So Discords are really big these days and I know that it's not a new phenomenon as such, since we basically used to use irc as a form of chatrooms/channels. In that sense, I'm totally fine with it existing and being a popular thing outside of conventional social media.
However, with so many game developers, publishers, and especially communities moving to their own special Discord channel, it means that a lot of information gets put away into (1) an exclusive channel you need access to and (2) that is also an unorganized chat stream that is difficult to peruse and search within, and (3) is not future-proof.
Usually fans of certain games will work together to create certain guides, certain mods, certain configurations, and all other sorts of useful information and knowledge that helps others. Usually such type of information would be in a dedicated forum where you could search for a certain keyword and get a thread or a topic that could more easily help you, as it basically collected all of the respondents into one single thread. With older games and older sites, this has been really useful if, a couple of years later, you need to find some certain information on how to launch a game, or how to troubleshoot a bug, or improve performance, or defeat a difficult boss or mission, and so on. Especially if it's an old game that people no longer talk about. But with so many communities moving to Discord, it is incredibly difficult to get that knowledge and you would have to go into that discord (if it even still exists) and ask the same question again - who knows if someone is even there to help out several years later?
My experience with Discords so far is that a lot of the same questions get asked again and again and again, and the fans / expert users who know the answer has to constantly reformulate the answer to every new user. Same thing in terms of community managers, where they also have to repeat the same information over and over again, because there is not a central information hub like a forum with stickied threads or a central website with the particular information. Not only that but the overall discussion is not categorized by topic but instead is more like a chat-stream without any real red thread (but I guess that's the nature of chatrooms)
TL:DR; Devs and communities are more and more replacing their forum style of community building with Discords, but this means that community-created knowledge and information gets lost and chaotic with little to no chance of future access to that same type of knowledge. It also puts a lot more stress on expert users who now has to repeat their expertise everytime a user asks the same question or needs help. It is not a very future-proof way of knowledge-building & archiving at all. Do you agree or am I just an old and archaic dinosaur who prefers asynchronous, categorized style of communication like forums?
However, with so many game developers, publishers, and especially communities moving to their own special Discord channel, it means that a lot of information gets put away into (1) an exclusive channel you need access to and (2) that is also an unorganized chat stream that is difficult to peruse and search within, and (3) is not future-proof.
Usually fans of certain games will work together to create certain guides, certain mods, certain configurations, and all other sorts of useful information and knowledge that helps others. Usually such type of information would be in a dedicated forum where you could search for a certain keyword and get a thread or a topic that could more easily help you, as it basically collected all of the respondents into one single thread. With older games and older sites, this has been really useful if, a couple of years later, you need to find some certain information on how to launch a game, or how to troubleshoot a bug, or improve performance, or defeat a difficult boss or mission, and so on. Especially if it's an old game that people no longer talk about. But with so many communities moving to Discord, it is incredibly difficult to get that knowledge and you would have to go into that discord (if it even still exists) and ask the same question again - who knows if someone is even there to help out several years later?
My experience with Discords so far is that a lot of the same questions get asked again and again and again, and the fans / expert users who know the answer has to constantly reformulate the answer to every new user. Same thing in terms of community managers, where they also have to repeat the same information over and over again, because there is not a central information hub like a forum with stickied threads or a central website with the particular information. Not only that but the overall discussion is not categorized by topic but instead is more like a chat-stream without any real red thread (but I guess that's the nature of chatrooms)
TL:DR; Devs and communities are more and more replacing their forum style of community building with Discords, but this means that community-created knowledge and information gets lost and chaotic with little to no chance of future access to that same type of knowledge. It also puts a lot more stress on expert users who now has to repeat their expertise everytime a user asks the same question or needs help. It is not a very future-proof way of knowledge-building & archiving at all. Do you agree or am I just an old and archaic dinosaur who prefers asynchronous, categorized style of communication like forums?
