Attempt hotfix for discussion rss feed

DO NOT MERGE (I want to see these tests pass and test on clone before it's ready)

Attempt fix for certain discussion feeds erroring.
Any idea why this line might be important, @robguthrie? It doesn't appear on any other discussion items, and it's causing the discussion xml feed to error (because `nil.try(:name)` returns nil, while `"".try(:name)` throws an error.)