this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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It isn't just long-term, it causes issues right off the bat; no fix is searchable. All fixes require a community member to respond.
For the user this causes significant delays. A problem that could be solved in minutes with a search now requires hours or days for someone to respond to their specific problem. A problem that likely was already solved 10 times before. And god help you if the server is active, your problem might get burred instantly and no response will ever come.
For the support people, they have to answer the same questions over and over and over because there is no way for users to search for and solve their own problems.
These issues compound on each other as support staff burn out and users get tired of waiting. Leads to people just going elsewhere.
For me, a lack of support forums signals the creators don't care about the software working right and don't care the software will be unmaintainable the moment they step away. Ie: a lack of support forum is a strong signal to find greener pastures.
Incorrect. While I find the search capabilities of Discord (and the Discord/Teams likes) to be... bad, it isn't THAT much worse than a phpbb in a lot of ways.
What you lose out on is the ability for search engines and, increasingly a concern, LLMs from being able to index it. I shouldn't have to explain why that might be a "pro" as far as the folk actually doing support are concerned.
As for delays? If it is a well supported bit of kit, a quick search and a skim of the FAQ (Discord is actually really nice for having a way to aggregate questions like that in an almost ticketing like system) is going to cover the major stuff. And my experience (on both sides) with Slack et al is that users are generally glad to help out.
It does suck because, unless it is a super common issue, you need to actually ask a question and interact with a human. But it also tends to mean that people are a lot faster to have you run a few tests rather than respond once a day to a thread.
Tell me you've never provided support without telling me you've never provided support, heh.
You think it's a PRO that nobody can search for your support info!? No you absolutely need to explain that...
Yeah, I have to back you up here. This person's alleged experience is completely divorced from my experience working on PCSX2 and tells me they have no idea what they're talking about. We have to answer questions over and over and over again, but usually there's a command to quickly give a canned answer.
And the questions aren't repeated because there's no way for users to search (there is); it's because it's usually lightning-fast in that kind of environment to just ask and because dedicated help forums are a form of selection bias. You're generally going to get more thought-out questions from users who use dedicated, thread-based support forums because either a) they needed to make an account just to ask that question, b) they already have an account and so are more dedicated than the average user, or c) all the others who didn't want to make that investment either just gave up or found the answer some other way.
Edit: I guess people who have no experience with FOSS user support are upset at reality. Next time, give me a list of things you want me to say, and I can bring that along with some choccy milk and some ointment for your sore ass.