I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to read through this entire thread, and I couldn’t agree more. I don’t think I have much to contribute, but as I mentioned in some Community Building > Praise posts, Discourse, along with its Fediverse counterparts, has become a “social network” alternative where user attention is not a metric sought to improve the algorithm and trap people.
I also hope that in 10 years, I’ll be communicating in the same way I am right now, preferably using Discourse or any other Fediverse platform. I run an instance with a lot of love, and I love the forums that have also adopted Discourse as their CMS here in Brazil. I am immensely grateful for the existence of this project, because I can say with confidence that today I choose what I want to consume, and much of that is due to people who still see value in human and civilized exchange.