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by rosmax_1337 872 days ago
I don't think the foremost message on the landing page should be a "join our discord" call. It should feature examples and links to the source/docs.

In fact, the prominence of "join our discord" on projects like this is off-putting for me personally. I don't doubt I am alone in this regard.

1 comments

You are not.

I really dislike discord as anything else than a platform for disposable communication, e.g. between friends and stuff, but people have this tendency of using it as the prominent platform for support questions and even as documentation. And together with terrible search, and no search indexing, it's just terrible when you need to search for a solution.

Fwiw, we're only using Discord for disposable communication. We have a docusaurus site up for the docs, and otherwise all the development is taking place on Github. Discord seems very popular with the board game crowd, so it was kind of the first place we went to try to reach gamers before we started reaching out to developers.

What do you prefer to discord for disposable communication? Certainly open to suggestions.

I don't think anyone's criticizing or advising against the use of Discord for the things it's adequate for, but rather its proeminence in the webpage, which communicates that you'll have to go to Discord to get more substantial information on the project. Having to talk to people is a source of stress and attrition for introverts. Not everyone needs or wants to have to modulate their language to a different social environment every time they need clarification.
Good feedback, let me see what I can do about this and thanks
I've spent over a minute after finding on HN there's something more than just discord invitation trying to find where any clue is. Like, you know, playing notpron. Tried clicking on different icons, then the footer, literally nothing. Finally, I scrolled. Not sure if it's my resolution+scaling or what, but with nowadays' bare visible scrollbars, there was a map with some tiles and coins on the right, and just some gray empty space after. As I believe 4k 150% is quite standard, there's no surprise some people may get confused.
4k 150% might be standard here, but steam statistics say a plurality of screens are still 1080p. Regardless i scrolled before i closed the tab, then realized i don't know anyone up to send an invite link to for powergrid (or whatever).
I have the same issues with Discord - but surely there must be bots that publish Discord support channels as indexable websites?
There is https://answeroverflow.com which is a search engine for Discord support channels