Original comment, copy-pasted for convenience:
why do so many projects start with a discord and not with a wiki, or github, or web presence?
simply, discord is the fastest, most frictionless way to do the following:
- garner a community of support ensuring that there is an audience for the project
- provide access to idea validation for the creators of that project. rapid feedback for their project = rapid progress
- provide the easy creation of (not necessarily accessible nor good, but) quick resources for the project
forums, websites, hell even github can only hope to match the value proposition of discord, and it's something people fail to take into account when they criticise the move to discord as a file host/forum/wiki/project website
if you want people to make a file host/forum/wiki/project website, they're directly competing with the frictionless, fast, yet unsustainable and frankly web-shit discord. the fast, frictionless nature is enough for people to use and accept, hell, even to make infrastructural to their project
a platform that could create a non-webshit, easy way to provide the value that discord provides, all while being just as fast and frictionless if not faster/more lubricated, would absolutely blow discord out the water
I am a sysadmin and my level of tech friction tolerance is different from the people referenced here leading projects, but I'd like to gather opinions on this, the fact that this regularly happens as described suggests there's a whole lot of truth to it, but i feel like it's overstating the friction, am i wrong here?
This is what I hate about Discord. It's another account. If you don't have Discord (or do, but would rather not tie all your identities together), you need to register. What I like about Matrix is any Matrix home server can join, and it can then be used to access bridged Discord rooms, the problem of course being that many projects don't bridge to Matrix.
I know before you didn't need an account but maybe you do now?
Discord had (has?) "unclaimed accounts" which were essentially guest accounts with a custom name. Not sure how the system works nowadays, but I suppose using them would be fine for one-off visits.
Yeah I remember that's how it was, but with the phasing out of #### after your username idk if they still have unclaimed accounts.