When Subreddits Require You to Get Help In Their Discords

[OneMillionFurries]

My modded Wii is suddenly having issues loading games it ran easily in the past, and when I google it I see many people posting help threads to the r/WiiHacks subreddit in the past. So I go there to ask for help bc nothing those other threads suggested helped, and I find out that support threads are now against the rules and you have to post to the Discord for that!

Seriously!? The Discord!? You're trying to fight question spam by telling people to ask it in a Discord!?!?

Don't get me wrong, I understand that having people ask the same question over and over again bc they don't know how to Google something is annoying, but the solution should NOT be to tell people to therefore go to the black hole of information that is a Discord server. Now THAT is how you get question spam!

What bothered me the most about it too is that the "no help/support threads" was under the "no low effort posts" rule which... What?? Y'all allow unfunny low effort memes to be on the front page but not someone describing their issue in detail? This truly IS Reddit.

[shevek]

I agree, and I think we will pay the price for moving so much to Discord, no matter if its organizations, institutes, companies, online communities etc.

Even with the added functionalities that public community servers in Discord now have - like that forum overview - or other solutions like threads and bots, it's not good. Discord's search isn't ideal; if you don't hit a specific key word, it won't find it. I appreciate the ability to search by user, channel, file, date etc. but I miss the use of wildcards and boolean operators.

Most people will use a search engine for issues, but discussing these things on Discord locks them away from public access. It will seem like no one else has that issue, there is no solution, or you need an account to access it. It makes the internet fundamentally more locked down and closed, and privacy conscious individuals are especially locked out.

I am the most critical of companies basing their entire support and documentation of their product(s) on Discord. That is a third party - stop relying on a third party to host something you should host yourself. From one day to the next, that can be gone - servers down, server banned, etc. It is a messaging service, not a wiki.

[wygolvillage]

This is a bad sign. Discord servers are good as chatrooms for friends, not taking the place of actual helpful resources.

I happen to like being able to look up a tech problem and find the answer on some old forum or subreddit. There's a whole meme about adding "reddit" to the end of your search to find relevant answers. Who the hell thought this was a good idea?

[Rrim0]

UH. That's a really strange way to moderate a subreddit on HACKED Wiis.
I could understand if the subreddit was primary for the original Wii, with moderators not condoning mods, but on a subreddit on hacks that's just puzzling.
Modding a console is not that difficult, but you almost surely will need to troubleshoot something.

What do they even post in there if not support question? Only mod updates (which sure, there should be a sub for that if the community is very active, but not ONLY a sub like that with no other alternative)?
I looked around the sub a little bit and it seems it's pretty inactive? Just some cool mod tricks and memes, mostly.
By the way, I have no idea if the Wii and WiiU are similar, but r/WiiUHacks seems to have a somehow active support community. 

I hang out in the PSP sub and it's just people boasting their first PSP or their collection or asking for help.
Sure, some people could just search a little bit more before posting, but some of the questions and answer are pretty damn good and saved me a lot of time when I encountered any trouble.

Reddit is gold because of all that obscure info you can find in forgotten 7+ years old threads.
If you more stuff on discord where stuff is not being properly archived then it's a recipe for losing a lot of invaluable information.

I don't know... A part of me think that moving question to discord is just a way for the mods to spend less time moderating reddit.
If that's the case then understandable, since the recent reddit fiasco rightly soured a lot of moderators and moderating without 3rd party apps is harder.
I still think that not having questions and answer openly available to anyone to see without having to register a discord account is a huge waste of time in the long run. For everyone.

But the very old, bitter and cynic part of me thinks that maybe mods are having a power trip or some ulterior motive and on discord it's easier to get to people. (this is possibly and very likely irrational thinking from my part, but I really don't like what I've seen on Discord so far)

There's a whole meme about adding "reddit" to the end of your search to find relevant answers.

Yeah. This is totally me! That's REALLY the only sensible way to use reddit.

[OneMillionFurries]

I only just realized I had put this thread in the Web-Crafting section instead of Life on the Web Please forgive me, it was 6am when I posted this LOL

Even with the added functionalities that public community servers in Discord now have - like that forum overview - or other solutions like threads and bots, it's not good. Discord's search isn't ideal; if you don't hit a specific key word, it won't find it. I appreciate the ability to search by user, channel, file, date etc. but I miss the use of wildcards and boolean operators.

Yeah exactly! I tried looking up multiple terms in the search relating to my issue, but couldn't find anything! And I don't know if that's just because no one has asked about it before OR if it's because Discord's search is crap!

Not to mention my support needs LOOK like it's gonna be just another "omg why black screen" (which yeah, IS what is going on) but my actual question is different from that! But I doubt I'll be getting any help for a while because if that :ohdear

Here's the text of my thread if anyone's curious:

Hey y'all, it's been a few months since I've played my Wii, but I just got it set up again and for some reason it's having a difficult time loading many Gamecube games?

Paper Mario TTYD use to load up just fine, but now after multiple tries of just getting a black screen, it will now load up a few company spash screens THEN go black (progress!)

Pikmin loads up just fine (now taking longer than usual though) and Windwaker just gives a black screen.

The one Wii game I have saved on this (Kirby's Epic Yarn) loads up perfectly fine.

The only things I have done is take out and reinsert my USB and SD cards, and change the USB Loader GX's settings back to default, which is what made TTYD load it's splash screens. I think.

Has this happened to anyone else?? If so, what fixed it for you? What could have possibly changed in my Wii in these last few months? Thanks in advance.

(With this thread, I'm more so curious about what could have actually changed to make the games stop working, y'know? And yes, I looked through the Support Mega-Info Thread!™️)

[close]

[shevek]

Related to the topic, maybe we can find a solution for your Wii here I used to have a modded Wii, but with an external HDD.

Was the console shut off or on when you removed the SD or USBs? Removal during use can corrupt files, but you probably already considered that. If you can rule out something not being stuck in correctly or securely, you could try other SDs or USBs to test if maybe, these storage devices are failing. If not, wiping the existing ones and putting the stuff you had on them back on fresh might be helpful, at least if you still have the game files on your PC. Those are probably still intact and non-corrupted. Just copying the contents of the SD/USB over to put it back on might just replicate the problem.
Other than that, does your Wii have access to the internet? Some mods and emulators, if I remember correctly, need specific versions of the Wii OS to work. It would be weird if it updated just now and not before, but it is the last thing that came to my mind.

[OneMillionFurries]

I always make sure the console is shut off whenever I remove the SD and USB, so I don't think it got corrupted? All my Wii backup files are on my old laptop that I forgot to transfer over to this one I really don't feel like dealing with a 20 minute boot-up time right now, so I may just check the files out on my current laptop to see if anything's corrupted. If it is, I'll be sure to get the original files back on there.

Not exactly sure if it does? I think the Wii having access to the internet was a requirement when I first hacked it, but I have since moved locations so idk if I have ever connected it to this wifi. I'll check it out.

Edit: Is it possible to fix any corrupted files through error checking? Or would that just cause more problems than solve?

[garystu]

would rather die than use reddit OR discord. wiis are like 20 years old it really bothers me there's no independent forum about this.

fake edit: lol just remembered GBATemp. That's an independent forum to discuss console modding among other things, including the Wii. ok im fine again + maybe you can get help over there.

[bugholder's epiphany]

there is no substantial benefit to moving to discord over using a forum website. Especially when moving it to discord means you lose access to help that would've been far easier to get back then.
People are silly

[OneMillionFurries]

Update on my modded Wii: I just put the USB into my laptop to copy over the files for a backup then put it back in the Wii and my games just?? work now???? I did literally nothing other than that but HEY. I'll take it LMAO

[virtue]

Its funny because reddit and discord are the two things that killed forums and IRC, the only two places you used to actually be able to get help with things. I cannot stand what reddit and discord have done to the internet. I want forum+irc/xmpp culture back so fucking bad

[virtue]

Update on my modded Wii: I just put the USB into my laptop to copy over the files for a backup then put it back in the Wii and my games just?? work now???? I did literally nothing other than that but HEY. I'll take it LMAO

LOL, if it works it works. I'm curious if my big sister would let me mod her WII since she almost never uses it and doesn't even live in the house where it resides. Though at that point I might as well just buy a vita or 2dsXL and mod that,

[Bede]

That makes NO SENSE as an anti-spam policy.

In my experience, when your rule of thumb is, "Ask any questions you have in the Discord," then people in the Discord will start getting REALLY annoyed when you ask the same question there that has been asked and answered before. Which, as you said, people ask the same question over and over can be annoying, I get... But should this not be an indicator that maybe something could change?

If only there was a way that someone could simply find out what has already been asked, and look through the answers for that issue, without joining a Discord server... Like, some sort of public log of questions and their answers.....

[grubbyfox]

Reddit is good for a lot of things, but oh man I seriously hate when I'm writing a loooong post asking for help, describing everything etc and then I'm hit with a auto-delete because XYZ. God it's infuriating. And how hard it is to make a throwaway account now, grinds my gear. With Reddit, I hate having to use an acccount across subs, because there's always someone like, snooping on your profile and stuff, looking at where you post and what. It's creepy.

Man I could write for hours about how annoying the features on Reddit are, but anyway, yeah it's becoming a real problem these days that valuable info will be hiding in a Discord chat.

[flowers]

i'm glad you were able to find help for your problem or at least just find a solution by luck! i would only use reddit to ask questions, especially in subs like that... i'm sure the sub probably moves very slow anyway. i understand not wanting to be totally bloated and spammed with random questions, but it's increasingly common for subreddits to try to push the discussion to only... discussion. and that discussion can get especially redundant when it's something like this - an old technology with a niche community that has a very small developer scene.

i feel like not ALL questions are low effort (for instance "where do i get started?" vs "i have this very specific issue google isnt helping me with"). there are so many people and communities online who are basically unwilling to help those who just don't perfectly know everything the first time

also i know duplicate questions and threads are a huge issue for subreddits in general but once again the sub is probably really slow so COMMON questions can just be removed without any big deal