Never again

One of the stupidest trends of all time.

Firstly, discord is entirely the wrong medium for documentation.

Secondly, documentation should be at least as accessible as the code. That is to say, if I can view the code without creating an account for some service, then I should also be able to read the documentation too.

Yes, this exactly! I still cannot fathom how Discord took off. It offers literally no advantages over forums, and introduces some massive disadvantages.

What makes it even more crazy is 90% of projects are using github/gitlab/gitea or some other modern git platform that literally has a wiki feature built in. And everyone and their dog either knows or could very quickly learn how to use markdown to write the wiki.

If you want a chatroom at least use matrix as it's open source and privacy respecting. Though IRC is better for a community. And good old forums are best.

If the documentation is on discord, there is no documentation. Documentation has to be freely available, otherwise it doesn't count.

How does everyone feel about the "isolation" of information exchange? Specifically with systems like discord which encourage you to congregate behind a wall? Historically things like community forums were open to the public and thus indexable.

Documentation is different from technical support and neither should be done on Discord.

It's actually quite worrisome, many projects exclusively have their troubleshooting or support on Discord now what's going to happen years down the road when all those Discord servers have closed or no longer active and the invite links expire this is going to be a vast knowledge base that's just lost to the world

What the fuck happened to README.md.

Or man pages.

Or readme.txt.

Or a goddamn wiki.

Opened a discord link for info the other day...looked like a fucking Las Vegas casino. The.fuck.

How to install:

Step 1: git clone website

Step 2: run dependency install script

Step 2 again: Ha, ha, just kidding, that would be to straight forward. Please install this dependency installer program that only this and two other projects use. Pip grep panda cholotte poetry bash docker numpty anaconda jupternotebook alacazam. Oh, you don't have it? Well, I'm sure the project page will tell you how to install it and add it to path!

Step 3: Run " program name" and .... "insanely detailed description of what to do once the program opens"

Step 3 again: When you run it, get error "k*args passed null into program, so eat shit you can't fix this"

Step 4: Go to git hub issue page and see people have been complaining about this error for 6 months, but it was working back then when it's 12 dependency hadn't been updated yet. No fix incoming since the programmer was a chineese grad student that graduated 6 months ago and stopped working on the code.

If it's not search indexable it can go eat dirt

Never clicked on one of those Discord links, never will.

There are so many tools to make documentation for your project. LATEX is a great one, and you can use it to easily host your documentation online. And it's really not difficult at all to do by hand. If you can have it on discord you can certainly have it in a repo.

Maybe it's a cynical ploy to increase community engagement with their project by getting them into the discord. Regardless, it gives me The Ick. Very gross.

Imo this kind stuff probably because these "dev" having safe space on those discord servers rather than using something properly setup site/forum.

Heck you can make your own documentation using github/gitlab built in wiki or if you want something fancier, setup a site using JAMstack/static site generator, pick suitable theme then use gh page to host it.

I even more hate this stuff when the files is gated inside discord server, dude out of all possible file hosting services why the heck you would use discord?

I have been lucky and haven’t seen this. What a horrible thing to do.

Speaks to the fact that we apparently need better and new alternatives or make current tools easier to use.

Certain aspects of discord seem to resonate with people (unfortunately...).

Man pages are great as mentioned, but maybe not as accessible to some people. Are there tools to generate more convenient resources (e.g. wikis) from that? Similar to how generating technical documentations from (structured) code comments.

A discord server with absurd amounts of over emphasised text, making nothing stand out, filled with emojis and broken up into different messages and sections at the exactly worst places for legibility.

No messages are answered in any channel, and you get amazing sense of all of the technology we have to communicate but zero ability to use it.

Not sure if everyone here knows the difference between documentation and discussion.

using discord for documentation is like using excel for a database

Name and shame!

It's not my favorite option. But at least use Discourse.

There seems to be some projects that allow indexing of discord. This should be encouraged more https://nextjs-forum.com/ is open sourced on GitHub.

Also stumbled on this the other day https://www.answeroverflow.com/

Fork it, clean it up, post it in their discord.

This is often done by people while the project is unstable. No need to write documentation that gets outdated every few weeks, when you can help people live in discord.

Not the dascord!!

Dicsor server

What if it is linked to foss social media like Lemmy and matrix ?

I don't get the people who put downloads on Discord. Apparently a lot of ROM hacks do this rather than, y'know, sharing a patch file. If it's to hide from the big N, Discord won't back you there. Hell, not even any open-source services would. Just teach your users how to use .IPS instead.

Anyone who does this should be blacklisted entirely

Why censor the word "discord"?

Is this related to Egalu?

I don't mind it too much as long as the maintainer's are actually available and around.

Ah yes first world problems. The issue here is checks notes refusal to create a discord account on a burner email and use a search bar. Omg so scary