@alexherbo2 Discord and Slack are interesting newcomers in the space, and as they both add features they start to look more and more like the other. Both have similar control issues to Reddit, and have sort of a stream of thought immediacy in terms of active conversations (but as you rightly point out, have a history).
Slack actually has sort of a “talk about this comment” feature now for sort of post-like abilities, but it is really clumsy and I have yet to see an organization really using it. Neither Slack nor Discord allow for the “old guard” to work in their “old way” (via IRC) without a lot of pain (I actually wrote a long article about this pain -> https://www.robertmelton.com/posts/weechat-all-the-things/ … I got it all working, then gave up on it) … as @andreyorst pointed out for some people having the mailing list mode is a “critical feature” because they are on many mailing lists and that is how they work.
But, it is an interesting and fair point about having a place to talk on voice, it is extremely humanizing. Text loses context and allows us to treat others as well – “others” rather than actual humans who deserve respect. This is even more prone to happen in the tech communities where text is sometimes the only medium you have for years.
A Kakoune discord is something I would join, maybe you should set it up @alexherbo2? If not, I could toss one up, just takes a few minutes to setup – throw a Kakoune icon on there, and maybe setup a backup moderator or two and we are off to the races!