likes and bookmarks in contents seem fairly useless to me

I'm beginning to resign myself to these changes, much as I hate them. I think it's deliberate.

As a support forum (ie free support), which is obviously what Adobe wants and needs, this must now work close to optimally. As a discussion club for us oldtimers, it's getting more and more useless - but there's nothing in that for Adobe. They don't need us, and would probably be just as happy to see us go.

The final nail in the coffin was the disappearance of latest poster. Apparently an insignificant detail, but that is in fact the one single thing that most effectively discourages a "discussion club". Focus is now 100% on "what", not "who".

For photography/Photoshop/Lightroom discussion, I can recommend Luminous Landscape, and there are also others I haven't looked closely at, like photo.net.

All part of Jive's efforts to be the Facebook of the cubicle world. It's true that in our case they're pretty meaningless as people rarely use them, but in a corporate setting where most discussions aren't questions and all the users are forced to be regular contributors, the "popularity" of a thread is important, especially when it comes to staff appraisal time!

If for example a discussion announces a new doodad extrusion on the company's Flanged Hoofer, "Likes" would be used just as they are in FB - "I think the extrusion is a good idea but don't have time to say so in longhand". Bookmarks tell the person posting the announcement that a bunch of people are waiting for more news. Showing details of replies isn't important to Jive's target user, as anyone interested in the thread would subscribe to it via their Inbox streams. It's why the Like and Bookmark numbers have popups, but Replies doesn't.

Can the layout of the Details widget be changed? Yes, in theory - with a customization to the software. Will it be? Not likely.