Hey there!
So a wiki that I use for Roleplaying purposes has recently had the Forum feature deactivated and replaced with Discussions. We've been dreading this for a while because when we first tested discussions, the interface was pretty ugly to look at, we couldn't see the whole list of replies, and it was stripped down to the most basic essentials for a forum. We were really hoping that these issues would be ironed out before our wiki was transferred over.
Now, a year and a half later, we've been transferred over to discussions and very few of our inital concerns with discussions have been adressed. The interface is still very unappealing to look at, we cannot see all of the posts without clicking through "more replies" every time we access the page, there's still so many features missing (Can't directly respond to replies, can't delete, can't edit after 24 hours). This isn't to say that it's terrible for casual discussions about TV shows and games. I suppose if you're looking for a twitter-style message board to use for mobile phones, then this one is okay. However, for roleplaying purposes and creating very long, in-depth posts, discussions is almost entirely inferior to forums.
I fully recognize that we are not the core demographic that Fandom is catering towards. In fact, one of my fellow wiki users posed a question to the Fandom staff about discussions and roleplay boards and the answer we received was along the lines of "We'll look into it later, but we're not really concerned with how it will affect roleplay boards right now". We're hoping that discussions are eventually improved, but seeing as how it's been a year and a half and very little has been said, we have all kind of accepted that Fandom doesn't really care about us.
So with all that said, we're currently exploring new options for forums to use that are similar to the replaced forums style, outside of Fandom. We currently have a lot of options on the table to transfer over to, but I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for new places to use. Any and all advice and feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Have a nice day!