User blog comment:Jenburton/An Update on Message Wall/@comment-4061770-20110930233559/@comment-3388044-20111001092611

SA: It's in Jen's blog above"When we originally made the announcement on Monday, we understood that turning Message Wall on and off was not technically feasible. We’ve since learned that it is possible to turn the feature off and on (and, with our help, the test wikis will be able to do so)."It's not about whether it can be made optional. Of course it can! It's that Wikia does not want any variation between wikis.