User blog:Brandon Rhea/Discussions and ArticleComments are now optionally available on Gamepedia wikis

In an important step toward feature unification between historically Fandom and historically Gamepedia wikis, we can announce that Discussions and ArticleComments are now available on Gamepedia wikis for the first time since the two legacy platforms merged onto the Unified Community Platform (UCP). These are available on an opt-in basis, with information later in the blog about how you can opt-in.

Throughout this blog, we’ll go through some of the background of why these features weren’t previously available, how this helps support FanCentral [Beta ], how admins can get them turned on if their communities are interested, and some of the things that aren’t available yet (like Message Wall).

NOTE: If you don't edit on a Gamepedia wiki, feel free to stop reading here if you'd like as this blog is specifically about Gamepedia wikis rather than the entire platform.

Background
For those who don’t know the backstory, the feature set of Discussions, Article Comments, and Message Wall are all based on a non-MediaWiki technology that we call Community Feeds, the earliest version of which was developed and released by Fandom in late 2015. Originally Discussions was the only part of this technology, but when we were building the Unified Community Platform we decided to convert Article Comments (inclusive of Blog Comments) and Message Wall onto the same technology. Although this came with certain limitations, like not being able to integrate wikitext into user-to-user messages, it did help us scale our use of those features in the future by taking them out of MediaWiki. The previous versions were essentially bolted on to MediaWiki, as they are not core to the MediaWiki software that’s maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation (the organization behind Wikipedia). Keeping them bolted onto MediaWiki would’ve meant that doing yearly post-UCP MediaWiki upgrades would’ve been more technically challenging and resource intensive, since those features would have to undergo updates every year as well. Features like that, from an older era of Fandom’s history, were a big reason why it took us so long to upgrade from MediaWiki 1.19 (the legacy platform) to MediaWiki 1.33 (the original UCP).

When all Fandom and Gamepedia wikis were migrated onto the UCP, Fandom wikis continued to have access to these features but Gamepedia wikis did not. Part of this was that, until summer 2021, Fandom and Gamepedia wikis were using two different skins (Oasis and Hydra/Hydra Dark, respectively), and these features weren’t built with the Hydra skins in mind. Even after the release of FandomMobile and FandomDesktop, though, there were some technical impediments that meant they still weren’t able to be enabled on Gamepedia wikis.

Our understanding for a while was that there wasn’t much interest from Gamepedia communities in using these features, so it didn’t make sense to prioritize the technical work needed to resolve those blockers. That started to change at this year’s Community Connect, though, when Gamepedia admins who were in attendance told us that there was some initial community interest in at least trying these features. So, we agreed to look into what it would take to have these features enabled on Gamepedia wikis.

The launch of FanCentral [Beta] was also an important reason for prioritizing that work.

How Discussions on Gamepedia can help power FanCentral
When we launched the beta for FanCentral last month, only a handful of wikis were initially included in the list of topics people can choose from—all from the Fandom app to start with, and none were from Gamepedia or non-English communities. Beyond the fact that the app was our starting point, the biggest reason that Gamepedia wikis weren’t included from the outset was because there’d be a lack of content in those topics’ fandoms on FanCentral. If someone had followed them, all they would’ve seen from that topic at the start was the Popular Pages module. So it’d be really sparse.

Knowing that, we prioritized two key things. One is adding more wiki content modules, like one showing recently added images that we mentioned in our December 2, 2022 Technical Update blog—plus some others you can expect to see in the near future. The second was making sure Discussions could become available on Gamepedia wikis. That way, if Gamepedia communities choose to add Discussions to their wikis, that’s even more content that fans will be able to see as they browse FanCentral, all leading back to their community and the users that power it.

But like I said, it’ll be optional! And Discussions won’t be a requirement for a Gamepedia wiki being represented in the feed. Once more wiki content modules are added, we feel confident that there will be enough to grab the interest of people who follow those topics. Being able to view conversations in Discussions is an added benefit on top of that. And if FanCentral overall proves successful with English language communities, we intend to begin localizing it into other languages as well to represent the global Fandom community.

How can you get it, and what’s not included?
As of this release, we’ve been able to make Discussions and ArticleComments available for Gamepedia wikis that want to use them—as well as the ability to turn anonymous editing on and off with the flip of a switch. And it’s very easy to have them enabled! Here’s how:


 * Discussions. Discussions can be enabled by request by sending in a ticket to Fandom’s Customer Support team or by reaching out to your assigned Wiki Representative. Either group can enable it for you on the backend. This is consistent with how Discussions can be enabled or disabled on Fandom wikis as well.
 * Article Comments. ArticleComments can be enabled by admins in the Admin Dashboard. Like on historically Fandom wikis, admins will see a toggle in the Admin Dashboard that they can use to turn the feature on or off. It is off by default, so if you’re an admin then all you need to do is flip that switch if your community is interested in commenting. Note that, thanks to the early adoption of Gamepedia Article Comments by the Escape from Tarkov Wiki, we saw that it takes a few minutes for the feature to fully behave as normal on Gamepedia. So if you enable it, you may notice a temporary issue where system messages are appearing or non-admins can’t comment. If you do, they should resolve shortly.
 * Require all contributors to log-in. Although unrelated to Feeds features, we’ve also added a toggle that historically Fandom wikis already have called “Require all contributors to log in.” This allows admins to flip a switch to turn anonymous editing on or off. Anon editing is enabled by default, but sometimes wikis feel that disabling it better fits their needs. This toggle allows admins to make that decision and act on it without having to contact staff or a Wiki Representative.

However, there are two toggles that exist on historically Fandom wikis that we can’t yet add to Gamepedia wikis: Message Wall and Blogs. Both are for a similar reason: Gamepedia wikis use CurseProfile for their user profiles, and that feature wasn’t built with Message Walls or a Blog profile tab in mind. So given the extra complexity those features would’ve added to our work in bringing Discussions and Article Comments to Gamepedia, we decided for now that they were out of scope. If communities are interested in using them, though, we encourage them to let us know! The more interest there is, the more we may be able to prioritize completing that work and making them available.

Moderation of Discussions and Comments
Since many of the people reading this blog post will be new to Discussions and Comments, I wanted to give a quick overview of some of the recent and upcoming updates to moderation that we’ve made or are making for these features. First and foremost, you can get an overview of basic moderation tools in Discussions by clicking here. Beyond that, here are some key details:


 * Special:SocialActivity. This special page acts much the same way as Special:RecentChanges, but it’s specifically for posts and replies in Discussions, Comments, and—while not on Gamepedia yet—Message Walls. This special page is available on historically Fandom wikis, but not yet on Gamepedia wikis as it’s owned by a separate development team from the one that added Discussions and Comments availability. We are working on delivering that to you soon, and we totally understand if Gamepedia wikis would rather wait to try out these features until Special:SocialActivity is available to make moderation easier.
 * Discussions AbuseFilter. Our new Discussions AbuseFilter feature was launched back in October, aimed at bringing a level of parity between moderation on wikis via the standard AbuseFilter and moderation on Discussions, Comments, and Walls. If you'd like to try out this feature as well, you can also request it from our Customer Support team or your Wiki Representative.
 * Post/Reply History. If you’ve been following our bi-weekly Technical Update blog series, you probably know that we’re working on adding History functionality to posts and replies in Discussions, Comments, and Walls. The work has taken longer than we anticipated, but we're still hard at work to get that to you ASAP.

These tools are designed to help you better moderate the conversations on your wikis, and can now be of benefit to Gamepedia wikis as well.

Recap
So, as a quick tl;dr, here’s what’s available now:


 * Discussions (requested via staff or Wiki Representative)
 * ArticleComments (via toggle in the Admin Dashboard)
 * “Require all contributors to log-in” (via toggle in the Admin Dashboard)

And here is what’s not available yet:


 * Message Wall
 * Blogs

For now, we’re happy to answer any questions you may have about Discussions and ArticleComments being available on Gamepedia. And as a reminder, if you’re a Gamepedia wiki admin and your community is interested in using Discussions, send our Customer Support team a message or reach out to your Wiki Representative!

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