I can’t stress enough the difference between shifting from a chat platform to a forum (or question-and-answer) platform.
Sometimes the shift is natural. Members were primarily using the chat platform as a question-and-answer platform anyway. In which case, it was the wrong platform to begin with, and the shift to a forum is correcting the initial error.
At other times, though, it’s asking members to change both their behavior and their perception of the community’s value. It’s a little like asking a group of friends, used to a free-flowing nature of discussions, to suddenly have to come up with precise questions and receive precise answers in a facilitated environment.
It can happen, but it’s a very different kind of experience.
And that can be a problem.
Are The Costs of Change Experiences Quicker Than The Benefits?
The worst thing to do is to try to copy the existing Slack/Discord experience.
The most common approach is to replicate the channels on Slack/Discord, send a series of messages asking members to use the new forum experience with a countdown, and then close down the Slack/Discord channels.
This runs into one obvious problem: the costs of the change to members (more friction in the user experience) are recognised much faster than the benefits.
In a chat experience, you skim what people have been saying, type a comment, and hit ‘enter’. That’s it, your comment appears (and it is soon buried by other comments – both part of the charm and cost of chat).
But in a forum, you have to type a subject line, write out a post, categorise it, possibly tag it, and then hit enter. This additional friction may lead to higher-quality debate, but it feels burdensome to members used to a chat experience.
This is often the result of a misalignment between what the organisation wants to offer (gamification, easier-to-follow discussions, better integration with internal systems) and members’ desires (an easy-to-use experience).
As a rule, you risk member backlash and declining engagement.
The solution is to recognise that you can’t offer a forum experience to replace a chat experience. The comparisons members will make will work against you.
Moving from one experience to another isn’t just a technology change; it’s a change in behavior and in the community’s value perception.
Create A New Thing…A Much Better Thing
Instead of simply replicating the old thing – i.e., ‘here’s a new place for you to chat’ – you have to create a different value proposition.
And that value proposition has to be immediate and obvious, not something which will only be realised over the long term. “Gamification” and “easier to follow discussions” are examples of value that will only be clearly visible over a longer period of time.
And this value proposition should embrace the unique advantages of a forum over chat. I.e., What kind of activity would make sense to have in a forum that you wouldn’t be able to have in chat?
This might include:
- “Solve This Once And For All” Threads. Members collaborate to produce the definitive answers to a recurring issue, then it’s pinned and updated over time.
- “Solve My [x].” Members post a full write-up (problem → process → outcome) and receive threaded feedback, not just emoji reactions.
- Peer Review Threads. Members upload work (slides, code, docs) and receive threaded, topic-specific feedback.
- Ask for a Review” Sections. Members request feedback on a product setup, campaign, or configuration, replies stay tied to the request forever.
- Monthly Expert Clinics. One topic per month, members submit questions in advance, expert replies in depth, all stored + indexed forever.
- Template / Playbook Exchanges. Members upload files, screenshots, workflows – future members can find, reuse, and iterate.
- Research Collaborations. Structured threads where members contribute data, screenshots, survey inputs, etc., and the findings are summarised at the top.
- “Show Your Setup” Galleries. Members post photos, configs, dashboards, and code blocks, which are impossible to scroll through and retain in chat.
- Multi-Week Challenges (progress tracked per member). e.g. “30-Day Implementation Sprint” — each person replies weekly with screenshots/progress.
- Structured Debates. 2–3 side arguments, moderated, with citations and threaded counter-replies, not real-time chaos.
- Beta Feature Feedback Hubs. One thread per feature, tagged by status (Planned, In Review, Released), linked to release notes.
- Crowdsourced “Glossary of Terms” Thread. Members supply definitions, vote, and refine. Searchable, linkable, not buried like Slack messages.
- “Hall of Fame” Knowledge Threads. e.g. “The Best Automation Scripts Ever Written”, curated, updated, forever referenced.
- Persona-Based Rooms. Instead of channels, you have structured categories (Developers, Marketers, Admins) with pinned guides and FAQs.
- Idea Tournaments. Members submit proposals, others vote & comment, moderator advances the top 8 → final winner.
- Post-Event Knowledge Drops. After webinars, conferences, or workshops, slides, takeaways, recordings Q&A captured and archived.
- “Lessons Learned” Retrospectives. One thread per major mistake, members add similar experiences – becomes a collective safety net of insights.
You can come up with plenty of your own examples, I’m sure.
But now you’re using a forum in a way you couldn’t (or wouldn’t) use Slack/Discord.
You’re not letting members compare friction levels across community platforms (which is a losing battle).
You’re instead pioneering a new way to build and engage with a community. One that is less about the ephemeral nature of chat and more about building a structured knowledge database, a database that will prove eternally useful.
Run Both (At Least For A While)
Don’t close down chat when the community is launched. Run both – at least for a while. Use the chat to promote community activities.
Set up an automation to post new forum discussions to Slack/Discord channels to drive activity back to the forum. Remind members who post support-related questions in chat that the forum is the best place to continue their support requests.
Over a relatively short period, activity will naturally shift. That’s because member preferences will shift. You won’t be forced to deal with the blowback from members resistant to the forum. They will simply find the activities published in the forum more valuable and engaging than those in chat.
After a few months, you should be able to close down the previous channels and rely solely on the forum (although it’s worth noting that many have both running for a period of time).
Good luck!