As another commenter pointed out, forums tend to serve one of two needs. Either they are a source of information, or they can be a place for casual conversatio

As another commenter pointed out, forums tend to serve one of two needs. Either they are a source of information, or they can be a place for casual conversations. Your list of 'wants' mainly speaks to forums being a source of information. People ask questions, remark on current events, debate and discuss and create a long-term record of thoughtful discussions. But Discourse appears to be geared more towards the community aspects of a forum. Mentions between members of a community are relevant in this case, since it gets users into threads and posting. Real-time features lower the friction of using the software and increase rapid-fire communication (we call that "banter") between members. Avatars on the topic index make it easy to see which of your friends are posting in which threads, so you can better decide where to go next. For this group, forums represent a "Third Place"[1] community outside of their home and workplace groups. I've been building forums software similar to Discourse, on my own for the past year, wagering that this second group of users is larger than the first, and that their needs are only accidentally addressed by the current generation of forums software. I'm anxious to see whether Discourse finds traction in this respect. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place