There is nothing wrong with forums, they've existed (and continue to exist) for decades. They are a great way to have information easily searchable, as well as easily post and contribute.

Just because they aren't carded like twitter or lemmy doesn't mean they are dated. Everything has it's place and every tool has a job. In this case, that place is a forum and the tool is phBB. Also, I wouldn't call it "old school" as the most recent update is from May 21, 2023.

Not everything has to be federated, and nothing is stopping anyone from creating an instance for Jellyfin ( !jellyfin@lemmy.ml ) . But for the official instance, having it hosted by them, on their hardware, that they control, it's a great choice to use a forum.

It could be argued that web forums were an answer to older system that came before it and the problems with them. Systems like Usenet and Fidonet BBS's were federated system, and web forums are actually newer than that.