BuddyPress.org

Forums are associated with groups, so to create a forum, you must create a group. Please re-phrase the question, because I am afraid I’m not quite understanding what you mean.

As for the mentions, try just mentioning the name of the user, without any other text. If you have a long paragraph, and than mention the user, the @mention will not go to the mention page because the mention is after the excerpt limit.