Board Thread:New Features/@comment-10502460-20191013022131

Hello. I am an admin on the Creepypasta Wiki. About four months ago now, we adopted the Discussions feature and are continuing to have issues with it.

99% of the users who post in our Discussions come from the Fandom app rather than the wiki itself. We are fine with this, to be clear, but it does cause some issues. The issues stem from two main problems with the feature: the lack of a direct interface with the wiki itself, and the fact that there are limited options for getting people's attention in Discussions.

To start with, the default link to the Discussions rules is not very conspicuous, and even less so when using the app where it's under a tab that you have to open. In addition, since there is still no pin/sticky feature, we can't pin a rules post. We have reason to believe the majority of our Discussions community never even see the rules.

In addition, we are having trouble getting the attention of specific problem users. Our standard way of notifying users that they have broken rules on the wiki is to leave messages on their talk page, but as far as we know there is no way that users are notified of talk pages messages on the app.

We have tried locking offending posts with notices that the post is in violation and that continuing to break the rules will result in a temp ban, but the only way for that to work is if the poster sees that this has been done.

We thought about having a disciplinary thread just for user warnings and ban notices, but I have discovered that you can't even bump threads, so it's unlikely they would be checking the thread to see if the have been mentioned.

We may try pinging users with the new mentions feature, but this may yield limited results as well.

Many of the users in our Discussions seem oblivious to the fact that there is even a wiki beyond the Discussions app. We recently had one user ask if there was a place he could read a lot of creepypasta, a database for creepypasta stories all in one place. Again, we're the Creepypasta Wiki.

Another thing I've discovered through test banning myself is that when users are banned, they aren't notified that they are banned when they try to post in Discussions. They just get a notification saying their post couldn't be saved, and they probably think the issue is a system error then.

I'd like to close by suggesting that the following changes be made to Discussions:

1. The ability for DMs and admins to pin posts.

2. Greater visibility for the rules page.

3. More interface between Discussions and the wiki itself, particularly on the Fandom App where there is currently next to none.

4. Automatically notify app users if someone has messaged their talk page/message wall, or at least make the push notification for it visible in Discussions as well as the wiki.

Or, alternatively, create an analogue to message walls specifically for Discussions, since Discussions users already have parallel profile pages anyway.

5. A mass notification system for Discussions, since as far as I know there is none currently.

6. A clearer message telling banned users that they reason they can't post is because they are banned.

7. Allow threads to be bumped by recent posts. I realize this can be abused, but it could prevent users from asking the same questions over and over as well as create a more vibrant community in Discussions since popular posts wouldn't disappear as quickly. 