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What's the most petty/pointless/pedantic hill you're willing to die on?
(programming.dev)
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this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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Discord is not a good replacement for support forums. Discord isn’t searchable by search engines.
Historically, if I had an issue with a product and I googled “[product] [issue]” I’d be met with a support forum post, with someone describing the same issue. I could read the thread to find how they resolved it. I don’t actually have to interact with the post at all, and I don’t need to ask the same question again. For most (decent) forums I don’t even need to make an account just to read the post.
Discord throws that all out the window. Now I’m met with a “JoiN OUr dIScoRd SerVEr to GEt suPPorT” page. Nothing is searchable via a search engine. And Discord’s server searchability (even in the app) has always been, at best, absolute dogshit. You already need to know exactly which text thread things were posted in, (because you can’t search the entire server at once), and you need to know exactly what was said, (because there’s no fuzzed search terms).
So 99% of the time, you just end up asking the same question that has already been asked a hundred times in the past, and now you need to wait for someone to respond. It also puts a lot more strain on the support staff, because they’re answering the same question a hundred times instead of just the once in a forum.
And don’t come at me with the “but Discord recently added a support forum feature where people can start threads and save the conversation for later” bullshit. That’s a band-aid, at best. It still isn’t searchable via search engines, so it means the above issues with Discord’s search function still apply, and the forum function is essentially useless as support forums.
Lastly, why the fuck should I be forced to join another server just to get support? What if I don’t have a discord account? What if I live in a region that Discord doesn’t support? What if I just plain don’t want to clog up my server sidebar with dozens of servers that I have only visited once? What if I just really hate the fact that your server has been configured to push notifications for every single message by default? What if I just fucking want to google my issue, and get an answer without any further effort?
And that's assuming they even have a support staff. Most of the time I see this bullshit, it's small dev teams maintaining niche software with less than the bare minimum of documentation.
The only problem I have with your stance is that it's not petty, pointless nor pedantic. It's a plague on the world of software. Discord is terrible for the use-case it's intended for (group chats), why the fuck are people using it for their community forums????
OP asked for petty/pointless/pedantic hills. Did you miss that?
I’d argue that this is petty, because you’re still technically able to get support for your issue in the end. It just takes a lot more effort in everyone involved; More effort on your end to actually get support, and more effort on support staff because they have already answered your question a hundred times further up the thread.
No. Using discord is unacceptable. It's not pettiness.
To be fair, the people that dont use discords search function also wouldn't use a forums search function. If discord was more effort as you say, people wouldn't use it.
"Please read our pinned posts and click these unrelated icons to indicate the topics you'd like to argue about."
It's also terrible for occasional discussion. A forum I can read the titles, go to the discussion I'm interested in, and read all the context. Discord if I'm not keeping up withe channel constantly I need to try to find where the relevant context for the current conversation starts, and hopefully it's one I'm interested in.
You're completely right. The only reason it exists as such a platform is because they've made the barrier to entry so low with plugins. Collecting payment through patreon, user ACL on the platform. It's simply the lowest hanging fruit.
I agree with all of your post but you can search the entire server at once. If it autofills the channel you're either on mobile or used ctrl+F, and you can just remove it as a parameter.
Works the other way around as well, like you can search in a specific channel by adding "in:#channelname" in your search box.
Still hate it though. But I wanted to point out that it's a teeny bit less stupid.