I grew up with (and love) irc but currently use discord. I find it odd someone who knows irc would list "figure out how to leave a server".

Try explaining the steps to irc to someone who has never used irc before. That will be way more difficult than figuring out discord.

irc also has the downside of "ask question - get nothing" because the guy (who you dont know which guy is "the guy") wasnt online to even see the message. Or "ask the question and wait and hope I dont get disconnected losing any responses they might have answered with"

Discords can setup tickets or question areas as well, which greatly helps

All that said, I prefer docs, wiki, or a forum/subreddit over either irc or discord, but no way would I want to go back to irc

I’m already on irc, so I just join a channel. There’s no membership or obligation.

Joining a discord server is a whole mental decision. And each server is organized differently. So when you join a server you have to figure out where to comment and search.

Joining a server is about as much 'commitment' as joining a channel in IRC. i.e. technically very easy, and socially it entirely depends on the server/channel. For a support one, it's not at all unusual or hard to join and leave again.

> Try explaining the steps to irc to someone who has never used irc before.

I mean, with modern web clients, it can be as easy as "open chat link, chat, close page".