User blog:Weesee II/Discussions - The Non-replacement to Forums

Before you Read: This blog post will likely be expanded upon to talk about more issues. However, functionality and proper integration are two of the most important issues about Discussions, in my opinion.

I'm sure everyone who reads this already knows about Discussions. Introduced in 2016, Discussions is meant as the "future" replacement to forums, while also unifying desktop users and users in the community app. Unfortunately, despite it being over 2 years since Discussions was first publicly tested, it has not yet reached the point of being able to replace the forums.

The point of this blog is not to just trash-talk Discussions, or to talk about FANDOM's treatment of mobility in general, but to raise concern about Discussions and FANDOM's treatment of the feature.

Forced Replacement
On many communities, Discussions has already replaced the forums, despite not having the necessary functions to do so. This is especially apparent on newer wikis made after the feature was first pushed out. These wikis are forced to use Discussions. There's no way to switch to forums and no way to turn them off. Staff are very unlikely to accept a request to switch to the forums or even have both running at the same time, although they have made some exceptions for large wikis.

While this forced replacement does mean that issues get noticed sooner, it doesn't mean much if nothing gets done about these issues. That is the big problem I've noticed with Discussions. While small features do get added to marginally improve Discussions, huge features that users have been expecting for years have not surfaced.

Mobility vs Parallel Functionality
The most glaring issue with Discussions is how much functionality it sacrifices for the sake of mobility. While the Forums were made with a lot of mediawiki code mutation, they at least improved from the wiki-style forums. They had all the same functions as the wiki-style forums, but with an improved interface, easy enough to navigate boards, and a simple reply system. On the other hand, while Discussions is easy enough to navigate, it has zero mediawiki functionality. This was addressed when it first came out, and in the FAQ, and we have never gotten full support for it. While FANDOM has taken the liberty to add things like Polls, image uploading, and some functions that the Forums don't have, it doesn't make up for the lack of basic wikitext.

I don't see why this was never added, considering that the mobile skin supports wikitext on the main wiki. Whatever the reasoning is, it's a problem. Templates, for instance, can't be added in Discussions post, so displaying a template on the post is impossible. Deletion lists are much more difficult if the users can't see which pages are redlinked at all. Even the basic formatting I'm currently using to organize this blogpost is impossible on a Discussions post. If Discussions is going to completely replace the forums in the future, there needs to be some sort of solution to this so that it at least comes close to having the same functionalities.

As a side note, there are some functions, such as the abuse filter, that Staff have said they can't add to Discussions, due to the fact that Discussions was not built off of MediaWiki.

Segregated Discussions
By default, FANDOM does not have a wiki-wide Discussions rail. Discussions posts and edits do not show up in WikiActivity or RecentChanges. The only feature that is there by default is the activity feed. Unfortunately, this is shown on a page-by-page basis, so it's really only useful on the main page without modification. This means that, for most users, discussions is a sectioned off area. No CSS or javascript exists there, and there's no way for editors, especially moderators and admins, to see changes without physically checking every discussions post. Small communities have no issue with this, but I'd imagine large communities have many problems with it. Much like the functionality issues, this has been a problem since its inception, and it's shocking that FANDOM has not changed this.

The Dev Wiki, however, has a few scripts that add a Discussions rail, as well as a Recent Discussions Activity and Recent Discussions Changes special page. These are basically mandatory if a wiki owner wants to actually use discussions, but since they are not default features, users would only know to do this if they did the research themselves.

Conclusion
As it stands, Discussions as a whole is improving, but not by much. While FANDOM has added numerous features, and while Discussions is easier to navigate and load than Forums, the lack of functions that the Forums have, as well as the segregation that can't be fixed without javascript is very concerning. If FANDOM intends to push Discussions out to completely replace Forums, I hope these are at least improved upon.