Why Did Microsoft's Dedicated Product Communities Disappear?

Over the past few months, it looks like Microsoft has quietly removed or collapsed many of the dedicated product communities — including the Copilot Users Group, Tips & Tricks sections, and other structured hubs that used to exist under the old Answers/Community system. If you post a NEW question, you can still find them (see below), but I’ve found no way to reliably locate one and browse.

Today, everything funnels into the generic Learn/Answers front door, and normal navigation no longer exposes product‑specific groups. The only way I’ve been able to reach them is accidentally: if a search returns zero results (announcements don't count), the system offers the opportunity to “ask a  question,” (with that header), and only then does it reveal a product/community picker for the "posting space." Without that side‑door, the communities appear to be gone.

This raises a few questions:

• Were the dedicated communities intentionally depreciated, or is this an unintended side effect of the Learn/Answers consolidation?
• Is the conditional “ask a question” picker now the only official way to reach product‑specific groups?
• If communities still exist, why are they no longer discoverable through normal navigation?
• Is Microsoft planning a replacement structure, or is everything moving toward a single flat Q&A model?

I’m asking because the old product communities were genuinely useful — especially for product-specific workflow tips, user‑to‑user knowledge sharing, and related discussions.

If anyone has insight into the reorganization, or knows whether the dedicated communities are coming back, I’d appreciate it.

P.S. If anyone has seen a different workflow or found a reliable navigation path, I’d be interested in hearing it.