a definite need exists for a more complete forum system, i agree.

i attempted to use the groups functionality but really, i would rather not use groups at all and instead have an evolved category system and base level forum.

others have attempted to integrate existing forum systems into elgg.. which really is a smart move, since reinventing the wheel is totally unnecessary. so far, i have not seen a well done integration though.
i will search for the best forum softs of 2013 so far. 

i see that mybb received the most votes for a review done this year:
http://www.mybb.com/features 

also has an elgg integration that needs updating:

http://community.mybb.com/post-575258.html

hype has a great forum but of course it requires his framework, i am no fan of frameworks but use his because i use 6 of his plugins.  started to work on it in the past to make it work without the framework, but other matters took priority.  sounds like it might be time to start again

I thought 1.9 was addressing some threaded comments issues which might be helpful for all threads including forums? I am just parroting what I THOUGHT I heard.

Cant you just make your own forums through discussions and just make a page with all the links to the forum discussion categories where people can post threads? I think 'discussion' is similiar to a forum, except there is only 1 discussion area, if you can somehow reproduce more than 1 to make more discussion areas your problem is solved, would be a pretty basic and simple forum, nothing special but would still workout.

1.9 is changing comments from annotations to entities, which will make it easier to implement threading, but as far as I know threading itself will have to be implemented via plugin.

I agree that the default discussions aren't as inherently useful as some of the more mature forum platforms, it could be though with a bit of work.  As with anything though, it's time and resources.

I also agree. I have been looking for a sitewide forum for elgg 1.8 and havent found any so far. Hope elgg considers this in its next release.

No updates on this yet?  I can't believe nobody will make a forum plugin for elgg that bridges myBB, phpBB, or SMF?  They are all great forum software that is free.

Hallo community

You can find a forum plugin for elgg on

https://github.com/THINKGlobalSchool/forums

I hope it 's helpful

That plugin is for elgg 1.8 and requires two addition elgg 1.8 plugins.  I am using elgg 1.10.3