Yes, this exactly! I still cannot fathom how Discord took off. It offers literally no advantages over forums, and introduces some massive disadvantages.
Discord is better than IRC in any way except available clients, while also doing voice/video chat rooms so it replaced Teamspeak/Mumble. With the additional (at first) paid streamers and being free it took off especially with younger audiences. I remember how terrible Skype was and Discord just worked.
Modern web IRC clients like The Lounge or Convos can now display images, play mp3 and mp4 formats, and they have upload options. It can still be excellent for real time support, but I’m not so sure about documentation though.
It took off because it was objectively the best catch-all communication option for gamers at the time. It’s still the best option for certain use cases like that, but I’ll never understand why people prefer it for projects, troubleshooting, updates, etc. It seems incredibly lazy and unserious to me. And the current Discord mobile layout is absolutely horrible, making for a totally miserable user experience.
I hated back in 2015 when people were leaving other communication platforms for the lesser option of Discord
Even today Discord still doesn’t have directional chat and you can’t be in multiple calls at once
At least mods help mask all the other missing features
Discord didn’t, and still doesn’t, require a download. Easier for people to pick up and easier to use on locked down computers.
I’m unfamiliar with Directional Chat outside of things like VRchat, how that work if you’re not manipulating your position in space relative to other users?
tbf discord is good for organizing activities in games with online multiplayer. definitely shouldn’t be used for documentation in place of forums though.
At the beginning it originally had an appeal that anyone could create a voice chat server for free in a matter of seconds.
Teamspeak needed a hosted dedicated server. Skype was “calls” and not communities. Mumble was hardly known.
I completely accept why it took off but I hate where it has gone. it’s over complicated and feature creeped electron shite
Counter-counterpoint: He did eat something off his foot in front of an audience.
Joining via server invites that guide you through sign up, no dedicated server to host (I know, major downside for people who don’t want all their stuff centralized to Discord’s servers), GUI server admin tools, etc.
I think devs tend to vastly overestimate how tech-savvy the average person is. Bring up hosting, DNS, port forwarding, terminal, etc. and they’re going to nope out pretty quick. Provide an option that lets you do everything from a single GUI and they’ll use it. Enough people use it and eventually the tech-savvy folks have to follow because that’s where everyone is.
That’s absolutely not to say that it’s a good medium for documentation. I will always prefer well-written and organized docs first and searchable forums/issue trackers/SO second. But that second group has a lot of tech elitism and devs who are (perhaps justifiably) short on patience, so Discord seems a lot more accessible to newbies who are asking the most basic questions.
Seriously. My only interactions with discord are in ways that its replaced a simple web forum or IRC channel.
Notepad is simple
Doesn’t mean it’s the best thing for documentation.
Actually… a readme file is probably better for documentation if you’re really going for simple.
I may be getting old, but I think D*scord (I’m all for cencoring it like a slur) isn’t any more simple than a phpBB or something similar was. Quite the opposite actually, at least for any user trying to navigate the the darn thing.
Having used both, if you can somehow navigate a phbb board then you can easily navigate discord. The only thing stopping you is you.
