We have tried chat platforms in the past - the worst solutions for support multiple real products, not crypto pumping/dumping themes.
Lack of ability to find anything useful, inability to provide a direct link to the specific post or just quote part of it, hell of a mess with the channels and so on. I know many of them have threads, but it’s not the same as topics. Chats stays as a text stream platforms, so any question will not be searched, but asked right away, even if it was answered multiple times in the threads above. Consumes too much time especially for complicated products like Storj.
This current forum platform can work as a chat too - you may also see as someone typing while you in the topic, and posts appears right away without refresh, but unlike chats it has a great search functionality and suggestions while you typing with providing answers on what you are trying to ask, it is moderated by the Community (anyone member with reputation can mark post as inappropriate or spam to review by moderators, if several members marks so, it will be hided right away, Regular members can hide such posts right away even without a moderator). You can quote posts, give a direct links and so on.
And I even did not mention that the reputation system on the forum works pretty well to stop spammers and bots from flooding forum with useless messages and unrelated advertisements.
It prevent newcomers from posting multiple posts before they will read at least several posts on the forum, this platform is trying to guide them to use a search first before asking the same questions. It also slow down them from posting multiple responses and teach them to describe a problem at whole not piece by piece in hundreds responses unlike chats.