Discord is only good for live conversation. Forums are good for information consolidation and general long term discussions about anything.
Comment on Discord Users Threaten Exodus Over Age Verification Face Scan Controversy
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago“No good reason” homie you ever use a forum?
Discord is so much better for real time conversations. The biggest problem is to the point of this thread, discoverability is non-existent, you have to join the discord to be able to search for what you need.
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Actively troubleshooting an issue in discord is easier then making a forum post and going back and forth that way, which is why it has moved to discord organically.
Murdoc@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
It’s not easier, just faster, and that’s only if someone who can answer your question happens to be on at the same time you are. Asynchronous communication does not require that, and has the added bonus of keeping the solution easily available for others to find by themselves rather than taking up someone’s time. So it is far more efficient. If you can’t find the answer to your problem after trying and genuinely need a solution right away, that is what live support is for.
And I think that a big part of why so many have moved their support to discord is the long standing (and annoying) habit of people trying to use only one tool for everything. Sure, you can use a hammer on a screw, but it’s not a good idea.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
“Asynchronous communication has the added bonus of keeping the solution easily available” no, that’s not a feature of asynchronous communication in the slightest.
Forums can and do go down or get deleted, there’s nothing inherent to it that makes it stay any longer then discord messages.
I’ll keep banging this drum for those who still don’t get it, the problem is DISOVERABILITY. Discord does not make conversations in their version of forums or threads accessible to outside users and that is actually where it goes wrong. Nothing about real time discussion limits indexability its simply how discord decided to go and to your point, people want everything in one place so they use the convenience provided by discord.
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Totally pointless if you can’t actually find it lol
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
You can jf you join the discord and search lmao, but I already said that the issue is discoveraviloty outside of the discord environment so I’m not arguing that point.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
Yeah but real time communication is not what this comment was about. The issues is that its being used as a social hub that replaces forums entirely. So when people ask questions about a topic they will do so in some shitty discord channel and the information (both question and answer) will be lost in the un-searchable, un-taggable, un-indexable discord black hole.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
It actually is, you’re just not connecting the dots.
The people use discord already to game and talk with buddies, developers of various apps/services then use it for similar and answering questions or troubleshooting issues in real-time.
Forums are archaic and difficult by comparison, don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the situation either, but I understand how and why we got to this place, and what would solve the problem is if that data was indexed in a way that search engines could use them, but because you have to have a discord account and join the server and have access to that particular section because of how discord is designed it is not really possible.
I actually freaurntly find helpful information in discord servers using search, but again, agree that it is not designed well for what its been forced into by network effect and convenience.
GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
There’s nothing intrinsically bad or “archaic” about forums. It’s the forum platforms that sucked for some people. It took some thought and work to manage a forum. The only advantage a Discord server had was that it’s simple enough, a brain damaged squirrel could run one. It saved you from having to do your homework and just created a simple plug-and-play space that required no skill on the owner/mods part.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
I literally used forums for over a decade, grew up on them, ran my own phpbb and vBulletin, forums suck when real time communication with the same features and MORE exists.
stardust@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
More permanent than discord, can archive it, and most important of all shows up in web searches and not needing an account to lool through them.
Like for example number of times Linux forums have popped up for solutions I’ve been looking for.