Any improvements will be hard if your platform is built on "as little effort as possible", which unfortunately has become the standard. Any changes to get back the qualities of more structured platforms will inevitably lead to more effort for users, and they will reject it, regardless of the benefits. This is also why groups on fedi may sound nice at first, but let's be honest, how long would you keep up posting in groups until you get annoyed because regular posting doesn't come with all the hassle?
I will give Discord some props for attempting to get the positive aspects of forums back with forum channels. Their only fault was making them not distinct enough so there's no real benefit for most people to use them. They usually serve as galleries or just another way to group chats, all with little activity. Hell, the UI in forum threads is just the same old chat UI.
They were bound to fail with that half-assery. Why would anyone start a forum thread and go through the hassle of thinking of a title and tags when they can just talk about anything in the regular channels? They stood no chance.
It's wild that the website of the first online community I joined 20 years ago is still online. It went into readonly mode 14 years ago, but all the user uploads and forum posts are still there.
I doubt we'll be able to say the same about Discord communities.
Volpeon