Help:Discussions

Discussions is your wiki's social spece, where community members can talk about the wiki's topic as well as the wiki itself. It's a great place to get a quick overview of what is going on in the community. Discussions is available on desktop web, mobile web, and the Fandom app.

On every community where Discussions is enabled, it can be found by
 * adding  directly after the domain name. For example, https://community.fandom.com/f
 * clicking the double speech bubble icon in the top right corner
 * accessing the "explore" menu in the local navigation bar and selecting the "Discuss" option.

What can you see in Discussions?


At the center, you see a feed of current conversations on the wiki and a module showing the articles on the wiki that most recently received significant edits. Articles that were redirected or just received minor edits do not appear in this module. Above the first post in the center column, you can filter the posts by category, sort them by hot or new, and change their card layout.

To the left, an info module provides a brief intro to the community and shows you how many pages and overall edits the community has. The wiki description you see here can be edited by admins via the Mobile Main Page curation tool. The Discussions guidelines are also linked here, which can also be edited by admins. The "Get Started" button at the bottom of the box links to the wiki's Special:Community or in case of its absense, the wiki's main page.

On the right side, the "Explore " module shows you which articles are currently most popular on the wiki, and the "Category Activity" module sorts the Discussions categories by recent activity.

Discussions reflects the color scheme and theme set by the wiki's admins via the Theme Designer and shows the same global and local navigation as the other parts of the wiki. Note that any additional changes made to the desktop theme with CSS will not apply to Discussions.

How to write a post or reply
Any logged-in user can participate in Discussions. Start a new post by choosing one of the options at the top of the feed if you are on desktop, or tapping the icon in the bottom right corner of the screen on mobile. For more information on polls, see Help:Polls in Discussions. A few select communities offer the option of creating a quiz, but this is a beta feature that's not available everywhere. You can also reply to any post of any type that has already been made.



Titles are required for all post types. In text posts and replies, you can format your text by using the toolbar at the bottom of the module, including bold, italic, and  text. You can also create numbered or bulleted lists by clicking the toolbar options, or by typing  or   or   followed by a space. More options for text content are described in the sections below.

Posts and replies can only be edited by their author in the first 24 hours after they are created. Admins and Discussions Moderators can edit any post at any time.

@-Mentions
You can trigger a notification for a specific user by typing  followed by their username in your post. This is useful when you want to make sure that specific person sees your post or reply. Once your post with their name is published, they will receive a notification and, depending on their email preferences, an email informing them that they've been mentioned.

Links


To add a link to your text, you can type or paste the full URL directly into the body of your text. Any link works, including links to article pages on the wiki. A visual preview of the link destination will appear in the post. In the Fandom app, article links to the same community will open seamlessly within the app. Note: Remember to put a space right after the URL. Putting another character, such as a comma, will add that character to the URL and the link will be broken.

You can also highlight text within your draft and use the toolbar option to add a hyperlink. Enter the URL to where you want your text to lead, then click the green checkmark to apply the link to the highlighted text. Click the icon again if you wish to alter or remove the links afterward.

Images
When creating a post or reply, click or tap the image option on the right of the toolbar to select a file from your computer or device. JPG, PNG and GIF files are supported, with a size limit of 10 MB and resolution limit of 12.5 megapixels.

Wiki editors, note that files uploaded to Discussions will not appear on the wiki or its maintenance reports.

Categories
After hitting "next" while creating a post, you'll have the option to assign your post a category. Each post will by default be assigned to the "general" category, so only on wikis where the admins have created multiple categories will this be necessary to change. All categories are available from a dropdown menu.

Article tags
At this second step of post creation or editing, you also have the option to add article tags to your post. You will see up to three suggested tags to choose from, based on keywords you have used in your post title and text or based on which articles are currently popular on the wiki. If you accept one of these suggestions by clicking it and adding it to your post, a new suggestion will appear. You can also search for another page. You can add up to 10 tags to your post.

If none of the suggested tags fit your post, you can also search for articles to tag directly by choosing "Add Tag +" and opening the search window. Only articles from the wiki's main namespace are available as tags.

On published posts, you can click on their tags to pull up a summary page of all posts tagged with that same article. This page also includes a link to the article itself, and a box showing which tags are used most often on the wiki.

Finding and following Discussions
The Discussions feed can be sorted by either 'Hot' or 'New'. The 'Hot' list shows recent posts that are receiving replies and likes from users, while the 'New' list sorts posts by when they were posted. The list can also be filtered to only show specific Discussions categories, using the category filter in the top right corner. You can also change the card layout of each post in the feed; the Standard option expands the contents of each post, while the Condensed option only shows the title of each post.

Use the Follow option in the dropdown menu at the top-right of each post to subscribe to conversations that are interesting to you. You will be notified when new replies are added to a conversation you follow. When you create your own post or reply, you automatically start following that conversation, unless you choose to "unfollow" in the dropdown menu.



To see a chronological list of all posts and replies by a specific user, click on that user's username or avatar on a post they made. If you are on a user's wiki profile, you can click on the counter of their posts to be redirected to their  on the   tab, where you can see all of their posts and replies.

Liking a post
Like or "upvote" a post or reply by clicking/tapping the icon. This icon will change color once you've liked the post. Tap the icon again to un-like the post.

Sharing and linking
Use the share option on the bottom right to recommend a specific Discussions post on a social network or blog. As on article pages, the sharing options available to users will vary depending on language and location.

You can also copy a link to the post by selecting the "Copy Link" option from the dropdown. This will copy the link to your clipboard for easy pasting elsewhere.

Notifications
All users can receive on-site notifications and email notifications about certain events in Discussions, which can be adjusted in user preferences. Fandom app users can receive push notifications as well.

Users receive notifications when:
 * A post they are following receives a reply. After a notification is sent for a specific post, additional notifications will not be sent for that post until 24 hours have passed, or until the user visits that post.
 * A post or reply they created receives an upvote.
 * Someone creates a post or reply that @-mentions them by name.

Post history


Every logged-in user will have access to the history of a post or reply by clicking the three dots in the upper right corner of the message and selecting the "Post History" option from the dropdown menu. This will open a new tab showing all the past versions of the content, category and tag changes, when it was changed, and by whom. Entries are grouped by date, and each change will be presented as a separate entry in a descending order.

Each post history entry starts by showing the meta information (timestamp, username, link to talk page or message wall, link to the contributions page) and states which action was taken. The actual change to the content appears on another line. Know that the presented content is the content after the change, so to compare changes to the actual post content, you will have to compare the two content entries visible on the history page manually. The same icons that appear in the post menu for certain actions (like the tags and change category icon) will reappear on the post history to indicate that that was the action taken.

Note that the post history will not include moderator actions like locking or deleting a post, or approving a report, nor will it have actions that you may be used to from MediaWiki (like differences, and the ability to undo or rollback). The history for polls and quiz posts will also only be limited to showing the moment of creation and potential changes to the category or tags of the post, as the content itself cannot be changed after creation.

Reporting content
If you encounter inappropriate content (such as spam or insults against another user), you can report the post or reply via the 'Report' option in the dropdown menu.

After reporting, you will see an orange triangle and a "Reported to moderators" banner on any post or reply that you have reported. This is only visible to the user who reported that post or reply. Discussions Moderators and local Administrators will see their own version of this. The report link in the dropdown will also have changed to say "Already reported", and the option is grayed out to indicate that no further action can be done.

User profile
The Fandom app gives logged-in users the option to upload an avatar and write a bio for themselves. Avatars uploaded via apps represent that user everywhere else on Fandom. Profile content added via the app will also be visible on wiki profile pages.

The Discussions profile on desktop and mobile, accessible by clicking or tapping that user's avatar next to one of their contributions, gives an overview of all the posts made by that user. Clicking the three vertical dots, every user will find a link to the talk page or message wall of the user whose profile is being accessed. Depending on the user rights of the viewer of the profile, other moderation actions may be available.

Moderating
Administrators and Discussions Moderators have specific tools to keep Discussions friendly and appropriate.

Further help and feedback
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