Open-ended discussions on code forges aren't very good. GitHub Discussions are just glorified issues in a separate tab and don't offer much if any meaningful benefit over using normal issues as a medium for communication, like I am doing right now.
Discussions can span multiple projects, and there is no easy way to represent that with the current model other than centralising discussion on one project's page and linking to that in conversations on other projects.
These discussions are often offloaded to 3rd party applications such as Discourse, Discord and Matrix. This leads to discoverability of communities and previous discussions becoming much more difficult, especially on the non-forum solutions.
An idea I've had for a while is to have forums that fully integrate with a code forge, while not being tied to any specific repository; they should be able to exist at any "level", whether that be for the site as a whole, a user/org, a single repo, or multiple different repos. Referencing other parts of the forge should be easy, whether that be PRs, issues, lines of code, etc.
My main problem with forums is they can often feel daunting to participate in, especially for less technically inclined people who are just there to ask a question or participate in the community. Making them integrated may ease this a little bit, but the difference between short, instant messaging like Discord and posts on a forum is a mental barrier I'd like to try and figure out, I'm just not sure how to approach it.
This is just me throwing an idea at the wall though, I'm sure there are oversights and whatnot. I haven't thought about implementation much if at all but I thought it was worth sharing to start a discussion ;3
