Hey, longtime lurker here. I want to raise awareness about a serious problem with accessibility of information on the modern internet, because I’m concerned PVB is heading down this path.
Like a lot of communities, I see you’ve moved most discussion to Discord, and the forums have been much emptier as a result. While Discord has its advantages, the fact that it seems to be replacing traditional forums has me seriously concerned, for a few reasons:
– All discussion and information is walled off exclusively to users of a single app. It is impossible to read anything people are saying or doing if you don’t have an account.
– Discord itself is not open-source, and there are reasons people might not trust them with their data. Unfortunately there is no alternative software to use.
– Search engines can no longer index anything, making locating information much more difficult. If you post something exclusively in the Discord server, a casual person searching for information will not find it, period. Discord’s own internal search is not built for this.
– Subjects of discussion are no longer conveniently organized. Discord is like a forum if there was only one singular big topic. Discussions are much harder to follow and keep up with. Anything older than a few days is essentially buried.
– New users cannot get a feel for the community before joining and making their presence known. Shy people have a larger barrier to entry 🙂
– You’re trusting everything to one single entity. If Discord has a catastrophic failure, or decides they don’t like you, poof, it’s gone forever.
Now, I’m not saying to completely abandon Discord, it has its advantages. I’m just saying, if you have a homebrew project, or discovered some new information, why not post about it on the forums, too? It’s better for the internet as a whole.
