[ajhurliman]

Disagree. Yes, forums with nested comment structure and voting are better for preserving and indexing data, but synchronous communication (like Discord) is better for having actual conversations and building community. Back and forth volleys of messages let people completely explore threads of thinking, rather than waiting days (or months) for a single response that misunderstands the question.

There’s a reason people prefer it: it’s better.

[diggan]

> There’s a reason people prefer it: it’s better.

That's a very "black and white" view, of any issue.

It could be that it's better for that specific person(s) who is having the current conversation. But what about after that?

It used to be that you could search Google and if it was answered in a forum post, you'd find it via Google. But since a lot of it are closed behind locked doors (like Discord), it becomes really hard to find, even with Discords own search.

Everything being ephemeral could help someone right now, but what about the others in the future, wanting the exact same answer?

[esafak]

Just ask it again so you can burn- and drive out the existing members with repetitive questions!

[ajhurliman]

Okay I'll elaborate, it's better for community building and answering questions for nascent companies or organizations. A lot of the time there's a big disconnect between a community and how a product is intended to be used.

I built a paper trading app for stocks and options and Discord was the primary place where the users talked. The subreddit was almost completely empty, nobody responded to tweets, the Instagram was thriving but there was no sense of community because you couldn't tell if anyone commenting actually used the product or a meme just showed up in their feed.

Did I have to repeat myself a bunch? Yes, but that's fine, especially because the answer sometimes changed (rapidly), like "No we don't support multiple trading accounts per user" > "Yeah I implemented that last week, it's in the release notes, to add a second account..."

For a mature product that's not changing as much and more or less has all its features built out, it makes sense to branch out into more structured forums that are easily searchable, especially as you progress through different versions and users are looking for answers to past versions.

[diggan]

> I built a paper trading app for stocks and options and Discord was the primary place where the users talked. The subreddit was almost completely empty, nobody responded to tweets, the Instagram was thriving but there was no sense of community because you couldn't tell if anyone commenting actually used the product or a meme just showed up in their feed.

What I'm hearing is that you think Discord is better than a forum, because people talked in Discord but they didn't talk in the forum, a forum which you didn't have?

Do you have comparable experience building a community via a traditional forum VS doing so with Discord? As far as I can tell, it doesn't seem like you have tried a normal forum, yet you say Discord is better for community building.