[ComputerGuru]

All the open source Discord rooms I'm in, absolutely no one uses the voice chat and I didn't even know there was a screen sharing option. The ratio of users to admins is probably 10,000:1 so ease of admin isn't really an issue (see also reddit where mod tools suck). There are plenty of visually appealing clients (e.g. this one!).

I personally think persistent message history (XMPP botched that rollout terribly) - which goes hand-in-hand with multipresence - and the extreme dearth of any - let alone actually good and usable - IRC (or XMPP) mobile clients (esp. on iOS) was the real reason they lost mainstream use.

Multipresence is more than just a checkbox; doing it correctly involves actually setting up a SSO system with actual first-party user account support (not just relegating it as a stateful detail of the underlying IRC library you are using). IMHO actual account integration would have bound users more loyally to IRC and would have created more of a "network effect".

Inline attachments, emoji reactions, etc are all just icing on the cake.

[jeltz]

Not sure why you are downvoted because you I feel you are pretty much correct for many non-gamers. I do not use voice chat and it is not what made me start using Discord. But I still see why voice chat is very useful to many gamers. Different groups missed different features from IRC.

Message history on the other hand is a huge Discord feature for me as is inline attachments (e.g. being able to post code snippets without having to use s pastebin).

[ComputerGuru]

I'm not sure either, but it's HN :)

Native attachments support was personally a big thing for me (inline images or gifs.. not so much) but what I meant to say is that I think the ecosystem could have survived without it if that were the only issue - just look at how long Reddit went without any sort of image or video upload support. Ultimately and "at some point," attachment support would have "just happened" naturally. I just really think multi-presence w/ history and the lack of a good web or mobile client was the bigger deal. Unlike attachments which you can just staple on to the UI and squint at it the right way, these were actual, fundamental issues that required a rearchitecture (or even rewrite) of existing servers and clients, and despite how obvious their importance was (at least to some of us) the mainstream client/server options didn't really relish the idea or jump on board.

I still vividly remember being locked out of a hacker space maybe seven years ago and needing to figure out how to get on the irc from my iPhone. I scoured the app store looking for a good (free) client for this one-time need I had and found nothing. I searched online and found a really shady, insecure, and ad-infested website that would open an IRC connection in the backend and then stream the text to your browser in an interface intended for desktop use. The interface was neigh impossible to use on a phone, all the UI bits were overlaid atop of one another, text wrapping was broken, etc.

I was able to use this to post on the IRC channel and get someone to let me in, but every time I changed tabs or my phone timed out and turned off, the connection would be severed and I would have to start again.. and ask "sorry did anyone reply to my earlier message, I am logging in from a web frontend and was forced to refresh, I might have missed your reply if you did."