this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
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Opinion: When you are trying to build a community it is more important to use whatever platform your users can be found on than to be a purist.
but discord is simply less accessible than any other option. I can't even login without identifying 25 bicycles lmao
That’s just not true. I’m no discord fan but less accessible? They have an app for the mobile platforms as well as pc/mac, and browser-based support as well.
But oh no, they have a captcha!!! So much less accessible!!! The fuck you talking about
Logging into a non-indexible proprietary service just to be able to read the documentation definitely does not contribute to accessibility.
And often the documentation is nowhere to be seen.
Nonsense! All you have to do is individually search each channel on the discord server and you just might find a brief thread discussing your issue 6 months ago, and then you just have to scroll for three minutes to find the comment with the resolution
/s
I'm sorry but where is this random assumption that the documentation is on discord coming from?? It is extremely common for projects/organisations to have some kind of community discord, but I have never seen one that used it as their main documentation host. The discord are almost always just community hubs to chat with other community members.
I think the term documentation can and should include bug reports, community questions and answers, and project examples and guides that are often only shared in Discord servers in recent years.
Most of these servers would be better off as discussion forums, but spam and ancient software have really hurt them. Young web devs need to start giving a shit about open web again. Time to make something better than phpbb, wordpress, and discord.
Then I must be missing a lot of projects, because I don't know of any which use discord for any of these things, besides questions and answers. And even then, only for informal stuff. Anything more serious goes on GitHub (or alternatives) or forums.
I run into this most often for video game mods' and fan ROM hacks' support communities; they might host their projects on GitHub, but any and all technical support happens exclusively on their Discord server.
For that stuff, yeah, Discord is trash. But for communicating and support it's definitely not a bad choice.
Obviously something like a Lemmy or Reddit community does both and would be better, or even a forum board
If I can't read or even search it without creating an account then it's pretty useless as an information source. Same issue with Twitter and Instagram.
A free account does not make something inaccessible.
That is absolutely bullshit, furthermore Discord is there for DISCOURSE, it’s not a goddamn wiki to be read and done with. Jesus Christ.
Putting everything on discord makes information unsearchable via search engines, which is objectivily not great. This recent habit is contributing to killing the web.
On a more subjective note, I just don't like it. On the top of my head : Confusing interface, wont' shut up about nitro, requires a phone number.
https://www.answeroverflow.com/
It's kind of stupid this even has to exist tbh
I don't understand what this is, can you explain? Apologies if it's obvious.
It is a bot that these communities on discord can invite to specific channels that will index the discussion to provide a search engine interface. Ideally search engines could leverage the answeroverflow API to help people get access to the technical discussion that now happens in discord instead of forums or mailinglists which do come up in search engine results.
Thanks!
also data collection
On the other hand, discord is a great way to help organize a community wiki.
Opinion: Not if that community advertises itself to know/care about open source. Using a proprietary, privacy unfriendly service which uses predatory marketing to get people to spend money on bs stuff and arbitrarily paywall functionalities is both anti open source and anti people. Its enabling those companies. One could maybe argue for a strict bridge which only server to connect those who resist foss platforms.
"I've built an off-grid support group. Join us on Facebook."
Exactly :)
Counterpoint: If said community is about a certain type of software, decisions over the type of platform matter more than popularity within teenagers. Coherence is important.
Well, i can't be there because the only provider doesn't accept my (mandatory) phone number.
I honestly think that's the big part there. You can build a great app but it doesn't matter if no one is using it and you don't get feed back or it's not shared around.
So, here we are trying to use the newest virtual 3rd space to create a community so that there is people will feel engaged in the product and share it around to add more.
But that's also an issue with discord. It wants to be a social space more than a useful space and it usually gets entirely dominated by a few users with others less inclined to add in. It's also accessible but not easy necessarily to stumble into if you are outside of the community trying to look into it more.
It just does the wrong job, slower and less efficient than old school forums or wikis, but it's the tools we have to use in this less efficient connected Internet of the now.
if you're trying to build a chatroom then any chat software goes but if you're trying to build a community you should probably use something searchable and indexed, like real community software
also i find it laughable that users must already be on such platform, by your logic all communities should be mailing lists
You may find it laughable but it is what it is. Most people does not enjoy signing up for specific product forums. It's much easier to just add yet another discord server to the list.
Set up a Matrix space, bridge the channels to Discord. Everyone wins.
(But don't use IM outside of its useful scope regardless)
Lot of bridge bots for linking Matrix and Discord along with IRC
...Don't use community software, got it.