User blog comment:Cristina7/Introducing Discussions, a New Platform For Engaging Your Community/@comment-26408193-20160908195752/@comment-1370845-20160908212427

This isn't the final version. It would be more worrying if this were the final version and it was immediately replacing Special:Forum as it is. Instead it'll just go live on some communities early, be monitored/checked for features that need to be added/improved, and Special:Forum will be migrated after.

Also, it technically is completely optional for users. You can just ignore the existence of Discussions and go on editing the wiki just as normal. You couldn't do that with Special:Forum, it was all over the RecentChanges.