Lt. Wilson 
Have you ever tried to access a service, or wanted to try out a new technology, but the only way to get proper documentation or support is through a Discord server? Doesn’t it drive you insane?
In all honesty, this is a major key point in why I wanted to maintain a blog of sorts, and also why I wanted to write this. In my opinion, I think that any public facing forum, blog, or documentation website would be a better place to put information rather than a Discord server.
So let’s highlight some of the key pain points about doing this, and why developers or project managers should stop relying on Discord for these things.
And I think it can be boiled down to 4 key points, that are all intertwined.
- An account.
- Privacy.
- Accessibility.
- Readibility.
1: It’s locked behind an account.
First and foremost, I think that this is genuinely one of the biggest problems about using Discord specifically as a platform for documentation - not so much as for a support method.
In order to access the information that you need, you are required to have a Discord account. And for some people, they might already have a Discord account and wouldn’t care to go ahead and join a new server. But for a lot of people, this is an unnecessary barrier of entry.
While documentation in the programming realm is often intended for power users that know how to understand it, it should always be publicly available to help preserve the information being presented, and to not waste developers time. Countless numbers of major services keep their documentation open so that developers can quickly and easily focus on what matters - actually doing their job.
When you lock everything behind a third-party account and service, you are obstructing the information that you need to present and introduce an additional step that makes reading that documentation harder for developers. Which leads me to the next point.
2: People deserve privacy.
In a day and age where security breaches are incredibly common, why should you require someone to make an account just to access information that should be publicly and easily accessible?
By default, Discord shares your game activity and enables rich presence in some productivity applications to not only other users of the service, but more importantly, to advertisers. The reason Discord is able to operate and afford the billions upon billions of messages, images, voice and video calls, and host millions of servers for free, is purely because they are able to sell a massive amount of your data.
And listen, if I’m being completely honest, I personally don’t care. I already made the mistake of giving plenty of platforms far more information than they actually need.
But you should avoid platforms like this and value your privacy when you can, and especially if you’re just trying to see documentation for something, it’s entirely unnecessary to use a platform like Discord.
(not to mention, Discord is completely closed source)
3: It’s awful for accessibility.
If you’re already a Discord user, you probably know how to navigate the app and how servers work. But to a new user, it is a nightmare to use. I recommend this video from Juxtopposed that highlights (and fixes) some of the weird design decisions that might be difficult for a new user to understand.
Discord’s inherent focus as a chatting platform makes it very confusing to a user who isn’t familiar with it. That isn’t to say that they haven’t made strides into making it work better for a wider audience and for something like documentation. For example, back in 2022 when they released forum channels - which as it sounds, behaves a lot like a forum. But it still has the same design philsophy as a chat channel.
4: It’s usually bad documentation, anyway.
Listen, I’m not trying to be rude to the people who maintain the documentation in these Discords, but often times - it just sucks.
One of the key advantages to using a proper website that was designed with documentation in mind, is that it’s formatted in a way that makes sense to navigate. A Discord server simply cannot accommodate for this layout.
Take for example, the documentation for Astro - the framework that holds this very website together.
Notice how it displays a sidebar with various categories and pages - this is similar to Discord. But do you notice what their documentation has that Discord lacks?
A table of contents - see the “On this page” sidebar when you navigate to a specific page.
Being able to quickly navigate and jump to different sections based upon what specific information you need to access is very important for a developer. Let’s say, for example, there was an API endpoint that you needed to use, finding it would be much harder if you can’t immediately navigate to it based on context. If you were using Discord, you’d have to use Discord’s search function to find what you’re looking for manually. Assuming the Discord server is well-maintained, and laid out in a way that makes it easy to search.
Not that any of this is Discord’s fault. Discord is intended to be a chat platform where you interact with and see what everyone else is up to. It doesn’t really work as well for documents.
It’s great for communities!
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use Discord at all, in fact I have used Discord for almost a decade now, and even have my own server. I just think you should use it for what it’s intended for - a chat platform.
Discord is a great place to have a conversation with other developers, or with your own team, users or customers. It’s a great place and a great idea to have your own server or be involved in others to discuss ideas, ask questions, and get feedback on your or others work.
If you run a project, your users will love the ability to interact with the developers and other users to see how they utilize your product, and how you can improve it. I would actually argue that Discord is one of the best places to have a conversation with your users, and that you should use it for that.
It provides a sense of connection and community that helps both users and developers feel like they’re communicating and working together. Like their feedback and ideas are actually being heard and considered. In a time where companies are often more focused on selling and making record profits, having a community of users and developers who are actually interacting with each other is a great way to build trust and loyalty.
But not for code.
I hope that this helps sums up some of my gripes with a trend that I’ve seen becoming more prevalent recently. I think it’s important to remember that Discord is not the best place for document things, and that you should use a proper website for that.
Obviously, there are different use cases for either. Maybe it’s a project in it’s infancy that just needs a little bit of documentation, but in my opinion, you should eventually move to a proper, publicly available website for that.
Use Discord to help build your community and engage with your userbase - like it’s intended to be used. And if you’re looking for documentation, use a proper website.
And hey, thanks for reading!
❤️