Forums and whether we keep them going forward

I started this thread as a way to see if the idea of a forumless site seemed like it would work for people... just testing the waters... this site isn't going anywhere soon (knock on wood) but it's about time we started to talk about if we can give you a better site in the future and what that might look like.

One of the things a lot of people miss about using Discord is that it has the potential to be very organized and for information to be effectively retained and available. Most of this comes from well established channels within the server (much like the forums are laid out in clear sections / categories) and thru topic specific threads. But 'most' people don't even know about threads and it typically requires active moderation and community cooperation to keep channels on topic. This can be aided by good access level / permission structures and some other elements, but this takes work to maintain... forums and commenting require some of the same efforts here... but the lack of constant discussion (like what you see on discord) keep it mostly behind the scenes. I've done some forums moderation on much more active forums and trust me when I say that forums can be just as chaotic and difficult to find relevant info as discord. Ours just hasn't gotten that sort of use (and I've put in some of the work up front to categorize and clearly define what is supposed to be in different sections).

For me, the key points in favor of moving to Discord are: reduced costs (on a number of levels), reduced risk from spammers/hackers, more active engagement with the community, reduced administrative commitment for me, less demand for software and server evolution/upgrades or the impact of migrating when direct upgrades aren't feasible.
Against are: need for active moderation, admin staying on top of info / structure organization, draft (forum level) publication of WhatIFs and in progress work, loss of continuity / backup of community data, challenges of setting up a new site using new (to us) systems and layouts.

Some of these things are workable. Much lesser scale forums as plugins for Wordpress exist as do solid commenting systems.

As Dan has said... this is still just a thought exercise. No decisions have been made but 'some' things about the site's operation are in need of changes and it made sense to get a feel for this as an option before that process happens. Otherwise, we end up in the same situation that led to where we are atm (that being we migrated the site only to be in operation for less than 6 months before Joomla went through a major upgrade which means we're approaching an end-of-life no longer supported level of operation - and that's a pain in the butt).