I strongly disagree. But maybe because of a difference of perspective. If you're imagining a Reddit-scale forum, with millions of people with no sense of community and no knowledge of the content they're consuming, then yeah a traditional forum format is awful.

Forums shine as spaces for focused communities, where people have reputations and care about the subject matter. Time-sorted discussions are great because that's what's happening - a discussion in the community. You don't want to read someone's quip first, you want to get the whole context. You don't want there to be upvotes that people try to earn - there's already your reputation in the community. If someone's a troll or gives bad advice or is wrong, they'll get called out, or banned, or simply ignored as everyone knows they aren't respected.

Forums just aren't meant for generic content and it's not because of the UI, it's because the entire concept is not compatible with masses of semi-anonymous users with no commonalities.