sudomod

The Discord server has been getting busier by the day now that we actually have invite links posted in the site header. It’s been a ton of fun and I’ve gotten to know a lot of you much better than I would have otherwise. It’s been fantastic for general chatting.

The only negative aspect I’ve noticed has been that more and more people seem to be using Discord for support/help/troubleshooting with things they are working on. I get that the real-time back and forth can be very appealing for this, but there are several good reasons for us to favor using the forums for those types of topics:

• New questions/topics in the forum stay visible for much longer, whereas with Discord they get pushed up in the chat pretty quickly (sometimes prompting the same person to re-ask the same question a few times)
• Topics are threaded on the forums, so it’s much more organized and better-suited for long term discussion (when you ask a question on Discord it is invariably mixed in with whatever other people are talking about as well)
• Having longer-running threads allows other people who may have the same question or problem later on to see it (or find it through searching) and jump in
• Forum threads show up in Google search results, which is very handy (I’ve even run across threads on our forums I missed when googling for a solution to a problem)
• The real-time nature of people direct-messaging you on Discord can quite frankly be a little stressful. There’s the expectation from people that they will receive an answer immediately and I’ve had multiple experiences where a user was obviously getting irritated with me for not answering them quickly enough. The forums are much more relaxed in this regard (like emailing vs. text messaging).

So with the above in mind we’re going to start trying to steer people toward using the forums for support/questions/troubleshooting, and using Discord more for general chat/banter. It’s a fine line (we don’t want to ban ALL questions, that would be silly), and so will largely be up to the discretion of the mods on Discord.

Any questions/concerns/feedback please post them here!

totally agree !

Yup makes sense. I love the forum aspect more just for archival purposes

I can agree, once I have joined the discord server, I have spent less time browsing the forums. It's exactly because it's nice to have direct conversation! I still try to browse and post in the forums, and I understand what you are getting at! So much information is already here, lets keep it coming!

rodocop wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 02, 2017 4:23 pm

I can agree, once I have joined the discord server, I have spent less time browsing the forums. It's exactly because it's nice to have direct conversation! I still try to browse and post in the forums, and I understand what you are getting at! So much information is already here, lets keep it coming!

It’s exactly for that reason that i do not spend time on discord lol... i keep spending my precious time posting here so i will let a trace behind me like the snails

I will respect this of course, but disagree. The reason why people post help questions on Discord, and not on the forums, is the immediate feedback. Forum posts can take half a day or more, sometimes, to even get a response. It feels like a snail's pace to post a question, wait half a day for a response, then go try out a solution, report back etc. Many problems have been solved "live' on Discord. I think the thinking works if people actually post and reply on the forums. What is the discord #mintypi channel for then? You can argue all on-topic questions could be posted on the forums. And if it's off topic, it wouldn't be in #mintypi. What else can we discuss there?

sygyzy wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 03, 2017 2:27 pm

I will respect this of course, but disagree. The reason why people post help questions on Discord, and not on the forums, is the immediate feedback. Forum posts can take half a day or more, sometimes, to even get a response. It feels like a snail's pace to post a question, wait half a day for a response, then go try out a solution, report back etc. Many problems have been solved "live' on Discord. I think the thinking works if people actually post and reply on the forums. What is the discord #mintypi channel for then? You can argue all on-topic questions could be posted on the forums. And if it's off topic, it wouldn't be in #mintypi. What else can we discuss there?

i see what you are saying. And i agree, the instant feedback is much better than waiting for a post. BUT, that helps one person. The individual who asks. Because that answer gets lost in 10 seconds when people chat more. But if you post it on the forum, it might take longer to get answered, but now that answer is there forever. Anyone else with the same question can search the question and find the post. Where in the chat, you will probably get the same question asked over and over as the answer isnt archived. Just my 2 cents

erik_gee wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 03, 2017 2:31 pm

sygyzy wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 03, 2017 2:27 pm

I will respect this of course, but disagree. The reason why people post help questions on Discord, and not on the forums, is the immediate feedback. Forum posts can take half a day or more, sometimes, to even get a response. It feels like a snail's pace to post a question, wait half a day for a response, then go try out a solution, report back etc. Many problems have been solved "live' on Discord. I think the thinking works if people actually post and reply on the forums. What is the discord #mintypi channel for then? You can argue all on-topic questions could be posted on the forums. And if it's off topic, it wouldn't be in #mintypi. What else can we discuss there?

i see what you are saying. And i agree, the instant feedback is much better than waiting for a post. BUT, that helps one person. The individual who asks. Because that answer gets lost in 10 seconds when people chat more. But if you post it on the forum, it might take longer to get answered, but now that answer is there forever. Anyone else with the same question can search the question and find the post. Where in the chat, you will probably get the same question asked over and over as the answer isnt archived. Just my 2 cents

Not 2 cents but 200$ ! My 2 cents

erik_gee wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 03, 2017 2:31 pm

sygyzy wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 03, 2017 2:27 pm

I will respect this of course, but disagree. The reason why people post help questions on Discord, and not on the forums, is the immediate feedback. Forum posts can take half a day or more, sometimes, to even get a response. It feels like a snail's pace to post a question, wait half a day for a response, then go try out a solution, report back etc. Many problems have been solved "live' on Discord. I think the thinking works if people actually post and reply on the forums. What is the discord #mintypi channel for then? You can argue all on-topic questions could be posted on the forums. And if it's off topic, it wouldn't be in #mintypi. What else can we discuss there?

i see what you are saying. And i agree, the instant feedback is much better than waiting for a post. BUT, that helps one person. The individual who asks. Because that answer gets lost in 10 seconds when people chat more. But if you post it on the forum, it might take longer to get answered, but now that answer is there forever. Anyone else with the same question can search the question and find the post. Where in the chat, you will probably get the same question asked over and over as the answer isnt archived. Just my 2 cents

Yep. This is precisely the reasoning behind it. As I stated in the OP, I get why the instantaneous back-and-forth is appealing but the same questions are asked over and over, the same problems get troubleshooted in real-time, etc. It helps that one person for that couple of minutes at the expense of frustrating people who have helped with the same issue 10 times before on discord, without any chance of helping anyone further down the road. On the forums at least if someone asks an old question, you can quickly reply with a link to a previous thread. It's just far better suited for long-term support of projects like we do here.

Edit: And just to reiterate something from the OP, the very expectation of instantaneous feedback is one of the reasons for trying to guide folks back to using the forums. It's simply not fair for people to spam channels with questions, often tagging myself or Helder, expecting immediate answers (and sometimes even sending us direct messages and getting testy when we don't answer immediately). I'm not trying to sound too salty or rude, but we've got to draw the line somewhere to stay sane.

Agree