User blog comment:BertH/New Forums now available in Labs/@comment-2026043-20121204053152/@comment-10370-20121204234232

Yeah, we knew that having the Forum threads listed on the article page was going to seem redundant with talk pages and article comments. We decided to just let that be redundant right now, so that we can see how the new feature works before we make any other changes.

To answer the more philosophical question -- I understand the desire to have clean, professional-looking pages, so that readers focus on the articles that we create. At the same time -- we have to communicate to readers that the site is made by people, and that they're invited to join that group and contribute to the wiki.

We designed the Discussion module to be an entry point for new people -- a way to find out what our readers want to learn more about, and a way to show off the knowledgeable and passionate fans who have written the articles -- and are still writing them.

A wiki is never finished, and it never should be. Every page is always "under construction". That's the excitement and the power of the wiki platform. Hiding the discussions and the process behind a link means that we lose the opportunity to share that excitement with our readers.