Exactly what Delirium said, with the exception that you keep pointing out what you think, without actually commenting on the points anyone else is making against your ideas.
Of course the forums are dead. Staff abandoned the forums when it was the foundation of the community. As pointed out in discord chat, nowhere in the Gmod Server does it mention the forums, but right off the bat it mentions discord. Trying to say "well players are joining discord instead of the forums" is baseless, as of course they are only going to join discord when they don't know about the forums...
Not only that, I don't even see mention of the forums really on discord. I don't see any form of incentive to join the forums.
Forums help retain members. The proof you are looking for is in this very thread. As delirium pointed out, you have people who have been members for 15 years commenting on this thread.
As delirium pointed out (and I in the past here), discord does not retain members. Its just another server channel in the 50+ channels most people are in. I'm in about a dozen discord channels. Most, I joined, was active for a week or two, and never left, but haven't looked since. 90% of your members in discord are probably exactly the same.
"Even the ones in TTT ... they do not care about the community unless it's to play games"
That is where our leadership has failed. At least one spot. To make a community, you have to form an environment people want to be a part of. When you joined, you didn't just stick to a single server. No, you joined the forums, discovered we had more to offer, and then got banned. Point is, you are drawing in a useless crowd. It will not build SG up. It is a placebo of numbers. You admit as much yourself. But, the numbers help you feel like its a success, so you want to remove one of the true indicators of the pace things are actually at.
Discord:
Pros:
Easy to have light convos.
Easy to create an account.
Voice Chat Channels (Although currently mostly unused) right at your fingertips.
Easy to quickly burry mistakes.
Huge Numbers of inactive players showing active
Cons:
Terrible at data management.
Terrible at providing information.
Very disorganized and overwhelming for new people with walls of information.
Terrible amounts of useless bot spam that blow out 'stats' that make things look more active.
Does not stand out from the other mass of 1000s of gaming communities. Just another generic channel in the horde.
Useless donations with 'perks' that don't actually seem to do anything real to help.
No google seo. No email gathering. No user retention.
Forums:
Pros:
Easy data management.
Easy Information Tool.
Looks professional.
Sets us aside from the horde of failing gaming communities.
Google SEO and search result potential
Server Tracking.
Realistic user interaction statistics.
Easy to research prior information and events.
Email gathering to help with long term retention through event announcements (why don't we have a newsletter?)
Already have 23,000+ members
Long term users visit the forums regularly. Helps to show that SG has been around, and will be around if the right choices are made.
Future possibilities are endless. The forums can be molded into whatever we want. Discord can only be molded into what discord wants (or spam bots people have created).
IS THE FOUNDATION ON WHICH SG HAS BEEN BUILT
Cons:
Takes staff time to maintain.
Is a coding mess currently.
Easy for users to see discussions such as this that are going on.
Was abandoned "very stupidly" by previous staff.
Is harder for users to make accounts. But, long term retention is far higher. There is also a reason donations were much more successful when the forums were active.
Anyone who thinks the forums aren't failing because of discord must not have been around much prior to 2018. A lot of work went into the forums, yes, but SG did very well because of it. It really comes down to incentives. There were lots of incentives before to join the forum, now there are 0. You were told all over in the server, by the server and players, to join up and join the convo. Now there is none of that. Yes, even before discord we were having trouble with getting and keeping members on the forums, but that was also after we got rid of most of our forums benefits. We also got rid of the SG Mem and reg system, which were very big attractors to the forums.
Now all that attention is on Discord, and it's not really generating very much beyond what the shoutbox previously accomplished.