I think the primary issue is that no matter what Google prioritizes for, the SEO "blogs" will always switch over to attempting to look like it. Forums, whose go

I think the primary issue is that no matter what Google prioritizes for, the SEO "blogs" will always switch over to attempting to look like it. Forums, whose goal is just people talking to each other, are never going to end up at the top of the list compared to people actively attempting to game the algorithm. Even if Google started actively promoting things that look like forums, SEO people would just make things that look like forums but are hyper optimized for whatever Google was looking for. The only way around this is for google to start making a white list of known good forums, but people get (understandably) really pissed when a company of google's size starts actively choosing winners and losers instead of just tuning their algorithm.