User blog comment:Brandon Rhea/Why Fandom Evolves: A Look Ahead in 2017/@comment-10370-20170112143345/@comment-5275700-20170112174827

Discussions is far from complete and we have never claimed that it's "done", so any statement about it being "failed" is premature at best.

It's obviously designed to be a way to push people from the quality content on the wiki to a mobile chat board that's easier to monetize

That's an odd statement considering that there are not yet any ads on the web version of Discussions, due again to the evolving nature of the layout. There are ads in apps, whether Discussions is present or not.

Your earlier comment bemoans the lack of much connection back to the wiki, which is absolutely true at this stage and again something that will be resolved by both design and feature evolution.

wiki admins wasting their time monitoring a feature that we can't do anything useful with

Making statements on behalf of all admins isn't really appropriate. Indeed even in this very comments section there are admins and moderators who have found Discussions to be a worthwhile addition to their communities. This is a point we often hear when new products are released, but then the feature becomes a key part of communities across the site. Forum was the same way.

The fact that Forum is being replaced remains a point of anxiety for many, which is understandable. And we do need to do a better job of facilitating understanding about that decision. But this is another example of where we're aiming for early transparency. Even though there is still no firm timeline for the removal of Forum, it certainly wouldn't have been appropriate to delay that news when first speaking widely about Discussions.

A final note, in the interest of transparency and full disclosure -- ToughPigs was the product manager at Wikia who developed Forum. He remains a key part of the community here as and admin and the founder of Muppet Wiki