The Problem With Fandom's Discussions

It is common knowledge to most well informed Fandom users that Fandom's project, Discussions, will be fully replacing Forums in the future. Discussions have been in development for over 3 years, as far as I remember. This article will be about my personal criticism towards the feature, which will likely not end up in Community Central Forums because of the risk of hostility that will go unpunished occurring on the potential discussion thread.

1. The fact that it doesn't seem democratic at all. Fandom's Terms of Use is completely constructed by EU's and/or the United States of America's laws, and staff will definitely deny any accusations that they are only making changes that interests them instead of the community. A common argument that staff and people who are pro-staff would say is that they are very open to feedback. On the surface, that is true, because they will respond to almost all complaints through Special:Contact and even on the blog comments. However, it is also true that a blog about Fandom joining with Curse resulted in hundreds of disgruntled users, and most of them were given a response by staff that didn't answer the question and was identical to another comment. No matter how similar the complaints are, giving the same generic response to everyone is a blatant show of disregard for the community, even if that was not the intention. I have never see staff not going through with any decision, no matter how many users have protested it on forums, chat, comments, or through contact.

1.1. However, it is also true that Fandom is a corporation. As you may guess, corporations' goals are primarily to earn money, at least most of them are. Of course staff would go with the majority (which is becoming mobile), and I completely understand that. I may not be very happy about it, but I understand the reasoning. However, I do have something to say in regards to paying attention to the majority in my next point.

2. Fandom shows little to no care for people who are not interested in switching to Discussions. Many people have argued that users who are unhappy with it should not judge it because it is in beta, but why would you release a product in beta and replace forums with it when it's incomplete? In the past, when there weren't even announcements added to Discussions, new wikis/inactive wikis had their forums replaced before the basic Discussion utilities were complete. It doesn't make sense to force a change on people when it seems like it's just a step backwards.

3. Announcements, on their own, is something that I strongly dislike. On a major wiki I am an administrator on, we have a monthly Article of the Month and User of the Month, but because it's impossible to have more than one announcement, only one of them can be seen. The ones who are responsible for highlighting/announcing are moderators, people who should be chosen carefully. I believe that the only reason why there's a risk of highlight "spam" is the fact that announcements on other wikis are still given to your notifications (which doesn't make too much sense in my opinion, but I digress).

4. Inconsistent scheduling. As you may guess, I am not too optimistic about the future of Discussions. Before anyone tells me that I should have more hope, it should be known that I was personally told that announcements were the next big feature being developed and were to be released soon...in 2016. I can find that thread if someone really wants evidence. According to that, we are over 2 years behind schedule. Wikitext doesn't work, announcements are flawed, but Discussions are still replacing forums on some wikis. Forcibly.