• IdiosyncraticIdiot@sh.itjust.works
    1121·
    11 months ago

    Imagine being in a corporate environment trying to implement an OSS into your platform and having to tell your 50 yo teammate: “Oh yeah, just pop in this Discord server real quick to see any relevant info”. Instant credibility loss

    • evatronic@lemm.eeEnglish
      126·
      11 months ago

      The loss of credibility is not because it’s discord,. specifically.

      It’s because the project thinks a chat platform is an appropriate way to document a project. I would feel the same way if someone told me to get on IRC for docs, or Slack.

          • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
            21·
            11 months ago

            Not even a forum.

            Documentation is not a snapshot of a discussion. It largely falls into two categories

            • collections of facts e.g. what command line switches there are, or all the options in the config files.
            • Guides on how to use the software.

            The first is vital. The second is really really useful.

          • pingveno@lemmy.mlEnglish
            415·
            11 months ago

            Wikis always seem to produce second rate documentation, except maybe the ones that are designed specifically around software projects. There are any number of tools out there that produce better documentation and it can be stored alongside the source code in a git repository to avoid drift between the code and the associated documentation.

      • theherk@lemmy.world
        26·
        11 months ago

        Markdown in the repository is a pretty good way to keep documentation in sync with the source.

        • JPSound@lemmy.world
          51·
          11 months ago

          Modded version of youtube app that let’s you kill all the ads, among many other wonderful features. However, every 6 months or so, youtube does something where the videos stop loading effectively killing the app. I usually switch between vanced and revanced every 6 or so months because one has so far always worked when the other gets the axe. By the time that one goes down, the other one is back up and running.

    • marcos@lemmy.world
      201·
      11 months ago

      To be fair, I could say the same, but is probably a biased sample.

      I have other red flags, like only distributing on docker, that I’ve tried, and tried again, and found that it’s a sign of a badly run project. But I can’t state any confidence on the discord based rule, because I’ve never tried to make any run.

      • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
        14·
        11 months ago

        The docker thing really grinds my gears. I see it as the ultimate “works on my machine” mentality. Basically they can’t be arsed to write software that is robust to changes in hosting platform.

        • mb_@lemm.ee
          3·
          11 months ago

          I have dealt with “only works in kubernetes” because developers couldn’t be bothered to make it even work on docker without all the hidden orchestration.

          So, instead of documentation, they just make the service work in that one specific environment.

    • thejevans@lemmy.ml
      2·
      11 months ago

      The Gagguino project is a counterpoint to this. They have some extremely limited documentation, but to really build one you probably are going to need to dig into Discord. I hate it. The project is really cool, though, and I’m building one right now.

  • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.mlEnglish
    33·
    11 months ago

    My biggest nightmare is one day you will go on to a random website and when you press “contact us” it opens an invite to a discord server.

  • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3420·
    11 months ago

    Stay the fuck away from anything that’s organized over discord. Mod abuse and Nazis are a guarantee.

      • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.mlEnglish
        59·
        11 months ago

        Just when I finally think I’ve found one which is safe, I am painfully reminded of my place.

      • Daeraxa@lemmy.ml
        3·
        11 months ago

        Its the same as the GitHub problem though, if you want to get community involvement then the necessary evil is to go where the people are. We use GitHub and Discord as that is where the vast majority of our users are, our Lemmy community sees barely any activity over our subreddit, we have barely anyone clamouring for Matrix or IRC. Our Mastodon is probably our only large ‘fedi or fedi—adjacent’ platform and thats because we drew the line at twitter. Would I love to get away from Discord? Absolutely, but that limits our ability to have an active community whilst we are still growing the project.

    • Sotuanduso@lemm.eeEnglish
      9·
      11 months ago

      I’m involved in a few projects that are organized over private Discord servers. No mod abuse or Nazis involved.

  • Zacryon@feddit.de
    7·
    11 months ago

    I am already happy if there is any documentation at all. And I am euphoric if it doesn’t suck, i.e. sufficiently detailed and up to date.

    So I guess Discord is better than nothing. But sure it’s a turn off.

  • Sibbo@sopuli.xyz
    962·
    11 months ago

    This is often done by people while the project is unstable. No need to write documentation that gets outdated every few weeks, when you can help people live in discord.

    • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
      721·
      11 months ago

      thats understandable but at least use something searchable that has tagging capabilities and is archivable so that you can come back to it years later

      • renzev@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        277·
        11 months ago

        D*scord is technically searchable and fairly archiveable (messages never get deleted due to old age (in my experience at least) or if the original poster deletes their account). And some d*scord servers even have a Q&A mode similar to st*ck *verflow. But yeah, not the right tool for the job, not to mention ＡＢＳＯＬＵＴＥＬＹ　ＰＲＯＰＲＩＥＴＡＲＹ

        • cheer@lemmy.worldEnglish
          371·
          11 months ago

          I think what they really mean is searchable without an account, but otherwise you’re right.

            • vithigar@lemmy.ca
              13·
              11 months ago

              Or find lots of things that aren’t matches because it’s a fuzzy search with no way to search for exact text.

          • renzev@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
            41·
            11 months ago

            Kinda tempted to make a bot that automatically joins d*scord servers, indexes all the messages, and publishes them to a public website

          • renzev@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
            52·
            11 months ago

            Same reasons you’d censor profanity. To show that I don’t necessarily agree with or support them. Maybe I should start using the vomit emoji instead of asterisks like u/pancakes [joking].

            • pixelscript@lemmy.mlEnglish
              8·
              11 months ago

              To me it comes off like you’re irrationally afraid to invoke its name.

              I get and appreciate that you’re trying to make a statement here, but in my opinion it isn’t landing the way you think it is. By giving its name special reverence you’re needlessly elevating it, not diminishing it.

            • computergeek125@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              11 months ago

              I get the statement you’re trying to make here - serving the name of a platform you dislike with the same reverence as he-who-must-not-be-named in Harry Potter (Voldemort) - but all you’ve done is obfuscate the search engine. Now if someone is skimming for information on the platform via search, you’ve hidden your comments and post from someone who might find your perspective useful. No one is going to try 15 ways of spelling a platform name (except maybe trying stackoverflow with and without spaces). Internet users are pretty lazy.

      • ѕєχυαℓ ρσℓутσρє@lemmy.sdf.org
        22·
        11 months ago

        Zulip is a little better in this regard. I’m involved in Lean, which uses Zulip as the primary mode of support and documentation. While it’s usable, I still think that a Discourse style forum is the way to go.

    • Dave.@aussie.zone
      67·
      11 months ago

      when you can help people live in discord.

      That live support is super handy when you’re 8 timezones apart from the maintainers.

      • Hey there, how do I get this thing to compile?

      11 hours later

      • Ok just need to make sure you have this list of prerequisites installed and then we can walk you through the compilation process.

      6 hours later

      • Nevermind, I built and installed another project.
      • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        Or if you find the project a while later, and the link/server is dead, either because the maintainer forgot to update the link, or the server shut down/removed invites for some reason, like spam prevention.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      34·
      11 months ago

      There needs to be some plan to migrate to stable documentation at some point though.

      Hell, even a small traditional forum is better searchable.

      What I see happen is that the people with the knowledge get so busy answering questions in discord that it impacts the efforts on documentation and on the software itself.