It seems that jacob1 wants to use this weird thing called IRC, what is it? I think the community could at least run their own Discord server right? I think it would be a great solution.
You can find guides for joining IRC here: https://powdertoy.co.uk/Wiki/W/Irc_setup.html It's basically a chat system discord, just from 20 years earlier. It's text-only, no pictures. Tbh I wouldn't recommend joining the IRC channel, most of the users there don't talk about TPT.
Eventually I'd like to move to discord, but it's not a high priority. When we're ready, we will post the discord link in-game and on the forums. Until then, giving out discord links to unofficial / community servers is prohibited.