I presume the goal in making the change was to reduce the amount of time SB staff spend on it, to give them more time to cover tech support calls and tickets, which apparently is needed.
There’s no reason why this change should reduce user-to-user interaction, unless you choose to stop posting. From what I can see people are still asking questions, and still getting answers from users.
Like I said, my opinion about the change is that it’s welcome. The previous iteration of the Issues subforum actually created expectations that were not accurate– it was really impossible to take care of the promised tasks consistently.
So with that, I’ll close this thread.