Sharepoint is not a discussion  server out of the box. However, you can
use other tools (like snitz forum s/w) to create a set of sites that
does support it, and then you can host  those sites within dashboards or
web parts.

See http://forum.snitz.com/ -- we use that and are quite happy.
Especially with the price.

This is just what I was looking for.

And to further answer your question, Sharepoint v2 *does* have
discussion group capability (like Team Services v1) but it's not as
robust as snitz.

Which brings me back to the question why MS doesn't include Snitz in v2 if
it is so much better.