> So you join the Discord and then you have 100s of channels with chat.. Try to find the information, need a role, I give up.

I know where you are coming from here, but that's not really on Discord, but on individual server management. The people who organise their Discord servers like that would probably have created a similar mess in ye olde forum times, or on Slack or whatever. Plus bigger servers tend to be subject to SPAM and scamming and counter-measures seem ad-hoc at times because native tools for handling that are a relatively recent addition.

And for all its faults (not open source, slow, privacy concerns, OP, etc.) Discord also has some things going for it. Lots of people are already on it so network effect is a thing here, it's relatively easy to pick up the basics off and there are no immediate paywalls (which makes it attractive to semi-public projects without a cash flow), a lot of basic and advanced features are there to use, and most of them work across a lot of platforms.

My biggest gripe with it (besides the aforementioned) is that its better new features like forum channels and stage channels are locked behind usage metrics and/or paywalls.

It's absolutely great for moderators and server owners though. Also color coding user names is surprisingly good to enrich communication on public channels. I guess that goes for personalisation in general but think is simple and very effective. Channel separation and hiding and other permissions are doing great service to reduce clutter, it's a trade off I guess.