Discord can be but often isn't easier to keep track of, but Discords tend to be pretty closed off. It's not easy to randomly find a cool new vibrant discord.

Forums solve both issues. They are usually (but not always) publicly accessible, it's easy to keep track of who's saying what, and there's often little bios for the users.

Forums used to be incredibly common but, like blogs, started falling out of favor with the rise of twitter and tumblr. A lot of the ones that remain are very focused on cars, electronics, and music but there's an awful lot of options if you're willing to look.

• Lost Media Wiki is a forum dedicated to lost media.
• Melonland (closed on Mondays) "is a web project and online arts community that celebrates homepages, virtual worlds, the world-wide-web and the digital lives that all netizins share, here at the dawn of the digital age." You can find more information here.
• Ars Technica has some active, well populated forums and a focus on technology.
• Something Awful is one of the older general interest forums, and the birthplace of a lot of things including "All Your Base" and "Slenderman." It costs $10 to join and is much nicer since Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka left the earthly plane of existence.
• The Straight Dope is a message board and not a forum but it's essentially the same.
• Metafilter, or MeFi, is another long-running conversation hub. It isn't quite a forum or a message board, but there's a lot of talk.
• Badcaps Forum is about electronics repair.
• The Number Ones on stereogum isn't a forum, but it is a vibrant comment section.
• The Steve Hoffman Music Forums are alive and well, full of conversations.