Discord👏Is👏Not👏A👏Replacement👏For👏 Websites
Always easy to say this in hindsight.
IRC is considered unsafe too to a certain degree with pirating folks.
Also let me emphasize this: for every discord server shut down like this, there are 100+ servers with almost the same purpose that still exist and will continue to for at least the next 3y.
If you are doing development as a hobby, you just don’t have the time to use a different system, get used to that system, and then critically convince everyone else to go there too. Just look at Lemmy, I want it to be great as well but we have to accept that a few tiny steps more in the day to say usability of a system can be the difference between Twitter and Mastodon. And before ppl are saying “well Twitter was there longer”, sure but that doesn’t mean we cannot see the trend for growth that does or doesn’t exist.
Also let me emphasize this: for every discord server shut down like this, there are 100+ servers with almost the same purpose that still exist and will continue to for at least the next 3y.
you completely missed the point here:
the issue that those aren’t around NOW, the issue is that they WILL inevitably disappear eventually and every shred of knowledge platformed there will be irretrievably lost to the void.
discord is a black hole for information:
it sucks information in and deletes it from existence.
that’s why it’s bad.
the time frame doesn’t really matter here.
the issue that those aren’t around NOW, the issue is that they WILL inevitably disappear eventually and every shred of knowledge platformed there will be irretrievably lost to the void.
That’s still not really the purpose of discord, and I think you have actually missed the point. It’s not an informational archive, it’s a tech support line, and oftentimes one which can be used to improve the FAQ and documentation, which is usually found on GitHub or independently hosted, and is usually light enough in weight that it can just be copy pasted anywhere or even included in software. For much of these kinds of software, creating an incredibly comprehensive and well-organized FAQ isn’t as large of an up-front priority as mashing bugs. Of that use case, what strikes you as better, the app that everyone already uses, or IRC?
Not easily searchable, only solves the problem of the user who is currently being interacted with, and on top of that a forum does everything you mentioned but better because it is indexed in the web, meaning the next person with that problem will probably find the forum post before they contact you. No one is taking these discord chats and updating FAQs with them, and if they were, they could save that time by just having a forum that is indexed by search engines. IRC isn’t the best option, but it limits corpo takedowns like this so at least what you have doesn’t randomly get nuked one day. Altogether, moving from forums to discord is a massive downgrade and much information will be lost in the Discord Exodus that will come with time as the company consumes its users for the shareholders.
