Original comment, copy-pasted for convenience:
why do so many projects start with a discord and not with a wiki, or github, or web presence?
simply, discord is the fastest, most frictionless way to do the following:
- garner a community of support ensuring that there is an audience for the project
- provide access to idea validation for the creators of that project. rapid feedback for their project = rapid progress
- provide the easy creation of (not necessarily accessible nor good, but) quick resources for the project
forums, websites, hell even github can only hope to match the value proposition of discord, and it’s something people fail to take into account when they criticise the move to discord as a file host/forum/wiki/project website
if you want people to make a file host/forum/wiki/project website, they’re directly competing with the frictionless, fast, yet unsustainable and frankly web-shit discord. the fast, frictionless nature is enough for people to use and accept, hell, even to make infrastructural to their project
a platform that could create a non-webshit, easy way to provide the value that discord provides, all while being just as fast and frictionless if not faster/more lubricated, would absolutely blow discord out the water
I am a sysadmin and my level of tech friction tolerance is different from the people referenced here leading projects, but I’d like to gather opinions on this, the fact that this regularly happens as described suggests there’s a whole lot of truth to it, but i feel like it’s overstating the friction, am i wrong here?
Making a Discord account is my barrier to some projects
But you can make a single account and then it’s never a barrier again.
I try to limit the number of private companies that I give my data to. Each project on its own isn’t enough to warrant creating a new account, and I never have interest in them all at the same time.
I believe all they require is your email, but I understand.
Discord is creepy if you examine the information they like to collect. On Android, for example, there are 11 unique data points. That’s not just an email.
Yes, that’s the tricky bit - the low bar relies on a lot of people having accounts. I caved and signed up because of games and now I’m in a book club and a 3D printing channel too, as well as lemmy.world’s. For some of that, I do wonder if Discord is really the right tool for the job but it does allow you to create a kind of forum without having to get your hands dirty.