I've always found the forum format useful, like each artist has their own thread kinda thing, and it's easy to search older stuff, like a tutorials section and so on. While Discord is pretty neat and I enjoy it, it's more of an in-the-moment thing, and it's easier to miss stuff and harder to find stuff as well. At least that's how I see it so far.
I think a cross between a forum and discord would be useful, like a concise directory and subdirectory of topics/threads, and a slim-line comments section without the "posted by: Posted on:" jargon with each comment. So it enables a more chit-chat approach but still sorted by threads. Basically if Discord had folders of chats where each person had their own personal thread for adding stuff. But then that's probably DeviantArt I guess.
Most places like reddit and others are basically if you missed it, you missed it, kinda thing. Navigating the past is horrendous.
It's more like each person has their own subreddit, or whatever it's called, and then that is "your place". but that seems like a strange way to do it. Maybe I'm just too old already :P