We wish to avoid any chance of people understanding how their computer works or why their programs keep changing. I've been here 20 years and still have to bow to Thomas on how things work here , LOL.
I've never really understood the point of these journal or article related threads on the forum since journals and articles have their own comment sections.
Journals (formerly blogs), articles, and reviews have both comments and discussion threads. It might seem redundant, but the developers' idea was indeed to notify users of new entries and increase visibility. These threads are not in the general forum but have their own "nodes" (or subfora, as we used to call them on vBulletin).