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Comment by cbdumas | Hacker News Reader

This is speculation, but I believe this is a vestige of when voice chat applications widely used by PC gamers like TeamSpeak and Ventrilo did actually rely on independent servers, usually paid for and administered by individuals (or guilds/clans).

Back in the bad old days if you wanted to voice chat you had to know someone who could invite you to join a "server" (or set one up yourself), and I think the verbiage just kind of stuck.

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Correct, this is the origin of the term. Before cloud services like Discord, people had to set up servers specifically to run TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, or Mumble. Discord has now largely/almost entirely replaced those applications, and it's just a vestige like "roll down the window".

The internal term of "guild" is more accurate, but no users actually call them that.

> it's just a vestige like "roll down the window"

Not to disagree, but I don't really see how the old rotary handles suggested the term "roll down the window" either. What was rolling? If I were supposed to describe the old way without knowing an existing word for it, I'd say "crank" was the closest option.

I never thought of it before, but it's interesting that building windows with hand cranks aren't "rolled open."

True, it wasn't "rolling" in the sense of the physical action you performed or even what the crank did, but the crank did move in a circular motion, and things that roll also move in a circular motion, so it makes a little bit of sense, even if it's not really rolling. Not sure why that term stuck.

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