Hate discord with a passion. I don’t know why all the “new-age” open-source projects are also moving to Discord as their primary forum. The search is abysmal, there’s no way to go back to previous postings in a sane manner.
I reluctantly use discord because some of my favorite application developers use that (Immich, Omnivore, Logseq) but it’s just a massive pain in the ass and every time I spend even 10 minutes there, it feels like I’ve spent hours looking into the dark mayhem, searching for a needle in the haystack.
Communities move to Discord because it is a catchment: you can set up a server for free on a moment’s notice, which gives you a place to hold a decent proportion of your community for continuity. The mod tools are also sufficient for basic use. You’re right that it’s not a replacement for a forum - terrible for archival and search purposes.
Agreed, discord feels like it’s more for meme sharing and info graphics than actual long group discussions