HN is closer to chat than forums. Topics after the first page are effectively closed forever and it’s near impossible to continue a conversation without constantly checking it or relying on some external tools/extensions.

The point based default sorting also makes it difficult for any late entrant to participate in the conversation. The community has already decided what consensus is and that topic will quickly disappear anyway.

HN has a great community but a shit format.

HN and forums have different use cases (this site is called Hacker _News_ after all). So I agree with you this format is better for HN. When discussing news longstanding discussions are not really the point, and this site is fairly strictly moderated.

But that's not true for most types of discussions and communication.