> Neither the client nor the server are what makes discord however... What makes discord is the community around it... Gamers aren't going to leave what they already have
Just on this, most Discord mentions I've come across on HN describe how the user experience is what separates it from the competition and I'd agree.
The networking effect across communities doesn't seem anywhere near as strong as traditional social media where one might argue it's what keeps users retained. Few I've observed in the years I've been on Discord seem to care or recognize who someone is across 'servers' (Discord meaning), which is made less obvious by the encouraged feature of changing handles/avatars across communities to maintain quasi-distinct identities (even across related gaming chat). It's also not uncommon for some users block all PMs and friend requests from communities merely due to spam issues.
The communities using it that I've experienced are often doing so since it's the most convenient service for their purposes. Users can join with invites without signing up (a la IRC, traditionally), supports inline attachments (acting as an all-in-one image/video/file host), includes persistent, easily searchable message logs and just as importantly is all free.
A decent number of the communities I've encountered (ranging from software, subreddit/forum chat, game modding, media creation) could migrate elsewhere if there was an alternative suitable for their own needs. A number of them have migrated from other platforms before and one of the gaming-related ones even discussed potential future alternatives. If anything the self-hosted aspect would be the main drawback to a Discord-equivalent alternative (ie: the costs, maintenance).
I'll second this. I started using Discord solely because all of the alternatives (Skype, teamspeak, mumble, google, ...) were so bad at the time. And when I say "bad" I specifically mean the UX and the quality/stability of service. Discord had good quality service and it was extremely easy for non-technical people to use, and so for me and my friends who talked online a lot, we naturally just tried it out and then stayed because it continued to be good.
When I've been after old comments of mine or others and know some text from it filtering been straightforward. Results can be sorted in chronologically ascending order and date ranges can be set in addition to the standard filter options.
It's not perfect though. There's no exclusion filter option, some queries are automatically broadened without a way to enforce strict string matching (eg: searching enemies will also include results for enemy but wrapping in double quotes like "enemies" doesn't prevent this), the pagination when there are too many results for a query maxes out at ~200 pages even if more pages are shown/should be accessible via the navigation (seems like a bug), the pagination is also only at the bottom which adds a little extra time navigating and attachment filenames can't be searched.
That said, even with the above caveats I manage to find what I'm after reasonably quickly the vast majority of the time, even things years old.
My friends and I have had a server since ~2016 that we use and I've been able to find whatever I've needed even back that far. It might be harder in a higher volume server (we have about 20 actives and another 20 semi-active chatters).
But the search will let you specify time periods, channels, who sent the message, etc. It also gives a line of context around the result, which takes up some space, but I find is quite useful for, well, getting the context of the statement and figuring out what it meant.
I think the most important facet for (very) old content searching, though, is that you can almost immediately go back in the chat history to any result. Whereas other chat apps make that slow or difficult.
Just on this, most Discord mentions I've come across on HN describe how the user experience is what separates it from the competition and I'd agree.
The networking effect across communities doesn't seem anywhere near as strong as traditional social media where one might argue it's what keeps users retained. Few I've observed in the years I've been on Discord seem to care or recognize who someone is across 'servers' (Discord meaning), which is made less obvious by the encouraged feature of changing handles/avatars across communities to maintain quasi-distinct identities (even across related gaming chat). It's also not uncommon for some users block all PMs and friend requests from communities merely due to spam issues.
The communities using it that I've experienced are often doing so since it's the most convenient service for their purposes. Users can join with invites without signing up (a la IRC, traditionally), supports inline attachments (acting as an all-in-one image/video/file host), includes persistent, easily searchable message logs and just as importantly is all free.
A decent number of the communities I've encountered (ranging from software, subreddit/forum chat, game modding, media creation) could migrate elsewhere if there was an alternative suitable for their own needs. A number of them have migrated from other platforms before and one of the gaming-related ones even discussed potential future alternatives. If anything the self-hosted aspect would be the main drawback to a Discord-equivalent alternative (ie: the costs, maintenance).