I think discord serves a functional quite like email mailing lists, but with a twist. Email mailing lists, by their nature, gatekeep and filter out younger or less technical people, while discord by its nature is doing the same but inverted. It filters the sort of people that would be far more comfortable with mailing lists.
That sounds awful. You want a venue where younger and less technical people can get help and guidance from the more experienced people, not an echo chamber full of the least experienced users.
Well, I think discord appeals more to the young or less technical, in other words young and technical people, like the developers of many new projects, seem to like it. It's a model of software collaboration for their generation which their parents neither get nor appreciate, and I think that is part of the appeal to them.
I dislike Discord for the same reason I disliked some IRC networks. There's a lot young people on a powertrip and generally very clique-y behavior. But at least IRC wasn't also run by a huge uncaring tech company known to completely ignore the GDPR (or interpret it in asinine ways) that will eventually run out of VC money and disappear.
It's okay-ish for when you need to ask questions. But we're trending towards gating binaries and general documentation there too.
Discord must be aware that their secret ingredient is that people are "admins" over others, and that people actually quite like being in power and having a different colored name. And all that without the technical barrier of having to setup forums or Teamspeak (not that such gatekeeping kept terrible people from being admins)
This is it exactly. Discord is, inherently, where quick gratification prospers. Immediate memetic responses followed by swapping to the next server for the next high.
