone likes it.
Discord != Support
Discord != Archive
Discord != Issue tracker
Discord != Update news distribution platformI could see the paradigm shifting over the years on reddit. They don’t approach the internet as a knowledge base but a personal assistant chat. That’s when I knew the value of the site was on the down swing.
I’m 50 and I have a 23 year old “RTFM” t-shirt.
Also, putting documentation in a format that has way too many features so just reading docs takes up 40% of CPU usage. Yes ,fuck you for using gitbook, i hate it so fucking much
I recently built a 3D printer where the entire community for it lives on Discord. Their website instructions are horrifically out of date because all of the current changes have been discussed at some point on Discord. What should have been a 2-4 day project turned into a 2-3 week project due to the garbage involved in trying to strain information out of a massive multi-channel group chat with terrible search.
It wastes everyone’s time. The project maintainers have to keep answering the same questions, and the users don’t have instant access to answers
Why would any sane developer want to use this system to “document” their project? Written docs have worked well for a million years and there’s no need to change them.
You can even include them in your version control system and allow others to suggest changes
And you can include separate ones right there in the root folder where the script lives. README.md renders out beautifully on GitHub.
What 3d printer is this so I can avoid it?
I’m afraid they’re talking about the Voron printers, which are really great printers.
The instructions on the Web are pretty good, unless you start messing with Tons of mods, but thats your own fault.
Requests to Discord are blocked by my company’s newest filters as “gaming”. 😶
Not wrong lol, it’s a gamer chat. It tried to rebrand as a regular chat app, but the entire gamer aesthetic says otherwise.
I mean, it’s not wrong? Discord is still primarily a gaming app built as a replacement for TeamSpeak and Ventrilo. The non-gaming use cases are still in the minority.
That’s true, but we had a work server there for voice chat
Wow. I’d be self hosting mumble for that. Or using Teams.
The only real alternatives to Discord is Matrix and Revolt. I am on both and there are a good number of people on there but they aren’t too active. Wish they would be more popular and widely used
I think you’re missing the point here. The solution to the “documentation on a chatroom” problem is not putting documentation on another chatroom.
I see a lot of things that have a discord community.
Why is this? Is it a way for someone. To earn extra money? Or do they just like that platform?
Discord is easy to setup and use. It’s basically a chatroom with history. It can help build a community. It’s also a horrible way to store/archive information because it focuses on real-time communication. At larger scale it also tends to get too noisy.
Lots of users gush over Discord for some reason. My impression is that more technically minded people don’t really like it, but your average user uses it for almost everything and encourages more services they like to use it. Hence why many reddit subs moved to Discord - the mods didn’t necessarily prefer it, but they were sent an overwhelming number of requests from their users.
Thanks for the heads up, i guess I just a bit too old to have been part of the discord group.
In the country where I live, it’s all Facebook messenger. It’s a shame as o think a number of people don’t really care for it, but everyone and every business uses it so we are kind stuck.
Yeah I mean I don’t understand it either. Telegram is bad enough for me, can’t be assed with Discord.
