Board Thread:New Features/@comment-26339491-20191016152503/@comment-9605025-20191017060538

Wow! There sure have been a lot of replies since I last looked at this thread. Though I suppose that is to be expected given the many many many discussions/arguments that have been had over this transition ever since Discussions was announced way back when. There are some things in particular I will reply to but I want to first give my response to what I think is the general gist of what has been said since my last post. This one I tried to ask in my first post but it got overshadowed by a different yet similar question. Since some others have brought it up in some form or another, I am going to mention it again.
 * 1) This transition has been a long time in the making. Maybe it will be halted again, maybe not. However, there is almost 0% chance it will be canceled at this point. Sooner or later, every wiki will have to deal with it. That is just a fact.
 * 2) DPL/wiki-style forums is not going to be affected by this transition and will remain an option for wikis regardless.
 * 3) The transition will convert Forum to Discussions; this is not optional. Conversion to wiki-style forum is something wikis must do on their own; and before Wikia's script comes through and removes Forum.

Right now, the plan is to convert everything and remove all the associated code. The code is hard to manage, okay, fine. But why does that mean that things need to be converted "right now"? Is it not possible to allow wikis to keep the content pages as they are just without the code for the operating feature? I am thinking similar to what happens to comments when talk pages are enabled. The comments aren't deleted, they just become hard to view and special protections are placed on them. In essence, they become archived. Why can't there be some sort of archival-type option?

From the reply to my earlier post, it sounds like the problem is with the code for the feature; partially as a result of the page structure. However, it was not mentioned that the page structure itself is a problem. So, at the very least, I don't understand why wikis need to remove that structure "right now". It would be nice to have this archival-state at least for a limited time so wikis can take time converting to wiki-style forums. The wiki I admin has tons of threads and I am the only active user. Even if I spent all of my spare time converting them, I doubt it would be done by mid-January when the bot or whatever comes around to devour all the thread-related pages.

Ideally, I would prefer the option for an indefinite archival state. In that case, some JS could be made for displaying the content without the ability to edit/create the content. However, if that is already definitely off the table, could we at least have some temporary archival state for wikis that need more time to convert to wiki-style forums?

I understand that the content is "preserved" when converting to Discussions. However, that is just the end result. As has already been mentioned several times, the wikitext will be erased from existence and the only way to save it, right now, is to manually move everything to wiki-style forums. - reply to #9 by Mira Laime - reply to #15 by Golfpecks256 Unfortunately, wikitext has about 0% chance of ever being supported in Discussions. This is a topic that has come up many times before. That being said, there is still a lot more that could be added to come closer to "feature parity"; at least in my opinion. Fandyllic made a decent list in. - reply to #18 by KockaAdmiralac Are timestamps also preserved? Without those, it would be difficult keeping track of which thread came first. - reply to #19 by Duskaa I don't mean to be rude; especially as a fellow Discussions skeptic. However, I feel most of your questions have already been addressed in the other posts. Have you read them? - reply to #21 by Mira Laime Mira Laime wrote: ...
 * 1) I refer you to Fandyllic’s detailed list in.
 * 2) Okay, I guess.
 * 3) Fair enough.
 * 4) I refer you to my general reply above.
 * 5) Okay. Thanks for explicitly addressing this question from my previous post but your immediately prior replies sort of already clarified this point.

By far the easiest path would be to have Forum content moved over to Discussions by January to have it archived and not lost, but to use DPL forums for your new and future conversations, to make a gradual shift towards DPL forums as your main conversation space.

...

When Forum content is migrated to Discussions, we won't create duplicates for those files, nor will we delete file pages for images used in the Forums. The existing file pages stay where they are, the images appear in Discussions, but admins won't have to worry about having to clean up a bunch of duplicates.

... From previous discussions, I was under the impression that converted threads would be editable. Is that not true?

The answer is probably obvious to anyone whose wiki already has Discussions, but since mine doesn't, I am asking. Are the converted images treated differently from images that are posted new? If so, how? Also, is the image database shared between Discussions and the wiki. Like, can I use a 5-year-old image from the wiki in Discussions? If I post a new image in Discussions, does it also get added to the wiki? If so, does MediaWiki:Titleblacklist still get applied? - reply to #22 by KockaAdmiralac That is not my understanding based on the recent posts. It sounds to me like the thread pages will be deleted. - reply to #23 by KockaAdmiralac KockaAdmiralac wrote: ...

I know of all the limitations of such a move, but it's still technically possible to achieve this with the import tool.

... I don't see how you could preserve all the page info like history and whatnot. Am I misunderstanding what you are saying? - reply to #25 by KockaAdmiralac That is not quite what I would consider "preserving content". From other posts, I am getting the feeling some of them agree with me.

Since Discussions is not part of MediaWiki, do the same restrictions on HTML apply or is it a separate set of restrictions?

Either way, it seems like being able to edit the posts would be really nice if you have an ongoing discussion. Perhaps better HTML editing should be added to the Discussions to-do list. - reply to #29 by Sophiedp I don't know what it looks like for you, but it looks like complete trash for me. And for those of you who know me, no, I am not using IE; I am using Chrome. - reply to #33 by Fandyllic All great points. Which ones are in response to misinformation? Some of them appear to be correcting things that no one has even mentioned (ex. whether or not signature are automatic for wiki-style forums). - reply to #34 by Golfpecks256 My response to this is covered by my above response to your other post. - reply to #36 by Qwertyxp2000 the second Not that I know of. As I mentioned in, I was/am working on something that could possibly be used if the content pages, system messages, and CSS were allowed to remain. However, it sounds like they are planning to nuke the feature off the platform. - reply to #37 by Doritodorito Just to make sure we are clear, the rest of the platform is getting updated; majorly. That is the reason why Forum and related features "need" to be retired. The problem isn't that everything else can't keep pace with Forum, the problem is that Forum can't keep pace with everything else.