this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
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Unfortunately, a lot of fandom communities, video games, and (ugh) hobbyist development projects have Discard servers instead of a forum or similar.
It provides a weird IRC-but-not-really type experience that is similar to MSN in some ways. A lot of younger people flock to it because they find computer stuff difficult and they just want it to work, be easy, and have an app. The UI is trendy even though it's horrible to actually navigate due to all the wasted space and buttons.
I really just think it caught on at the right time, though the video calling is pretty good. What I have a problem with is that you need to join a server to access any information inside of it, so it's not searchable from outside of the Discord ecosystem. For dev projects or large communities, that sucks and makes the internet a worse place.
Personally I originally went to Discord because it was the alternative to skype which was increasingly becoming shittier and shittier when Microsoft bought it.
Discord is great as chat program. It should've only ever been used for that. It completely sucks as forum replacement. Discord should've had very little value to any decent organization.
Yes, that's how I ended up there too. At the time, Skype sucked and Mumble/Ventrilo/etc. were seen as too old-school for my friends (and a lot of them didn't have PCs, just smartphones). We also tried Google Meet, Zoom, and Facebook Messenger at various points but Discord always seemed like the most reliable.
I have a hobby development project with a modest community and maintain a Discord server basically because it's necessary in order to avoid reducing my potential community reach by at least 50%.
I'm active on GitHub and respond to comments and issues there. I maintain an official thread for my project on the official forum for the game it's related to. I also keep all documentation, downloads, and guides off Discord and on the clearnet. Discord is still easily 80% or more of where people look for information about the project.
That's great - I am obviously not talking about you in that case. I understand why people want to use it, I just don't think Discord's features are good enough to justify the mass adoption and the walled garden and UI are bad.
Yeah, I'm just sort of also complaining because it feels like I have to use it.