General Why Choose a Forum Over Discord for Your Community?

[Al]

Building a community isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation, especially if you’re in it for the long haul. Discord is great for real-time chat, but that's really all its designed to do. Even their 'forum' bolt on is poor. A forum is simply a better fit for a community, especially if organisation, customisation and accessibility is important to you. Here are a few reasons why:

Long-Term Community Building

If you’re aiming to create a place where members can connect, contribute, and revisit important discussions without everything vanishing into the chat history, a forum is the answer. Forums let conversations stick around for future members to find and join in, keeping your community active and accessible for the long run. Plus, this makes it easier for people to discover the forum through search engines, bringing in fresh perspectives and keeping the place alive.

Deeper Discussions for Niche or Complex Topics

When it comes to niche interests or topics that need more than a passing comment, forums really shine. Whether it's guides, strategies, or in-depth Q&As, forums provide the space to dig into what matters without it getting buried. It’s also a huge win for SEO. Discord's invite system means the content is not searchable on Google et al. Forums are far superior in advertising your content - for free!

Transparent, Searchable Updates

If you’re looking to keep a record of updates, patch notes, or just a running timeline of your project, forums are the best bet. You get a space where members can easily find what’s going on, and you don’t have to worry about them scrolling through endless chat history. Plus, it helps build trust and creates an organized hub for updates that search engines love to index.

Best of Both Worlds: Using a Forum with Discord

For real-time interaction, Discord still has its perks. But pairing it with a forum gives you the best of both worlds: the immediacy of live chat plus the structured, searchable space of a forum. This way, you can keep things dynamic without sacrificing the benefits of long-term community building.

No one ever said that running a forum was easy, especially in today's social media world, but the extra work and investment can really pay off over the quick win of sticking a Discord server up. Can anyone suggest any additional concerns? Or maybe a set of circumstances where Discord would be better?

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Is Discord something you can self-host or is it just rented space?

If just rented space, that would be my main reason for choosing a forum over it.

 

[2TonWaffle]

Is Discord something you can self-host or is it just rented space?

If just rented space, that would be my main reason for choosing a forum over it.

Discord is a private/open service that you to freely create a server within the service. You don't have any access to the behind-the-scenes stuff, except for general admin options.

Discord is essentially a black hole of knowledge, you put stuff in and the rest of the world has no access to it unless they become part of your Discord server.

 

[Nomad]

You can build your communities on multiple social media platforms, and Discord is not the only one where you can build your community. However, when you use someone else's website to build your community, you do not have any control, let alone your ownership. When you run a self hosted community, you have full control and you can run it the way you want.

 

[frm]

Is Discord something you can self-host or is it just rented space?

A good analogy of Discord would be Proboards vs. IRC (the old chat system).

You don't really own it (maybe you do and they let you export it, I'm not entirely sure with free forum hosting services) and it has trendy features that the latter you wouldn't have even conceived of at the time.

 

[Al]

It would be interesting to see if you could export Discord data, but I doubt it. You'd have account details for Discord members as part of your data, and as we have been discussing here, there are probably some legal ramifications involved.

 

[frm]

It would be interesting to see if you could export Discord data, but I doubt it. You'd have account details for Discord members as part of your data, and as we have been discussing here, there are probably some legal ramifications involved.

I know from watching YouTube commentary videos on controversial people that there are ways to scrape entire servers just to pull it out as (unofficial) evidence after the server is taken down.

Unofficial in parenthesis because I'm sure if it were a legal matter, you'd probably have to subpoena Discord for the official transcripts.

What you're allowed to do with scraped data is beyond my knowledge though. It could be ownership of Discord in full. I'm not going to bother to sift through 100 pages of ToS to confirm that, but that's more likely than not the case.

 

[Al]

Unofficial in parenthesis because I'm sure if it were a legal matter, you'd probably have to subpoena Discord for the official transcripts.

If companies like Meta are any indicator, getting access to their data is next to impossible unless you’re dealing with a critical, ongoing crime. From my professional experience, Facebook won’t consider releasing user data unless it’s linked to something like an active kidnapping or a homicide investigation. Anything less serious—fraud, harassment, minor offenses—hits a wall, and they won’t budge.

This isn’t just Facebook playing hardball; it’s the same across many tech companies. They’ve built significant barriers around user data, driven by a mix of privacy laws, legal liabilities, and the massive risks associated with data breaches or leaks. For them, protecting user privacy isn't just a legal formality—it’s foundational to their business model. Handing over data without a pressing reason would risk lawsuits, public backlash, and even government fines. So, while it can be frustrating from a law enforcement or investigative standpoint, these policies are deeply rooted in ensuring compliance with data protection laws and maintaining user trust.

 

[Cory]

All I know is there are sites like Spokeo and other people search websites where bots scrape your data from webpages to put into their database and full access is generally granted upon payment. I've searched my full name and other personal details on Google before to have these types of sites pop up with my personal information. They generally list your primary family relations in your results. I'm pretty sure Facebook gets scraped for personal data constantly to be placed on these websites. This is why you must be very careful about what sites you share your personal information online. I'm sure social media is the primary target for these bots to scrape the web for users' personal information.

With today's internet technology, privacy is a thing of the past.

 

[Al]

With today's internet technology, privacy is a thing of the past.

Perhaps this is the reason why people have become so fiercely protective of their personal data. Too much data scraping going on. I have never been overly protective of my data. I thought maybe it is time to start but I suppose that once your information is out there, it's probably too late.