It’s a change in thinking but — in my experience at least — can quickly become familiar (and I’m someone who has always hated web forums). See Navigating Fedora Discussion — Tags, Categories, and Concepts if you haven’t already, and my top tip: mark the tags you specifically care about as Watching (either by using the bell on each tag page, or in your preferences). Then set your site Default Home Page to “Unread”. Wit this, the front page view of the site will be a consolidated view of new topics just from those selected things.
I do see your point about packager workflow.