Help talk:Discussions FAQ

Where did these questions come from?
Seems like they didn't come from the community or several important ones were left out. -- Fandyllic (talk &middot; contr) 9 Dec 2016 5:34 PM Pacific


 * They probably just came up with a bunch of questions and answers that they think will be asked a lot.—by Grudgeholder the Great (Pulty); posted at 04:49, October 3, 2017 (UTC)


 * These are questions we've been asked the most in response to our blog announcements, on our message walls, in Community Council, and in direct messages from users via Special:Contact. Naturally, we can never include all questions that users might have, but these seem to us a fair collection of the ones we get most often. Mira Laime   (help forum | blog) 18:08, October 3, 2017 (UTC)

Do user opinions matter?
http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Cristina7/Introducing_Discussions,_a_New_Platform_For_Engaging_Your_Community#comm-1132456

-- Fandyllic (talk &middot; contr) 9 Dec 2016 5:50 PM Pacific


 * From what i seen, clearly not. They can say whatever they want, but they hardly ever take opinions. Thousands of users disagree witg adding discussions, but Wikia is giving little to no feedback. Even if they do, it is rarely convincing or helpful. They say that there are always problems in Forums, but if communities are fine with it, then let them keep it, instead of forcibly removing it. To me, Discussions has mich more problems. In fact, i think of it as a problem itself. Wikia says that they are constantly updating and improve it, but these updates do not do very much. Users are still unsatisfied with discussions. And new wikis have to use discussions. Shouldn't Wikia allow them at least to have non-garbage services (Forums)? So, user opinions never really count. The wikia staff are like dictators and power abusers that make changes that many do not want.—by Grudgeholder the Great (Pulty); posted at 05:16, October 3, 2017 (UTC)


 * While I myself agree that Discussions are woefully underdeveloped & inferior to a great many alternatives within FANDOM & without, that FANDOM does not account for feedback is inaccurate. They have an entire global user group dedicated to collecting feedback, & there are structures in place specifically designed to collect feedback. There would be no point spending money on these things & responding to feedback or vetting product testers (which is very time consuming) if it didn’t matter, & I have seen FANDOM take feedback into account with several of their decisions (albeit much less often than I would like). But FANDOM is a business too. In regards to why Forum must go; you’re only “fine with it” because FANDOM works constantly to fix the numerous bugs that it has, I have seen many of the more technical ones rear their heads on Diep.io & DCoW; if more such problems arose, admins would be able to do very little about it as the feature fell apart around us, since much of the backend fixes are only doable by Staff. Bottom line is, the new Forums are janked & cannot remain. Whether Discussions is the ideal replacement is another question entirely, & I think that Discussions, in its current state, is an outright downgrade from Forum, & will remain so unless it has some serious overhauls, but that doesn’t change the fact that Forum cannot be maintained.


 * Ironically, I literally just read about yet another bug with the Diep.io Forum, where you frequent Pulty. This stuff happens all the time.

Why was the search question removed?
I noticed "Can I search Discussions content?" was removed from the FAQ. Why? -- Fandyllic (talk &middot; contr) 3 Apr 2017 2:20 PM Pacific


 * Nevermind, it must have been a duplicate. I see "Will Discussions be searchable?". -- Fandyllic (talk &middot; contr) 3 Apr 2017 2:21 PM Pacific

Can you answer this question?
Why couldn't you guys fix the Forums' problems instead of rebuilding it entirely?

~Signed JustLeafy ( ͡| ͜' ͡| ) USER  WALL  06:51, September 17, 2017 (UTC)
 * Forums is really old and it's falling apart, and its architecture (MediaWiki) is not designed to handle something as complicated as Forums. Right now, it also has loads of both front-facing and back-end bugs and has been patched together with "band-aid" fixes. So, Discussions is pretty much a rewrite and redesign of Forums. noreplyz  talk 07:09, September 17, 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the answer. Do you think it is a good idea to add this question and response into the page?


 * ~Signed JustLeafy ( ͡| ͜' ͡| ) USER  WALL  08:07, September 17, 2017 (UTC)


 * That question and a response are already on the page. Granted: It's a rather brief response and FANDOM staff should give a more detailed one soon! Mira Laime   (help forum | blog) 18:09, September 18, 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry for replying a few months after this discussion happened, but your statement about MediaWiki confuses me: is MediaWiki as a whole unable to handle something complicated like Forums? Or is it just "extensively forked 1.19" (okay, Wikia isn't precisely 1.19 but also isn't a later version of MW either (does it have an official name?)) that's not able to handle it? Because there are a handful of extensions over on mediawiki.org that work very similarly to if not exactly like the forum extension here, from how they look, but all of them I looked at (save maybe 1-2 experimental ones) require a later version of MediaWiki than the one Wikia's fork is based off of. - Citrusellaeditswikis (talk) 17:36, November 27, 2017 (UTC)
 * The problem just isn't what MediaWiki is capable of, it's what scales well. Technical scaling requires high code quality, performance, and compatibility with caching. Social scaling requires that the forum integrate well on all wikis without having to add special edge cases and being easily understood by all users of different experience. For example, DPL-style forums require a high technical knowledge to set up and often have caching issues. LiquidThreads, currently in vogue on most independent MediaWiki platforms, have some UX issues and is a performance drain. FANDOM has many different needs than your general vanilla installation - as such, after looking at the current options, we determined the best long-term solution was build an in-house solution as opposed to invest time into a leaky architecture (aka current Forums) or try to backport and then modify a third-party solution. --DaNASCAT (help forum | blog) 20:02, November 27, 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah, that's fair. My initial confusion with noreplyz's statement is still sort of there, but the scaling explanation makes enough sense. (The only extension listed on mediawiki.org that I've personally made use of is Flow/Structured Discussions (mostly because I was able to come across it on mediawiki.org, though I sort of liked it), so I also didn't know about potential UX/performance issues of others (besides some minimal experience with DPLforum).) To be honest, I almost wasn't expecting any sort of reply, so thanks for the answer! - Citrusellaeditswikis (talk) 23:04, November 27, 2017 (UTC)

Template question
Any plans to integrate templates into Discussions? Or is this not possible based on how separated the software is from MediaWiki. -HighJewElfKing (talk) 20:31, November 27, 2017 (UTC)


 * We don't have any plans for this at this time, so at the very least it is unlikely to happen soon. Some of the most common uses for templates, such as in voting threads, may be addressed by other functions we add to Discussions in the future. We would like to hear more from communities who use templates regularly in Forum and see some examples. The scenario where a community is talking about a template used on wiki pages is pretty clear, so I mean situations besides that. -BertH (help forum | blog) 00:00, November 28, 2017 (UTC)


 * Communities who use templates regularly in Forum: Community Central, Dev wiki, Portability (Hub) wiki, and Templates wiki (duh). -- Fandyllic (talk &middot; contr) 20 Dec 2017 11:05 AM Pacific

More questions by JustLeafy
I want to ask the following questions:
 * Will there be preferences for Discussions?
 * Will there be a "View Full Site" button in Discussions?
 * Will the discussions background ever be customizable? ~Signed JustLeafy ( ͡| ͜' ͡| ) | USER  &bull;  WALL  |  18:20, March 7, 2018 (UTC)

Comments
If you remove article and blog commenting, you will literally be KILLING many of your current wikis. For instance, Fantendo. The MAIN part of our community is interacting with each other through blogs, blog comments, article comments, and forums. Removing these methods of communication would LITERALLY KILL the wiki of Fantendo. It would make it unusable. The current community would leave and the wiki would become inactive. These implementations need to be REVERTED. Replace forums if you must, but do NOT remove the ability to comment on articles or to make and comment on blogs. This is an unbelievably stupid and self-destructing idea and whoever is responsible for the suggestion should be fired because that's just the most anti-userbase idea you poeple have EVER come up with. --SonicWiki


 * I agree with my fellow Fantendo bureaucrat SonicWiki, removing comments would be a mistake and would more than likely annihilate multiple communities, including Fantendo. Please take a look back at what you have written down and ask yourselves, "is this really a good idea?". My thoughts on the situation mirror SonicWiki's. --Athena Hawkins

--The third Fantendo bureaucrat


 * As a fellow member of this wiki's management staff, I concur with these feelings completely. Removing the ability to comment is a death sentence for wikis such as ours that rely on communication and feedback and will likely result in mass exodus of users who are unable to effectively interact as efficiently as before. The biggest question I have to ask is why exactly you are eliminating them entirely; would it not be better to make them optional, providing more options to wiki management in how to operate the site. Reducing the available options that a wiki's staff has and removing convenient options like comments in exchange for more complex, less well-constructed features such as Discussion would do nothing but essentially kill wikis designed for content like this. As an administrator on Fantendo Wiki, I stand by my fellow staff in stating that removing comments without the change to at least making them optional would be an extremely terrible decision. --Pyrostar


 * Yeahh but honestly, comments are:

<dd> </dd></dl></dd></dl></dd></dl></dd></dl>
 * hard to moderate and easy to spam
 * quite bad on the technical side (probably better than Forum tho)
 * can't be replied to on mobile or searched
 * missing Forum features just like Discussions is
 * The key takeaway is that until Discussions is done, there is little and less likelihood of anything happening with comments.


 * Personal opinion - this content is just so much better off a wiki. (Yes, I'm not a fan of article comments!) However, Discussions has little layout and markup options so a Discussions-like system would hurt blogs.
 * • speedy • 🔔&#xFE0E; • 🚀︎ • 17:24, December 16, 2018 (UTC)


 * Fandom has no intention to retire blog or article comments, because we know users need these as tools to communicate. We may update the technology that powers them - just like we're building Discussions as a more modern and more mobile-friendly forum replacement. But we won't stop users from communicating. Quite the opposite - we're looking for new and better ways to enable interactions. Mira Laime   (help forum | blog) 19:07, December 17, 2018 (UTC)