Salrite posted...
But what's the alternative? An online forum? Most of those would have you make an account anyways.
To participate, yes. To view/download the content? Often not so much. Most forums and especially wikis are publicly viewable (especially subreddits, which would be the main alternative because Reddit kind of took over the Internet from smaller forums). Anyone can wander in, read the information/download the file, and continue on their way without needing to make an account and request access to the community.
Most significantly, though, content on forums, wikis, and modding hubs is visible to search engines. if I search for, say, character builds for an RPG, for a lot of games that are 3-4 years old I'll get a handful of old reddit discussions, some old youtube videos, and an assortment of those SEO farming nonsense sites that just regurgitate high-level summaries of those other sources. For anything that reflects the current meta, I have to either dig up somebody referencing content that has come from the Discord (which is sometimes a link to the same Google Doc the Discord would provide), or find a link to the Discord and join it myself. It's not something I'm going to find with a cursory Google search. That may be okay for me because I don't approach the Quest for Big Numbers so casually that I'd be turned off by having to do a bit of digging, but for the many people that don't share my love of recreational spreadsheets, that means the best advice is pretty inaccessible. That, I consider to be a significant problem.
Plus, as I mentioned, web sites get archived. Discords don't. If anything happens to those Discords, there's potentially quite a lot of valuable information/content that goes with them.
Salrite posted...
The good thing about a lot of the larger hubs, and this one specifically, is that you don't even need to engage in the community at all. Like, ever. You could make chart requests if you'd like, I have and have had some made for me. But if you wanted, you could just lurk and download charts to your hearts content.
But like, you're here aren't you? Posting daily. What's the difference?
Probably the main difference is that I've been posting on GameFAQs for over 20 years at this point and it'd feel weirder not to, but even with that I'm still not exactly comfortable hopping into other boards to do anything other than lurk. Past that, though, creating an account on most forums is entirely an automated process. Joining a Discord server (I already have the account), however, involves specifically asking a person to join. I know that for most big servers it's either effectively or actually automated anyway, and there's pretty much no chance that my request would be turned down because that's just not how public servers work, but the fact that the process is framed as asking a stranger to do something for me makes me hesitate because that's something I'm particularly uncomfortable with.
Mostly, though, that's just me. It doesn't make a whole lot of rational sense because it's not a rational discomfort.
Salrite posted...
And at least in your case, from how you post here, you have enough social awareness and are intelligent enough not to do weird s*** like post random stuff in the wrong rooms or respond with random emotes. You're one of the better posters here and I'm sure most communities would welcome you openly.
Probably, but I'm still cripplingly shy and that makes joining new communities/conversations uncomfortable, even if there's no rational reason for the discomfort. I appreciate the vote of confidence, though.