This article has a few primary arguments for not using Discord—

• because it is proprietary software
• because it has poor accessibility
• because control over moderation and other administrative tools is ultimately in the hands of Discord rather than the community.

I know this opinion is going to be unpopular but here I go anyway.

Other than the accessibility argument, I find these arguments quite weak. Yes, Discord is proprietary software, but the reason it's used is because a lot of people are familiar with it and many people already have Discord accounts.

Although I'm a firm supporter of free software, I also believe that it's more important to use the right software for the job than to idealistically use inferior software just because it happens to be open-source. And yes, I regard most of the alternatives to Discord listed in the article to be inferior solely because they are unfamiliar to users. Sometimes, the superior choice happens to be proprietary and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. That's the way it is sometimes; you can't win every fight, as much as you'd like to.

If your goal is to foster a community of regular users and make it easy for normal users to interact with contributors, there is no choice that will hamper that goal more than using an obscure alternative software that nobody's heard of.

With respect to chat logs and administration tools... for the most part, nobody cares. Discord's tools are sufficient for most groups and few people consider the drawbacks to outweigh the other benefits.