User blog comment:Cristina7/Introducing Discussions, a New Platform For Engaging Your Community/@comment-4193424-20170102212627

I just started a new Roleplay Wiki after taking a break from wikias for about 3-4 years.

Roleplays are very dependent on a decent forum feature, so finding that it was no longer supported by Wikia was discouraging. I have been trying to embrace discussions, and am finding enough potential that I am actually very excited about discussion's future.

I was trying to make it a prominent aspect of my community, but a few critical flaws make this feature currently unusable.

The Bad:
 * The aforementioned lack of 'sort by recent reply' feature, both in the discussion hub and the discussion activity feed widget. Without this feature, discussions are completely useless to my small community. Other flaws I could work around, but without clear recent activity, I have given up on the discussion feature for now.
 * On desktop, discussion's lack of continuity with the rest of the wiki's theme & top navigation. Even simply the discussion hub's inexplicable lack of linkable wordmark. This makes discussions feel clunky, and also feels as if users have left the wiki. Mobile looks fine visually except for the missing wordmark link home.
 * New activity isn't obvious at a glance, or even with some digging. When a discussion is at the top of the feed, there is no indication as to why. Possible solutions to make discussions a much more usable forum replacement:
 * If pushed to the top due to reply activity, a highlight of the reply icon
 * Show # of new replies since the user last visited the thread
 * Highlighting unread replies within the discussion itself
 * A note/timestamp of the last user to reply
 * Lack of clarity of 'Trending'. How are discussions chosen to trend? I have not been able to easily find an answer (neither for trending articles), though it should be clearly available information to admins and users. Regardless, I did see that replying to or liking a thread did not automatically make it 'trend', which does not meet my needs.

The Awesome: The Uncertain:
 * The separate discussion activity feed widget. I love being able to separate the discussion from other wikia activity.
 * Thread starters including linked pictures in the discussion feed. This is my favorite aspect of discussions so far, and why I would favor this feature over most other forum options if not for the flaws. It would be fantastic if the discussion activity feed widget included the thread starter image as well.
 * The follow thread feature. Anything that makes it easier to see new activity is excellent!
 * Discussion activity showing on other wiki pages. If discussions were usable, this would be a great way to keep discussion activity from getting missed.


 * Could there be a way to turn off the integrated bottom discussion feed on a page by page basis?
 * Before figuring out it didn't meet my needs, I had planned to make the discussion widget feature prominently on my Wiki's front page. However, I could not find a way to remove the bottom discussion feed from the main page itself. While I really like the integrated feed on other pages, the redundancy of the feed on my main page is not ideal.
 * Clearer notifications of discussion replies/Followed threads
 * While some notifications seem to linger under the top bell notification drop down, I do not see any of the discussion replies I recieved listed there, even though some were recieved more recently than other activity that is showing up. While this might be a problem for bigger communitiess' discussions, it would be a lifesaver for smaller ones. Allowing admins or users to decide on what notifications pushed to the feed/how long they stayed in the feed could help with keeping the feed from getting swamped.