• Sibbo@sopuli.xyz
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    10 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 No need to write documentation that gets outdated every few weeks, when you can help people live in discord.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
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      10 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.worldOP
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        10 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

          • renzev@lemmy.worldOP
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            10 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

        • cheer@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

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

            • vithigar@lemmy.ca
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              10 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.

      • 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
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      10 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.world
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        10 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.com
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      10 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.