Forum Folks - Why Forums Over Discord?

[#1 Taln Fan he/him]

As someone who uses both the 17th Shard discord and forums pretty regularly, I'd be interested to hear from people who primarily use the forums: Why do you spend more times on the forums rather than discord? What do you dislike about discord/like about the forums specifically? I have things I like more about both, so I'm curious 

[Kansas Stormcursed he/him]

For me, the forums are a lot easier to converse over, particularly when I have to leave mid-conversation. Also, it's easier to manage the chaos than on Discord. About all I manage to do on the Discord is keep track of #cosmemes

[IcedOutPenguin He/Him]

I generally dislike Discord. There are personal reasons for this, but just know I view it unfavorably.

The forums are able to be accessed on a school device, whereas Discord is blocked. And, I like this site. Notifs are easier to handle, as are PM/DM's. 

[Honors Spectral Image She/her]

I’m not allowed to have discord well technically I’m probably not allowed to have the shard either but I can open the shard on a browser on my phone so I like that 

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

I am not allowed to have Discord.

[SpartanBrigade He/Him]

I do use Discord and use it/prefer it for everything else. I don’t use it for the Shard though. I’m in the server and spoken there once but I definitely prefer the forums. The server has a lot of people (many of whom are on the older side of things) and feels significantly more strict and focussed on lore and the books themselves. The forums feel like a tight-knit community and at any given time I know about 60-80% of people online. The forums just feel like a smaller, more chill community and I’m more comfortable here.

[Treamayne]

20 hours ago, #1 Taln Fan said:

As someone who uses both the 17th Shard discord and forums pretty regularly, I'd be interested to hear from people who primarily use the forums: Why do you spend more times on the forums rather than discord? What do you dislike about discord/like about the forums specifically? I have things I like more about both, so I'm curious 

Because Discord is a tool meant for real-time conversation and not meant for separation of topics. Discord is far too busy to have a small specific conversation - it's great at what it does, but discussing books in detail is not something it is good for. It's like trying to talk at a crowded bar - all the noise and three+ other conversations all happening on top of each other makes it very difficult to track who said what and when. 

I'll take a forum where a topic is defined by the OP and every post in that topic relates to that conversation every time (and the forums allow multiple time zones to participate), and use Discord for it's intended real-time chat purposes when no specific detailed conversation is needed. 

Just my 20yen

[Through the Living Shadow he/him]

On 8/29/2025 at 1:00 PM, #1 Taln Fan said:

As someone who uses both the 17th Shard discord and forums pretty regularly, I'd be interested to hear from people who primarily use the forums: Why do you spend more times on the forums rather than discord? What do you dislike about discord/like about the forums specifically? I have things I like more about both, so I'm curious 

Don’t got no discord. (Actually, I made a temp account to satisfy some cybersecurity challenge or another, but I don’t use or even have it downloaded.)

[Aeoryi she/her]

The forums have a different set of people and community than the discord- don't get me wrong, I still think both are cool places, but I've been here for like, half a decade or something.

The main draw to the forums is the accessibility to non-sharder users, I think (whether they be spambots or new users) compared to the discord, but I can't really speak for the discord.

There's also the community section of the forums which contains things found not on the discord. The Last Post Wins, TLT, and forum games really don't have any sort of parallel in the discord, and of course, everyone's favorite: the RP subforum.

Also the discord and the forums don't really seem to have too much overlap all things considered so stepping into the discord felt like entering a completely new space which was a bit off-putting. Why go to the discord if I just want to use the forums instead? I'm more familiar with the people on the forum and I'm not really seeking anything I can't find on the forum in the discord anyways. There's not really a significant bridge between the discord and the forum that makes it appealing to the long-time forumers.

[Argenti he/him]

Most of the time, I use the discord to get a quick answer to a cosmere question. 

Otherwise, I feel there's too much going on at all times in such big servers.

[Immortal Platypus]

On 8/29/2025 at 11:00 AM, #1 Taln Fan said:

As someone who uses both the 17th Shard discord and forums pretty regularly, I'd be interested to hear from people who primarily use the forums: Why do you spend more times on the forums rather than discord? What do you dislike about discord/like about the forums specifically? I have things I like more about both, so I'm curious 

Don't have discord. Plus, TLT used to be a big thing for me

[Treamayne]

On 8/29/2025 at 1:00 PM, #1 Taln Fan said:

As someone who uses both the 17th Shard discord and forums pretty regularly, I'd be interested to hear from people who primarily use the forums: Why do you spend more times on the forums rather than discord? What do you dislike about discord/like about the forums specifically? I have things I like more about both, so I'm curious 

Did you ask the same question on Discord? Any conclusions from the various responses?

[Chaos he/him]

On 9/7/2025 at 8:09 PM, Treamayne said:

Did you ask the same question on Discord? Any conclusions from the various responses?

We did not; we are quite familiar with why people would choose Discord, so that's not really necessary. It is vastly more active than the forums, particularly for book discussion. For example, our Emberdark channel has over thirty thousand messages. The Ghostblood preview channel, over 4000. The Wind and Truth channels? Nearly four hundred thousand. The Silksong post (not even a channel, but something kind of like a subforum, kind of) has nearly 9000 messages.

How much Emberdark discussion has been on the forums? 800 posts. Yes, forum posts tend to be longer, but it's not even remotely comparable. Forums do have their niche, but they are much less popular. That has been the trend for years.

(It doesn't help that people tend to prefer Reddit over forums, and also have done so for years.)

The overwhelming amount of posts here are in the RP or forum games section. It has been that way since after Oathbringer. (Coincidentally, when our Discord server started.)

Edited September 10, 2025 by Chaos

[Treamayne]

Sorry to disturb you, didn't realize this was on informal Mod poll (thougth it was a Taln's Curiosity).

On 9/10/2025 at 2:50 AM, Chaos said:

We did not; we are quite familiar with why people would choose Discord, so that's not really necessary. It is vastly more active than the forums, particularly for book discussion. For example, our Emberdark channel has over thirty thousand messages. The Ghostblood preview channel, over 4000. The Wind and Truth channels? Nearly four hundred thousand. The Silksong post (not even a channel, but something kind of like a subforum, kind of) has nearly 9000 messages.

I doubt there is a way to tabulate, but I would be curious what percentage of those posts are emoji/meme responses and/or "I agree"/"Me too" type posts. AT least, in my experience, the post volume in DIscord is high, the but substantive posts percentage is low (as implied by my post above). 

Thank you for your time and response. 

Edited March 17 by Treamayne
SPAG

[#1 Taln Fan he/him]

3 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Sorry to disturb you, didn't realize this was on informal Mod poll (thougth it was a Taln Curiosity).

Yeah this was just my own curiosity - the discord is way more popular, so I didn't ask there. (As Chaos summarized well)
 

 

3 hours ago, Treamayne said:

doubt there is a way to tabulate, but I would be curious what percentage of those posts are emoji/meme responses and/or "I agree"/"Me too" type posts. AT least, in my experience, the post volume in DIscord is high, the but substantive posts percentage is low (as implied by my post above). 

I imagine some, but probably not as high as you'd think, since a lot of people use the "same" or "this" emoji for a lot of that. There's still wayyyyy more discussion over on the discord. (Also just a higher number of active people) The forums have the advantage of being more accessible to people, since it's just a website rather than downloading a whole app, and are good for long posts, but ultimately I do think Discord is more suited for ease of discussion. But I get why people would like the forums more, and to each their own

[Shatter He/Him]

57 minutes ago, #1 Taln Fan said:

Yeah this was just my own curiosity - the discord is way more popular, so I didn't ask there. (As Chaos summarized well)
 

 

I imagine some, but probably not as high as you'd think, since a lot of people use the "same" or "this" emoji for a lot of that. There's still wayyyyy more discussion over on the discord. (Also just a higher number of active people) The forums have the advantage of being more accessible to people, since it's just a website rather than downloading a whole app, and are good for long posts, but ultimately I do think Discord is more suited for ease of discussion. But I get why people would like the forums more, and to each their own

Forums is better. It's more fun and lets you think about your response. Also, easier to find threads.