Discord is worse than Reddit for anything other than chatting. You can't view a Discord without an account, Discords aren't indexed by search engines or protected by google cache / archive.org, Discord's API usage policy is even more restrictive than Reddit's new one (it's completely against the TOS to create third party discord clients at all)...
Being able to look at the historical threads on a subreddit like hardwareswap is really important for learning the value of what you have. A format where every offer gets its own collapsible conversation thread is much better than every negotiator popping up in sequence.
Yup, agreed. Discord is only good for chatting. I do not find Discord to be a good place to share information or to even use their 'forum' channel option.
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.
How is Discord better? It's also a walled garden that doesn't allow 3rd party clients, and it's just a horrible website to run a forum like this. In fact it's just horrible all around.
The Matrix Code of Conduct actively condones harassment as long as the Matrix people dislike your politics, which makes all the official forums unsafe for technical coordination.