Forum:Your Concerns On The New 'Wall'


 * NOTICE! Most of you might think this is to stop the new wall from launching, well think again! This is for Wikia to see the loop holes and fix them. Thank You

This isn't a petition, nor is it a place for opinions, it's a place to write your concerns on the new wall. I made this because after my experience, petitions are the ones that are most likely not to work, so we should talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the new editor (as Wikia seems to be more interested in these than anyone's opinions, as I noticed in the comments). Feel free to write any advantage or disadvantage, or add to the discussion. I'll start, you add. -- 12:51, September 28, 2011 (UTC)

Disadvantages

 * 1) Since it ressembles a message wall from facebook, new users may think this is a personal section for them to fill with random messages like what are they doing, their daily matters, or whatever irrelevant conversations you can imagine. This would probably increase the socialization of people, making lots of edits on this "wall" or abusing it. Because of the auto archive and the way it may be flooded, important messages and warnings posted by sysops would be hidden very fast by random messages. Since it would increase the activity in those "walls", it would flood RecentChanges as well.
 * 2) The ways you could design your own talk page will be much limited.
 * 3) Since it's like blog comments, the use of signatures will be probably extinguished, specially since there's no button to add the signature, and some languages/keyboards don't have the special tilde "~" sign accessible. So goodbye to personal custom signatures.
 * 4) There's no way to find what has been updated since a particular date, because there's no history of all the talk page. This makes specially trouble to find old updated messages (paginated ones, aka archived) or replyes of archived messagges.
 * 5) Users can edit their posted messages without no one noticing it, to say "I've never said that". About "no one noticing it" I mean specially the users to who is this new system addressed: newbies that don't know what an history is or scared (according to Staff, of course) of RecentChanges.
 * 6) You cannot edit or fix other user's comments (fixing links, removing unnecessary or abusive use of images, bad words, etc), possibly unless you have special rights.
 * 7) Both previous issues introduce the common problem seen in almost every blog post: One person that is replying to a particular message post their response as a new message instead of replying to the previous message, splitting conversation and breaking the structure of it, making it more difficult to trac. If the user realizes that, it's unable to delete the message he/she just posted.
 * 8) The edit interface for comments is excessive minimal, with no charinsert for special characters, no custom edit buttons, no LinkSuggest, etc. Talk pages are often used to explain complex wiki code and now it would be more difficult for either experienced and unexperienced users.
 * 9) The actual textarea for entering comments is too small. With the new editor it's now consistent (both are small) but this affects monobook users that have a widescreen edit area.
 * 10) The comment system sometimes fail to post a message: A temporary error from the server when it's under high load, and connection problems (and this may happen periodically). When you hit save, if the edit is not posted, you lose all what you have written (which is extremely annoying).
 * 11) You cannot redirect a talk page. For example a bot talk page, being a redirect to the bot controller.
 * 12) With an easier way to chat and talk with friends on Wikia, general conversations may flood the Recent Changes page, making important comments hard to find.
 * 13) Blog comments past from first page aren't indexed by web search index. This means it's more difficult to search for an old message using google (because Wikia's internal search is buggy or outdated).
 * 14) Some users could flood it with derogatory messages, causing them to be archived.
 * 15) Likely no way to preview a new post to the Message Wall, if it works like article comments.

Advantages

 * 1) Easier to use, which should encourage more users to leave feedback and ideas regarding the wiki
 * 2) Attracts more users to register and join in
 * 3) No need to structure the discussion manually. Missing titles, headers and indentation will no longer be a problem.
 * 4) Automatic signature solve the problem of users not signing their posts.
 * 5) Lack of custom signatures, which when too obtrusive, can make a talk page unreadable.
 * 6) IF developed properly, will allow to track changes easier, both on the whole talk page as well as particular threads.
 * Can't speculate on this as an advantage until it actually is revealed as part of functionality.

Discussion

 * Advantages: Attracts more users to register and join in. O RLY? How could you prove this? --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 19:02, September 29, 2011 (UTC)
 * Disadvantages: Might be misinterpreted by new users / Might be abused by people. I would change them by: it would make people think that's a message wall from facebook and thus they will use it as such, generating unnecesary spam on recentchanges. And the second... you mean it'd be more easy for users to leave SPAM or message massively on a lot of talk pages? --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 19:02, September 29, 2011 (UTC) Already changed.
 * Advantages: Easier to use, which should encourage more users to leave feedback and ideas regarding the wiki. Leave feedback where? On their own talk page, since they don't know anybody to leave the feedback on? Forums are the place for leaving feedback. Their own talk page not. Nobody would see it.