“While there are tradeoffs in terms of convenience and closeness, for most developer communities a public, managed forum is better than a private, unsearchable Slack.”
Slack’s free plan caps history at 10,000 messages. Discord scrolls the answer away by Thursday. Every good answer in a chat room gets asked and answered again next week. Companies moved their communities into chat because it felt lively, and they traded a searchable archive for a vibe.