Hacker News Reader

Comment by dpoljak | Hacker News Reader

Its amazing to me that it has become such a default, similarly to Slack before it. At least some Slack communities tried and worked on getting the channels indexed so that it shows up during web searches, now with discord I need an account just to view the content...

A hard pass from me, especially when an answer to a simple question requires me to drink from their firehose of a search...

View on HN

I always go with discord in newer projects. Why? I feel like most people have discord nowadays and it just works (TM). I rarely have a case where a person said that they can’t join because they don’t have discord or don’t want to create an account because other reasons.

Beside that, money is also a big factor. Slack for example is getting more expensive for communities.

It does not "just work," and you're not going to hear from me because I'm not joining yet another Discord server just to wade through searching through chat. Do a free forum. They've worked for 30 years and I might actually find my answer by Googling and won't need to even making a forum account.

With attitude like this, perhaps it is indeed for the better to not hear from you.

I actually entirely agree with you. Nobody needs to take on accommodations they don't want to. And that was kind of my point; you should be aware that choosing Discord limits your participants and also limits your participants ability to engage with your project.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing; may even be a positive aspect. In a quickly changing project, maybe it's good if your documentation isn't too "sticky" and the solution to a problem isn't low-touch "read the docs" but high-touch "ask me so that I can experience the pain points"

I agree. Search is abysmal. Discord is fine for community chat, but it’s awful as a replacement for customer support forums.

Maybe Discord just works for chat. Not for support.

They claim 150 million monthly active users. Not close to most people.

How would you expect someone to tell you they don't want to create an account? Most maintainers would consider opening an issue inappropriate I think.

Slack doesn't require phone number validation, Discord does. Try to login first time with FF on Linux and with uBlock Origin defaults and then pooof, insta ban! Guess what, your phone number is banned for validation too forever,

Reply on news.ycombinator.com