Of course.
But if UX and UI, and tech in generally, is too difficult to use or access is behind too many walls, it doesn’t matter how good content you are offering.
Facebook, Instagram etc are really easy to use. Anyone without tech skills can share and create content (and quality doesn’t matter). I have thousands users on FB-group that create and consume quality content, but they won’t come to Discourse. And for that is one and only one reason: they don’t understand how the editor works.
Actually the most important thing to do in Discourse is remove tool bar, or leave there only buttons for media uploading and perhaps the big three: bold, cursive and simple list.
But Discourse has one thing they praise: quoting and how easy task it is.
But that is only technical side. There is The Biggest Issue To Solve Out™: mobiles and how impossible writing with those is.
We are in quite strange situation. Creating content is not matter of knowledge. It is matter of physical tools.
Working audio recorder could be one solution — actually any social platform doesn’t offer audio. Videos, gifs etc. yes, but not just audio. Discourse has audio player that is wonderful option — but it demands an user can record audio using same gizmo he/she records video and takes photos, and they just… can’t.
Most of users consumes, not create. That has been fact all the time and won’t change. So we are back in square one: amount of users. We need a lot lurkers to get creators. And we get creators only when they have easy enough tools for that. And we get lurkers, if they understand how to use platform.
Content is king. Or queen. Really important anyway. But this is very much same than SEO. All you need is content, and environment where googlebot has access to the content.
And mostly we spend hours after hours thinking how we make life of googlebot more easier and effective. Why don’t we put same effort to UX/UI for human users?