User blog comment:BertH/Migrating Forum Content to Discussions/@comment-24258073-20170928223808/@comment-5275700-20170929011930

Indeed, there is a bit of a trade-off. With categories, there's the "filter" setup that allows users to view multiple groups of posts/subjects at one time, or to exclude specific things while leaving everything else. This isn't possible with the board setup. And users get to content right away with Discussions, as opposed to having to "drill down".

But in the current layout it's true that there is no space for category descriptions. Choosing clear category/board names is good practice no matter what feature is being used. Like topics, we are preserving the board descriptions in the migration process.