- Discord isn’t documentation
- Discord isn’t change logging
- Discord isn’t issue tracking
Exploring cool FOSS projects is fun, until you have a question and someone responds with ‘Oh, join our discord server, we’ll answer.’
No. I won’t.
Discord isn’t public. That gives it a tight-knit feeling, which is great for small group cohesion but terrible for knowledge sharing. If I had a question, it’s likely someone else later will have the same question. If I get an answer in a publicly indexed webpage, then when that future person searches their question they’ll find the answer.
If the only way to get information about a project is to join a gated (even if freely gated) community, then I immediately have reservations about the project. The worst offenders are projects that require you to join a server in order to get updates. Absolutely not. No thank you.
Use a publicly accessible, search indexed, platform for these things; not a members-only platform. I view Discord like IRC with a pretty GUI and voice channels. It’s nice for conversation and chatting but really not suited for record keeping. The moment a conversation turns to something that should be properly recorded for future reference, it should be moved somewhere that’s possible. It isn’t possible though Discord.
Thankfully I’ve been seeing less of this more recently. Hopefully this annoying trend will vanish soon.