What is the difference between "All Content" and "Discussions"

"All Content" is a raw list of all items in that category/forum-equivalent.

"Discussions" is effectively the same list, but with an important difference - unread discussions are shown in bold, and discussions which have been read are shown in plain. In this context, 'unread' means a discussion whose content has been added to since you last read it.

So what's the point? Why have two tabs that display the same items? Why not have one tab that displays "All Content" & another that displays just the ones with new content, with a matching & intuitive "New Content" name?

As it is, it gives users the impression that "Discussions" is a sub-category of "All Content." Not at all intuitive, & likely to cause frustration if users try to find the other "missing" sub-categories.

I can't disagree.

There are a few minor (to me, anyway) other differences - "All Content" means just that; it's a composite, and includes entries classed as discussions, announcements, and documents, as appropriate. "Discussions" does not include any announcement- or document-type items.

There is a choice available to make any of those tabs the default one for you when you go to that place; it appears as a clickable link just to the right of the last tab. Click the tab you want as default view, then after the page has loaded click that set as default link. I choose the Discussions tab as default, because it does show the read/unread status and may remove a few things I rarely need to look at.

Hi, R C-R -

There are some subtle other differences, as I mentioned above.

To me they're not important - not sure what a 'document' might be (yet), and I haven't regretted missing an announcement (yet).

My solution is to just set the viewtab for that palce to "Discussions" and drive on. That setting governs any time I return to that place. If I should want to check for new documents or announcements I can easily do so by clicking the appropriate tab.

I notice that here in Using Apple Communities the "Announcement" tab just shows me the announcements in a yellow box that appear in the same place in the other tabs anyway, whether I want then to or not. And they aren't context sensitive -- one of the two tells me:

"To see unread and updated messages … Use the "Discussions" tab. You can set it as your default tab as well"

That appears even in the "Discussions" tab, & even after I have set it to the default. I assume (hope) it will go away eventually, but for now it & the other message -- telling me that I have removed subscriptions, which (duh!) is not news to me -- alternate in a distracting way that just makes me want to ignore them.

I've also noticed that the numbers in the tabs don't seem to add up. Right now there is a difference of 2 between "All Content" & "Discussions" in this forum but with the "Refine this list …" thing open, the total of each of the 'available categories' don't match the totals in either tab, regardless of which of the two are open.

It's all needlessly confusing & non-intuitive.

Speculation:

They wanted to change the front page for new users (hence the Overview) but didn't want to hear the complaints from old users, so kept Discussions just as it was, and named it Discussions for old-user-familiarity.

Agreed that it is needlessly confusing.

Matt K gave me an answer here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3002129?answerId=15008151022#15008151022

The new platform does support other content types, some of which are not currently enabled. Should we decide to enable those content types, the "Discussions" tab would not catch them but the "All Content" tab would.