Yeah, and it’s doubly infuriating because Discord is not a good replacement for support forums. It isn’t searchable via search engines, and even the built in search is fucking dog water.

Let’s say I have an error, so I google “{Program} {Error code} Solved”. With a forum, I would find a thread that is already talking about the specific error, with comments regarding troubleshooting steps or a solution… But with Discord, all I get is a generic link to the program’s server.

And even once I’m in the server, there often isn’t a good way for me to find existing threads about my specific error. Maybe I check the pinned messages, but some servers have dozens of channels; am I expected to check the pins on every single channel? Oftentimes that seems to be the expectation, because asking a question will often just get a “check the pinned messages, ya thud-fuck” type of response.

Or maybe I search it, but (again) am I expected to search every single channel? And since Discord doesn’t use fuzzed searches, searching for “Error code 0x00548327” won’t return any results if the thread simply uses “Error 548327” instead. With Google (or any half-decent search engine, really) you get results for both. But not with Discord.

So instead, I ask in the support channel. And that leads me to my final gripe… My response takes actual effort from another person in order to solve. Maybe I get lucky and they have a bot set up to respond to a keyword/error number in my comment… But if not, or if I didn’t use the specific keyword that the bot was searching for, then I need to rely on other people. If there are 200 people with the same issue, that’s 200 times that someone needs to respond to what is essentially the same message. With a forum, you could simply find the post, and read the responses. No human interaction necessary, because it has already been done. The question and answer process has already happened. But with Discord, I’m forced to wait on someone to actually respond, and the devs/admins actually need to dedicate time and resources to ensuring it gets answered. That constant vigilance takes a lot more time and effort away from actual mod duties.