@nprofile1q... I might have been the initial advocate for moving to Discussions over Issues. So, I'm not necessarily the right person to ask. ๐
The primary downside of Issues is the visible counter, making it looks like there's a lot of bugs that need addressing. Closing an issue with a PR is fine, but otherwise, if an issue had no realistic hope of formalization, there was no incentive to upset someone by closing it. So everything stayed open, and the counter would trend towards infinity.