That's the thing - I don't believe they wanted a refreshed integrated forum, I believe they wanted a Reddit and I don't think that desire has gone away.
Upvoting, whats hot rather than whats latest, that heinous nesting as default rather than chronological, you cant put an image in a post it has to be in a seperate post-box, you cant include video it has to be seperate, no polls, only recently did we get an Ignore feature, only relatively recently did we even get the ability to flag posts, only recently did we get search a basic of any community to the point when you join up you are told to look for old threads on a subject using search before making a new one... None of it seems fluid, its jarring, when was the last time you had to stop typing, click to open and image window, click to load an image and click to open a new text window to start typing again? There are three too many clicks just to put a meme on a post.
it's not a forum and every part that has been made to be a like a forum seems to have been at community demand rather than dev initiation. I don't think it's ever supposed to have been a forum and I think they arn't delighted that the community wants it to be one.
By the way, whats a Reddit?