There is still a place for the forum but it is long overdue a facelift. Hopefully none of the historical threads and their wealth of information would be lost in the process.
Improvements I'd suggest would be the ability to easily add pictures -cloud storage costs nothing these days -and the ability to 'like' posts. I read a lot of threads, think they have merit but don't feel the need to respond. Perhaps even a read count would be a good thing. This would at least show contributors were being acknowledged.