A practical-use question from a non-EE who enjoys simple repairs of home electronics. Am curious about whether "where" to discharge makes a difference to the continued health of an electrolytic capacitor - and for caps still in-circuit on a PCB also to the health of its neighbors.
A brief web-search yielded: some discharge 1) directly across the terminals, 2) from cap to "ground" (metal case, or ground pin of the power plug), or rarely 3) from cap to "ground" (the earth). (And most do use a resistor to slow things down.)