Board Thread:New Features/@comment-14250-20190716002404/@comment-9605025-20190716012534

You are certainly not the first person to think this. In fact, a while ago, I even started trying to work on a way to display article comments and message walls while the features are disabled (see here). However, I was nowhere near as JS savvy as I am now (though I still am not that savvy) so the solution is rather awkward and not even quite done yet.

Because of the way the thread posts are stored, this mutual exclusivity may be necessary; or at least it is precautionary. The issue is that the thread posts are stores as subpages of the respective talk namespaces. What Wikia might be trying to avoid is a scenario in which the ability to edit in the talk namespaces leads to mis-editing/vandalism of the thread posts. But that is just speculation on my part.

Either way, if you want Wikia to get this feedback, it is best you use this.