I have some experience in online discussions, even of very deep, complicated, and nuanced discussions. Email discussion lists can work well for those. Usenet could as well, back when I was using it.
A medium that mostly has short messages, such as the fediverse, is not good at it in my experience.
Regardless, any medium requires some form of moderation to keep flame baiting, trolling, and outsiders with no stake in the topic from derailing the discussion.
We need more forums. We need to revive and embrace the forum culture.
And I am sad to say it but people sticking to mailing lists are partially responsible for this not happening.
They have good intent. They defend the mailing list style of discourse, but they are not saving it, they gatekeep it. They do not let us move this style anywhere to a more accessible place. And it only can move *with* them.
And this leads to social networks taking over that role in all the bad ways.
Sorry, I know you said no debate. But I think there is important part missing:
In my interpretation forum is not a specific piece of software.
It is a project, people, culture, workflows, rules, etc.
And to make it work we need people who know these aspects to recognize that they need to seed them outside of the mailing lists walls.
You do not say "show me a good forum for me to migrate to and I consider it". You migrate and make it a good forum, using your expertise and experience.
And it is exactly the core issue: we can not just create a perfect piece of the forum software somewhere on the side, prove that it works, then come to a mailing list and say - hey, we made it, migrate all.
Because the presence of those people sitting on the mailing list in that forum is the main thing which makes a forum good. Not the technology.
Ok, proving your point, I guess.
Lars Wirzenius
Aleksandra Fedorova 