Move discussions to Github

[milkbump]

Github Discussions is currently in public beta. Has there been any discussion about moving "community support" from Discord to Discussions?

Reasons for using Discussions:

1. We lose a lot of community knowledge through Discord.
   Once a question has been asked and answered, it is buried in a stream of new messages never to be found again. With discussions, you can easily browse previous discussions, and conversations are discoverable through Google.
   Upvoting, comments and reactions make it easy to discover interesting info on Discussions.

2. Not everyone uses Discord.
   For example, I only use discord for Svelte. This means I only visit the channel by accident or if I'm really stuck on a problem. I assume I'm not the only one.

3. Many issues and feature requests etc. are lost
   Search for issues(and comments) mentioning Discord on Github. I assume there are a lot more issues than the 34 that were discussed on Discord but no one reported here.
   Also, links to the conversation on Discord are especially rare due to how Discord's stream-of-consciousness conversations work. Using a Discord conversation to move an Issue forward is unnecessarily difficult.

4. People still use Github Issues to ask for help anyway.
   Converting an issue into a Discussion is trivial. But it stays as an issue if we use Discord, thus adding noise to actual issues that serve as a roadmap of sorts.

5. Addressing issues on Discord is difficult
   People are asking questions/sharing info over each other, making it difficult to respond to other's messages. If no one responds to you in a few minutes, it's likely no one ever will. Github Discussions separates every question/conversation/showcase separately making sure everyone's is addressed.

6. People may use different identities on Discord
   It's difficult to @mention someone relevant to a conversation unless they're using the same Github username on Discord, so you don't know if it's really them.

I have 42.7 more reasons, but I'll spare you the pain.

Case in point: it's possible this question has been asked on Discord, but I don't know where to find the said discussion.

[Conduitry]

It's been asked on GitHub as well. #5857

[milkbump]

Oops! I didn't find that one. It's good to know the frustration is shared.

[SystemParadox]

I fully appreciate the issue with time and resources to moderate such a thing, but I think this is a serious issue that needs addressing. I would love to move to svelte and was even interested in helping out, but I've been completely put off by the lack of a sensible discussion forum.

At the very least you should point people to stackoverflow instead of discord. Using discord for this is a joke - you can't have a sensible technical discussion on a chat system.

[diepoe]

To Point 6: You can link GitHub and Discord account. I think both (Discord, GH-Discussions) are having their special pros and cons. At the end of the day i would prefer using both platforms because i think so you can get the best of both.

[Florian-Schoenherr]

Repeating questions are the worst on discord, but I think discord is maybe still cool for "realtime" support?
I think it's not really maintenance-heavy to keep discord around, but maybe more for "playing around" (or really specific things?), not for serious questions or "half-issue-half-question"-questions. I don't know about "Github Discussions", but it will probably be really searchable and all that stuff, better than Discord.
Also maybe telling people to share their problems more (on Stackoverflow &/or Github Discussions) would be a good idea.

[waldyrious]

Repeating questions are the worst on discord, but I think discord is maybe still cool for "realtime" support?

If I may add, for us at tldr-pages a great solution to this problem has been to use Gitter, which solves these issues quite nicely IMO:

• No need to create a new account (login with GitHub account)
• A permanent archive of the chat is publicly available and to some extent searchable (we use this all the time to add chat permalinks to chat conversations into a github issue or PR to provide context)
• Close integration with GitHub: avatars and usernames are the same, channel sidebar shows a stream of repository activity, etc.

And best of all, it's open source!

[antony]

Svelte used to use Gitter, and we moved away to discord. I don't know the reasons behind it, but there were probably things which we didn't like about it. Gitter has had a dramatic decrease in usage since its inception, which doesn't seem to correlate with it being a good solution.

[antony]

Closing this as I think gh discussions are out of the question.

If there were to be a new issue to discuss this problem, I would like to see it pitched as more "a way to retain persistent questions and answers" vs "use product B".

[Florian-Schoenherr]

@antony Why is gh discussions out of the question? (Maybe I missed something)
@kwangure maybe you could rename this issue to "Move most discussions to Github discussions"?

[antony]

@antony Why is gh discussions out of the question? (Maybe I missed something)

#5857

@kwangure maybe you could rename this issue to "Move most discussions to Github discussions"?

That issue title again reads "Move most discussions to Product B".
Essentially, issues such as this should be raised with a view to discuss a problem, not with a predetermined, preselected, unilaterally decided solution. It fosters a better discussion and therefore a better solution.

[Florian-Schoenherr]

Hi @kswope - I can understand your frustration, but we have neither the resource nor time to support or moderate another forum. (#5857)

It takes significantly more time to re-answer questions 10 times on discord (which I'm doing too, sometimes).

Then maybe the title should be adjusted to read more like "Re-answering is annoying" and the first comment could be "I think Github Discussions is good against this problem, here's why:".
@antony I get your point in keeping it neutral.
Also sorry if I'm sounding harsh 😅

[milkbump]

A good bunch of the problems I pointed out while opening this issue are issues that do not necessarily come from being on Discord, but from NOT being on Github. I was soliciting for having all things in one place, and all the benefits that come from it. That said, I understand where @antony is coming from.

I'm stepping back from this one and inviting anyone else to take move the issue forward, with a non-Github-Discussions solution to "the Discord problem".

[antony]

It takes significantly more time to re-answer questions 10 times on discord (which I'm doing too, sometimes).

I write gists if I need to answer something a lot. Gists, presentations, talks, and example apps.
But more importantly, stackoverflow exists, is already used, and is something we actively answer questions on.

You are correct in that the title should be "Re-answering is annoying" - that's exactly what I mean by presenting with a problem, not a solution :)