Board Thread:New Features/@comment-26339491-20191016152503/@comment-168424-20191022181139

After catching up, I have a few comments.


 * As some people have noticed, Discussions does not fit well with most wikis aesthetically. The reason for this is known by FANDOM and was a conscious choice based on how most customers visit FANDOM: mobile. Discussions was designed as a mobile-first feature and slowly (very, very slowly) adjusted to be a bit more Desktop browser friendly, but there are still several more things that could be done.
 * Discussions was designed as a desktop-first feature and then basically abandoned. It was also designed to work well with the wiki, and it does. However, because it was basically abandoned engineering-wise, it was never improved or fixed for mobile or anything really. However, since it is wiki friendly, most wiki editors really like it.
 * Wikia/FANDOM wikis are built on an old not-very-mobile-friendly version of the MediaWiki engine and until recently, the decision was to put in the least effort in trying to keep up with the main MediaWiki version that has added many mobile-friendly features and lots of improvements. Because of the old version and basically fear and lack of resources, FANDOM decided to develop features outside the MediaWiki engine that work operationally with the core engine, but barely talk to it, so exist in a sort of sidecar framework.

Its all pretty complicated, but the short versions in Discussions are mobile-first, Forum is Desktop-first, and wikis are mostly Desktop-first with mobile skin and tack ons.