There was a lot of engagement in the communities I participate up until a couple of years ago. People were interested and actively discussing a lot of topics. There were a lot of newbies asking questions and people proposing different ways for tasks.

Is it just me or did it reduce a lot? LLMs? Company forums? Other forums I did not move to (e.g. discord)? Reduced interest? Or is it just subjective?

  • fuzzzerd@programming.dev
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    3 months ago

    Communities moving to ‘chat’ based platforms instead of traditional discussion boards is something I’ve observed a lot in the last few years. Which certainly feel like a step backwards in my view. It keeps happening though, so I must he in the minority opinion on this.

    • Pissmidget@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The quickest way to have me lose all interest in any new, potentially neat, tech is having to visit their discord for anything from documentation to discussion.

        • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Lol I can’t remember if it was sync or Lemmy that tried to get me on their discord server recently. I go to join, and it asked for some kind of ID verification. Like dude, I didn’t have to do this for your actual app. As you might guess, I did not join the server.

          • theneverfox@pawb.social
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            3 months ago

            I keep joining discord rooms because I just want to search for something specific real quick… I don’t want to dig up my real account or join, I just want to take a peek inside and dig up the answer to my question

            Almost every time I sign up with a username and get just enough time to start looking for what I need before it decides to kick me out for “suspicious activity”

            At this point I just search the project name when it happens… I’m usually there to evaluate a project, and if that’s not enough I just drop it

      • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Idk, I used to get my questions about Mirror for Unity answered on Discord either directly or by doing a search and never had a problem with it. I’d never say never.

        (Tbf, they do use GitHub and such but the Discord is quite active as well.)

        • PoopingCough@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          How does searching discord work? I was under the impression that entire chat logs weren’t permanent and that older exchanges would be routinely deleted.

          • DreamButt@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            I’ve searched chat logs that are ancient as all hell. Not sure what lead you to think they purge history. Maybe it’s only on the largest servers?

            • mesamune@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              They do if the chat gets banned. Which eventually some dingas will do something that will get a community banned. Quite a bit of emulation docs got removed a couple of times this year because people cant take the hint not to talk about how they got their roms and emulators.

          • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            It actually was half way decent til recently, then they just broke the search function for idk reasons. Discord doesn’t purge chat to my knowledge.

          • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            I don’t think Discord deletes chat logs. I have no idea how it works but I think restricting chat history based on tiers was more of a Slack thing. But maybe I’m wrong and they have permanent boosters who unlock all those perks?

            • Krzd@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Discord doesn’t delete chat logs AFAIK, however one of the permissions prevents you from reading things from before you joined a server/channel

    • Phegan@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Yeah I will never understand why discord has replaced both forums and subreddits, the form factor doesn’t fit the discussion style.

    • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      I think it’s a result of trying to get support right now so you don’t get stuck waiting for someone to up vote your question or having other questions push your thread further down.

      I’ve been a victim of this myself and going to Discord seems to be better getting someone to actually help you, especially for niche questions.

      I’m not saying I like it but I certainly get it.