Does GitHub discussions fill those requirements reasonably? https://docs.github.com/en/discussions
An example of this - https://github.com/nodejs/node/discussions
An example of this - https://github.com/nodejs/node/discussions
Also, for nonprogrammers Github is a really alien place.
And it is still proprietary lock-in.
But yes, it can be a viable alternative and at least is not asking phone number for read only access.
And yes, GitHub isn't the proper spot for non-programmers. All the workflows around it are geared to hosting a software or at least a site.
The proprietary lock-in... I don't agree with in that if that is an issue, then discord is too (and likely more). GitHub exposes the information for discussions quite easily - https://docs.github.com/en/graphql/guides/using-the-graphql-... I would be willing to take the stance that any forum that you don't host and access the underlying data without needing to go through the user facing application is lock in. With GitHub discussions, the access to the underlying data is more available than any other forum that you don't host yourself.
FWIW, from my work machine I access GitHub without issue. I can't access discord and will likely be unable to persuade such a change up the chain as Discord is largely seen as primarily chat for non-professional activities.
I was thinking here primarily about network effects.
While there might be some overlap as discord users grow up and decide to keep their discord account, I'm guessing that even in that case they will have a separate github/gitlab/whatever account for their professional or unprofessional programming.
That you don't see this is an indication that it works and dissuading those spammers.
Consider all the nearly forgotten repos out there that you occasionally stumble over and that there are no "work from home and get $30/hour - click here" or a dozen forms of "somespam.example.com" links peppering it.
Compare that with the old Wordpress blogs out there that haven't disabled comments and yet still have search indexing (or not, but spammers don't always dig far enough to see if there's a nofollow attribute on links).
So, for the most part, GitHub isn't indexed by search engines - and its across the board for the entirety of the site. Spammers realize that it is pointless to attempt in any of the forms that they could on other user created content sites and so expend no effort at all to post spam links.
Github discussions is searchable within GitHub in that repo. For example https://github.com/laravel/framework/discussions?discussions...
The wiki is fairly useful - and again, if you are searching for content in GitHub you can search wikis ( https://docs.github.com/en/search-github/searching-on-github... ) and get only content within GitHub (without having to sift through Google search results) with arguably a more powerful query language than Google's search bar ( https://docs.github.com/en/search-github/getting-started-wit... )
Personally, if I am looking for content for a FOSS that is hosted on GitHub I use GitHub's search for discussions and wikis first before trying to search for content in google.
What's the difference between a spammer creating their own repo and creating a bunch of issues with spam links vs their own repo and creating a bunch of wiki pages with spam links?
That said, the wiki workflow, permissions, and limitations in formatting may push people who are after a more durable store of information to create a GitHub pages site which is then managed with the same workflow (forks, pull requests, and reviews) as code, along with the ability for search engines to index the GitHub pages site.