LISTSERV FTW. You could keep the alt.* / rec.* / talk.* riff-raff out and sneak it into a locked-down workplace IT environment.
To be honest What is Disocrd? I have never heard of it or used it. I like Discourse.
Discord - Often used as a social interface between software users and their software’s developer. Here is one that I’ve tried to like for the NotePlan app.
Where do I submit NotePlan feedback?
You can submit bugs by reaching out directly to us, hello@noteplan.co. If it’s not critical, you can also post it to our Reddit Forum or join our Discord community and share the bug in the #bugs channel.
Discord and similar tools/services (these days mostly Slack and Teams) have their places. A discussion among people that’s time sensitive (its relevancy decreases rapidly with time) for which a fairly high degree of interactivity is required, especially among more than two people is an excellent use case.
Examples where this kind of communication has been game changing include incident response, realtime problem solving within a group, gaming, and collaborative development. Getting new team members up to speed during an incident by having them read through the transcript is so, so, so much better than trying to explain all over and over. Also, having a transcript of the incident is invaluable afterward. It’s similar for conversations about anything that’s happening in real time.
I would hate to try to replace this forum with Discord, but conversely I would loathe attempting to use Discourse for any kind of incident response. (This is especially true in light of the fact that Discord-like services tend to have voice/video capabilities that can be activated when needed.) They’re different kinds of tools for different kinds of uses and communities.
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You can create threads in Discord too.
I’ve found Discord helpful when I’ve needed some support. It’s best (in my experience) on relatively low traffic servers and allows for more conversational interaction where that’s appropriate. (I occasionally get annoyed on Discourse sites when threads get sidetracked by ‘chitchat’, but maybe that’s just me). Indeed, low traffic communities would probably not find the Discourse useful or its overhead worthwhile. I belong to a Discord around a podcast. I dip in a couple of times a week to the channels that interest me. There’s rarely more than 10-20 posts to review.
On the other hand, the Obsidian Discord is like a firehose. It’s packed full of intelligent, helpful individuals, but it could be a full-time job keeping up. For a quick support question, however, it’s great. The Obsidian forums are much better for thoughtful consideration of issues and longer term development.
Again, depends on the server, but that’s the issue across many platforms, including many enterprise systems and Twitter. I have been known to find gems on Twitter, but the time I have to spend finding them means there are better starting points.
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I “follow” many more on Twitter than I read. Everyone I read is on a list I’ve made by topic. And I ruthlessly cull my lists. And I’ve stopped being a “Twitter completionist.”
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I should have been clearer; the software is GPL. The hosting is pricey in that the software requires root access.
If you’re running a large forum, or a very active small forum, it’s an interesting target of opportunity. It’s too risky for me, personally.
If you’re running other software on the same server, again, it’s a risk I wouldn’t want to manage personally, I know many others would feel more comfortable than I would, which is why there are professional Discourse hosting services; they know what they are doing.
Discourse’s own hosting service is not cheap, but I have heard good things about it.
As a person in dozens of discords, I really think the quality of a discord depends on the channel organization and your use of the app. I only regularly read the discord channels for my closest IRL/internet friends - the rest are muted, and if I need actual info from any of them, I search for what I’m looking for before typing the question.
An example - for the relay.fm general discord, I really only look at the home automation/tech policy/keyboard channels. Everything else I have muted forever. If I’m in the mood to talk about a certain thing, I’ll scroll through that thread, but more for the sake of conversation. If I’m researching a thing, I won’t scroll, but search or go elsewhere
I guess the tldr is Discord is more like an old AOL chat room - you either really care about the thing and therefore treat it like a twitter completionist, need instant communication, or peruse it when bored. Given the demographics of MPU generally, I’m not surprised it’s less popular given “peruse when bored” is lowkey anti intentionality, a value many people here share
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Someone else who remembers Usenet, eh? 
I got access to it in the early 90s, used it for many years over dial-up internet. (A good offline newsreader was a must back then, I used Forté Agent on Windows back then.)
My usage dropped off in the 2000s as I got cable broadband and the web became more attractive option. It’s still around, though most newsgroups are dead or filled with spam. (Thanks in no small part to Google Groups allowing anyone to dump their effluent into it.)
I was using Unison for a while before it was sunsetted by Panic, and more recently I used Usenapp, though that is better suited for, ahem, those interested in binaries. 
Now I’m back full-circle to Mozilla Thunderbird, which does a great job of filtering out the detritus.
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I use Discord primarily for coordinating with staff and management for my broadcasting work plus advertising production. It’s also handy as a discussion and support system for several organisations I support in Second Life (Second Pride and the various annual events organised by Relay For Life / The American Cancer Society). Since Second Life’s reliability around its own group messaging systems is frequently lacking, it’s just as well that Discord is available as a backup!
I have made the mistake of joining some more generalised Discord servers, and I agree that the signal-to-noise ratio can get overwhelming. I’ve now gotten into the habit of changing the default notification settings for each new server I join, and permanently mutiny any channels that are irrelevant to me.
I was also a Usenet user. It was an indispensable service for developers. I used it most when I worked a lot with PHP and needed help (especially in the early days of PHP in the 90s when it was a new language). Now, it’s still a valuable place to find binaries - Open Source, of course,
Unfortunately, most of the groups are now just filled with spam or inactive.
I used to use Hogwasher to access it but have now moved to NZB Vortex, an excellent client but only meant for binaries.
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I remember Forté Agent!
I still occasionally fire up Gnus to read some groups, but they’re mainly the gmane.gnus hierarchy or comp.editors. My old favourites like misc.writing, soc.history.medieval and rec.sf.arts.composition (may have not remembered the addresses precisely) became unusable many years ago and I’ve not been back to check if they recovered since.
Totally agree!
My preferable choices in order:
- A regular forum like Invision Power Board is the best!
- Discourse is usable.
- Discord is something I have to use because I’m a member of o a non profit organisation that uses this awful piece of discussion solution.
- Facebook… Facebook could have been a really good discussion platform, but it is not. Instead, it’s a total mess of trolls, discussions that you can’t follow and so on…
/$0.02
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OT, but wanted to chime in that this is exactly how I use Twitter. It made it much more usable and was totally worth the time invested.
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I think a lot of the enthusiasm for Discord is that its upkeep and maintenance are Someone Else’s Problem. In the past web-based forum software has suffered from various security flaws that allowed outsiders to hack into them, a situation made worse because many were installed and then never updated. Things have improved now, but I suspect enough people were burned that they’re reluctant to go down that route again. 
As for Facebook, it’s a mess because the mighty Algorithm has to be applied to everthing, even when it makes no sense to do so. Unfortunately, instead of taking a step back and rethinking, Zuckerberg and the rest of FB management thing the answer is to ‘nerd harder’ and throw more (poorly-trained, poorly-paid) moderaters at the problems.
There’s several companies + software projects that use Discord rather than a forum like Discourse, and it’s annoying because:
- Anything posted in Discord is not going to show up in a web search
- Even with threads, questions get lost in the river of messages
- Chat rooms encourage low effort, useless replies
If you have a project you want to build a community around, and maybe don’t want to spend much time or money on maintaining a forum, I can understand setting up a Discord server, because it’s free and quick to start.
There’s no excuse though for companies like CloudFlare for example, who have a Discourse forum but their developers only answer questions on their “CloudFlare Developers” Discord and completely ignore the forum.
Forums vs. chatrooms is a long-running debate. I’ve read threads on the subject from 20 years ago, I participated in threads about the subject 10 years ago, and we’ll probably still be discussing this issue on a forum 10 years from now, lol.
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Part of the underlying issue is that both Discourse and Discord platforms need active moderators to organize and coordinate and title and stick threads, as well as create or curate FAQs. Discourse is much more likely to have active moderators, but Discord can/could.
That’s 100% based on the server/community. In the Relay FM membership Discord, we’ve got a large team of moderators that is always around. 
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I will say that I use slack but I treat it like a private asynchronous forum. A new Slack si easy to set up for a small group to share things in a threaded conversation way and typically faster than adding another private room to a Discourse forum.
I refuse to use Facebook. Full Stop. Yes I have logons but it’s to keep my name out of Facebook trolls’ hands
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