I recognize your username. Thanks for your hard work.
The forums weren't perfect but they were a valuable part of the discussion. The steam forums are pretty toxic. The Discord chat moves too fast and doesn't have a good search function. The Private Feedback channel isn't visible to the majority of us and from what I hear it isn't all that useful even for those who have access. Crush seems to be blocking critics and turning it into an echo chamber. That aside, Discord just isn't built to be a forum. Reddit is mostly for memes and fun community stuff. Feedback and critique don't get much traction or engagement on here.
I'm not saying the forum was perfect -- it had plenty of toxicity, bait, and low effort meme-age -- but it was structured far better than any of the alternatives. It had a solid search function, clear linear discussion threads, a like button (and no dislike button), and clearly visible account profiles which displayed metrics like total published comments, likes received, and player titles and flair. All stuff that could give you an idea of who you're talking with, what their history with the game is, how involved with the community they are, and generally give you some inkling to their credibility.
I understand the reasoning that Triternion gave. That it was too much work for the moderators and that their efforts would be better focused on the other community channels. My problem with this is that I haven't noticed an improvement on the other channels. Steam has more locked threads than it used to but otherwise things remain the same. I love the idea of these weekly feedback threads but they don't seem to be working. Serious critiques of mechanics, Tri's development habits, and the general state of the game get downvoted or ignored by Jax.
Again, I appreciate the work you and the other mods do but I can't agree with you here.