User blog comment:Toughpigs/Wikia's new Forum demo/@comment-1280533-20120726164619/@comment-10370-20120726203002

There are two big principles that we've used to make decisions about User talk (for Message Wall) and old Forum namespace (for the new Forum).

1. Nothing should ever be lost or deleted. Old conversations are a really important part of the wiki's history; they should always be archived and accessible rather than deleted.

2. It doesn't make sense to have two competing systems on the same wiki that do the same thing. We're working to make the communication systems more efficient for veterans and more accessible for new people. If you've got two different things called Forum on the same wiki, then new people don't know which to use, and wiki vets have to waste time trying to direct people to the right one.

So the solution for old Forum conversations will be similar to the one for User talk and Message Wall. Forum conversations will be archived and accessible, but only admins will be able to make edits on those pages. We haven't built that yet, so right now this demo version is only on wikis that haven't used the Forum namespace.