4E tried to introduce skill challenges, but they never felt nearly as organic as combat. You needed a certain amount of "passes" to succeed in the skill challenge, and arguably the same is true with combat, but the whole narrative aspect of just how much or how little you have made progress with that success could never really exist in skill challenges the way they do in combat.
I don't want to detract from the lead post, but I feel like it actually dovetails (because it hooks into "how do we fix this" which is something I wrote about directly above this and then went further later on). Thoughts on this part of the post:
I'm sure that they felt that way to you. However, empirically they are not that way. Many, many 4e GMs and groups had significant success with Skill Challenges.
Broadly, why did this happen (some groups struggled with noncombat conflict resolution in 4e, while other groups flourished)? My take on this remains the same now as it was when we were having so many discussions on this back then:
1) The groups that flourished had significant exposure to and success with scene resolution mechanics from other games. 4e's noncombat scene resolution mechanics (the Skill Challenge) were clearly kindred with so many other indie game's scene resolution mechanics.
2) Those that struggled did not have that same exposure and that same success.
3) The initial DMG release wasn't great (it wasn't awful, but it certainly wasn't good) at explicating the principles and techniques that underwrite successful noncombat scene resolution:
a) Adjudicate
intent first, task second.
What you're trying to accomplish is more important than how you try to accomplish it.
b) Dynamically change the situation and evolve the scene at each moment of action resolution. The gamestate and fiction should change with new obstacles that interpose themselves between the PCs and their path to goal realization or an escalation of a present obstacle (even if it morphs) on a failure. Always Fail Forward (new and interesting things need to happen on failure).
The situation should ALWAYS change. Not what is at stake or the goal of the conflict...but the fiction that hangs upon it.
c) The fictional momentum should be an expression of the gamestate similar to Freytag's Dramatic Arc. If you're right before denouement, the fiction should be that desperate and filled with tension...things hanging in the balance.
4) DMG2 improved dramatically in its instruction and its expression of the principles and techniques that underwrite successful noncombat scene resolution. Finally, RC basically pulled it all together (and introduced some new tech). Unfortunately, by that point, the edition war was a full-throated cry of revolt at that point. Baby and bathwater were indistinguishable.