I ran a Zcash dedicated RocketChat server for a few years:
It’s relatively easy to setup and has just as many features as Slack, it was also bridged to the old internal ECC Slack in a couple channels.
However it’s not without it’s own caveats. You have to trust whoever is running it to not be malicious and that person has to be willing burden the legal responsibility for it’s users content. That’s one of the main reasons we decided to close it, that and it was much cheaper (free) to just go with Discord where many users were already chatting.
I’m personally in favor of any and all forums and channels wether they are Mastodon, Matrix, Telegram or anywhere else. The challenge is getting the general public to accept and use the more “complex” channels. Many don’t want to go through the hassle of installing apps and creating accounts for things they’ve never heard of.
As far as moderation goes I think it’s always beneficial to have multiple people and a clear CoC. Plus an open communication channel like “Moderation Feedback” where users can question decisions that have been made Where other platforms like Reddit, X, YouTube ,etc… fail (imho) is the lack of accountability for the mods. There are no appeals, no clear CoC, no way to ask what someone did wrong. r/cryptocurrency r/Monero etc.. is really poor for this especially when it comes to Zcash related stuff. The way things are setup here it’s actually much more work because you need to justify why you took an action vs just clicking the button and saying oh well. Plus I am a contractor for the ZF so if I’m going crazy users can always contact ZF directly to go over my head.
All that to say any new platforms should have a diverse mod team with accountability. Users who don’t like a how a platform is being moderated won’t always complain they will simply stop showing up.