Help talk:Discussions

Enabling
How do you enable this? I can't find it on the WikiFeatures page. WolfLord315 (wall) 12:18, September 2, 2016 (UTC)
 * From the page:
 * This feature or extension is currently under development - it may be in beta testing on specific communities, but may not be widely available for some time.
 * -- Cube - shaped   garbage can  12:56, September 2, 2016 (UTC)


 * Discussions is still in Beta, but you can request it to be enabled for your community if you send us a message via Special:Contact! Mira Laime   (help forum | blog) 17:05, September 2, 2016 (UTC)

Will it be optional?
I really, really hope communities will be able to keep their old Forums because they have a few important features, at least my own does: the ability for anonymous readers to comment because it makes communities more open and it even makes people more willing to join; and the use of wikitext markup, because it's a good way for people to learn how to format pages before putting their hands on the real thing.

We had an external forum and we decided to move it on our wiki also because of those features; it would really be a shame if you'd kill Forums and substite it with Discussions without asking first, because we would be forced to go back to our old external forum.

Please let communities opt-out of this.


 * Hi Wedhro,


 * Discussions is optional at the moment - communities can request to have it enabled, but won't have it turned on automatically. However, all current wiki forums will migrate over to Discussions eventually.


 * See also this section from the Discussions FAQ:
 * Can my community ask to turn off Discussions if we try it and don't like it?


 * The answer can vary depending on the situation. If Discussions is causing problems or not meeting your community's needs or expectations, we want to hear more. Development of Discussions is ongoing and we may have an update coming soon that will address the concerns. Please note that Discussions is intended to become a standard feature on Wikia, and any community that has the current Forum feature will eventually have Discussions since the content will be migrated over.


 * Mira Laime   (help forum | blog) 00:56, September 9, 2016 (UTC)

Speaking of Forum, it is also handy for play-by-post text roleplay wiki sites, and the use of Discussion reply tree or like/disliknig wouldn't fit the flow for RPs.

Mhazard (talk) 07:52, September 10, 2016 (UTC)

Will Discussions ever be compatible with CSS
Will Discussions ever be customisable with CSS? If Discussions ever do become compatible with CSS, the sooner that time comes, the better! :D ― C.Syde  ( talk  |  contribs ) 23:36, November 23, 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree. Being able to customize Discussions with CSS, or at least with Theme Designer, would be a great idea. :D ~Signed JustLeafy ( ͡| ͜' ͡| ) USER WALL  14:01, September 12, 2017 (UTC)
 * From what I have heard, it would not be possible to customize them with CSS because of a few reasons:
 * FANDOM separates Discussions strictly from wiki (influences)
 * FANDOM restricts the customization by users more and more in favor of corparate identity
 * That does not seem to be a necessary feature to be developed in the near future (FANDOM has limited resources)
 * So I think, inheriting from or adding something to the theme designer would be the ultimate feeling...
 * Agent Zuri Profile   Message Wall   Blog  14:13, September 12, 2017 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that seems like to be the best choice if CSS won't work. Plus, ThemeDesigner would have more of a use, so I do agree. ~Signed JustLeafy ( ͡| ͜' ͡| ) USER WALL  15:50, September 12, 2017 (UTC)

Highlighting Discussions
Is there a way to highlight discussions, so that other users would be notified of it even if they don't upvote or comment on it? There seems to be no option to do so, and I need to make important threads (that everyone must see) for my wikis that have the discussions instead of forums. But I don't know a way to attract users to it. Please help. - Charles12310 (Profile|Talk|Blogs|Contribs|Guestbook|Twitter|Roblox|DeviantArt) 20:10, December 31, 2016 (UTC)
 * They do not have that functionality yet but, per Help:Discussions FAQ, they are working on it. -- Cube - shaped   garbage can  20:13, December 31, 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay thanks a lot. - Charles12310 (Profile|Talk|Blogs|Contribs|Guestbook|Twitter|Roblox|DeviantArt) 01:55, January 4, 2017 (UTC)

Discussions Feature Progress?
Is there anywhere to find  public documentation of  discussion feature's progress, (news on recent bug fixes, recently implemented features, or even simply 'what we are working on next'?) The last informations seem to be from September 2016.

I have been submitting my feedback on discussions and contacting wikia one-on-one to request that forums be reinstated (to no resolve) since January when I realized the feature is far too underdeveloped to be useable within my community, and that the removed forum feature has made the Wikia platform unusable for my community's needs. I want to stick with wikia, but without any visible movement on this critical feature, it seems like the only sensible option is to look into a different hosting site for my wikis :(  Information on the feature's progress would help to see if it's just a matter of patience or if migrating from wikia is necessary.

KyuKyu (talk) 20:14, April 9, 2017 (UTC)


 * There is no particular page where you can see list of updates to discussions, you keep an eye on Blog:Fandom Technical Updates where they post blogs about changes made on every fandom extentions and staff/someuser will also update help page according to changes made on discussion.Minato826 (Talk to ANOOP)(Contributions) 20:47, April 9, 2017 (UTC)


 * Minato826 is right: Apart from following the Technical Updates Blog, which will mention any updates to Discussions, you can follow the Discussions help or FAQ page, which are also updated as Discussions receives new features. The most recent update, for example, was the addition of on-site notifications at the top right, like the forums have them.


 * The reason why we don't necessarily have a public list of what features we're currently working on or what is coming out when is simply that our development is dynamic and not statically planned ahead for months. The options mentioned above should give you a pretty solid way of tracking any updates to Discussions - and to the rest of the platform, for that matter, which might factor into your decision where to take your community, too. Mira Laime   (help forum | blog) 16:46, April 10, 2017 (UTC)

Will you be able to attach media files?
Will users be able to attach photos/videos to their posts before the final version of this feature is released? If not, then the wiki that I'm admin on is gonna have problems with this feature, unfortunately. We need images in case a user comes up with the theme design, propose new ideas for the wiki, showing content that is off-topic, etc. SatoTheDancer101 (talk) 21:39, May 28, 2017 (UTC)


 * Image upload will likely come to Discussions. Even now, you can already include links to files you've uploaded to the wiki the regular way or that are hosted elsewhere in your Discussions posts. That way, you can embed images in your posts directly. That should be quite useful even before image upload is released! Mira Laime   (help forum | blog) 19:04, May 30, 2017 (UTC)

Some Feedback
I honestly disagree with Discussions. I prefer Forum much more. I believe there should be a feature where Admins on a certain Wiki can choose between Forum and Discussions.

For me, Discussions is laggier. It is also hard to reply, since I cannot see the replies,so I have to delete my message' while in Forum, I may simply scroll up to view the ENITRE list of replies, and scroll back down so I may finish my reply.

In discussions, there is no highlight feature, which isn't very helpful, since no one goes to discussions on my wiki, so no one hears what I have to say, unless I directly tell them on their message wall.

Please consider this feedback.

WikiT (Message Wall) 21:24, May 30, 2017 (UTC)


 * There's no chance in preventing the discontinuation of threaded forums since they are now considered a discontinued feature. But I'm sure things will be worked out so that the disadvantages to discussions will no longer be significant. I'm very tired right now and almost falling asleep, so please forgive me if this response isn't as helpful as you were hoping for. I was hoping to be able to make a more elaborate response. ― C.Syde  ( talk  |  contribs ) 11:06, May 31, 2017 (UTC)

Preview?
Why is there no ability to preview a post before making it? Also I see that standard wiki syntax for links doesn't work in discussions other parts of a wiki. Will this be implemented in the future? Fei noh a  Talk 00:12, June 14, 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah yes. I started a forum discussion using the discussions feature for the first time a few days ago. I remembered when I was unable to preview my edits. I had to double back and fix what was unsupported by discussions that was supported by forum threads. ― C.Syde  ( talk  |  contribs ) 00:40, June 14, 2017 (UTC)
 * There's no preview because there's currently no markup - what you put into the field will be exactly what you get: the only difference is links will become links. Markup seems like it's a popular request so I would expect it to be a part of Discussions in the future - but for now you can send your thoughts on it via Special:Contact/feedback. noreplyz talk 02:34, June 14, 2017 (UTC)

Link to articles on wiki (EDIT: As topics)
Can this be done like forums?FortressMaximus #WeLoveLegends (Talk) 00:50, July 12, 2017 (UTC)

Not the same way, no. You have to do it like, for example, community.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Discussions --
 * I actually meant as a topic similar to that of the forums. So there's no chance of an article having a "Discussions about..." heading at the bottom of the article with this system?--FortressMaximus #WeLoveLegends (Talk) 23:36, July 18, 2017 (UTC)

Why no wikitext?
QlnwtheOctoGuy (talk) 10:48, August 14, 2017 (UTC): I sure this is not a stupid question. However, wikitext is the only source allows custom formatting, adding images, using templates for a lot of reasons (cough cough pvz wiki cough cough). Doesn't know why did this get removed in disscusion? Anyhow: They did not really remove this feature, but as insofar as discussions are encapsulated and apart from the rest of the wiki they use another editor which does not support wikitext yet. They think about implementing it but I'm completely unsure when to anticipate it. Best regards, Agent Zuri Profile   Message Wall   Blog  11:06, August 14, 2017 (UTC)
 * There were stupid questions out there for sure, but this is not one of them. It only indicates a little lack of knowledge which can be resolved by giving an answer.


 * Shorter answer: Discussions was not built with MediaWiki, so wikitext does not work. Forums were built with MW, but that was very hacky and didn't port very well. -- Tupka 217 11:55, August 14, 2017 (UTC)


 * This is all correct. FANDOM is planning on adding more text formatting capabilities to Discussions, though what that will look like exactly isn't decided yet. You might find the answers to this and other commonly asked questions about Discussions helpful, too. Mira Laime   (help forum | blog) 21:03, August 14, 2017 (UTC)

Voting?
Including voting makes this feature more a popularity contest than a place to get consensus on an issue. I say it should be removed. Lady Aleena (talk) 11:09, September 12, 2017 (UTC)


 * It's really just upvoting, liking. How does it influence consensus? -- Tupka 217 11:17, September 12, 2017 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I've been wondering how it influences consensus in the first place. Also it's really just the same as the Kudos feature on forum threads. I have no reason to believe that it should be removed. ― C.Syde  ( talk  |  contribs ) 00:26, September 13, 2017 (UTC)


 * Voting in any way, shape, or form should be removed. It belongs on social networks not on wikis. Lady Aleena (talk) 01:22, September 13, 2017 (UTC)


 * I strongly disagree. If it gets removed then those users who are fond of Kudos and Upvotes may become discouraged from being involved with Wikia. ― C.Syde  ( talk  |  contribs ) 01:26, September 13, 2017 (UTC)
 * Consensus sometimes should be left in the way of simple voting. MechQueste (talk) 12:46, September 13, 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree. ― C.Syde  ( talk  |  contribs ) 12:01, September 14, 2017 (UTC)


 * Well, if there is up voting, will there also be down voting? Can a person's post or comment be sent into the depths of Hell with down votes? That is only fair and may even encourage better behavior. A post or comment with -100 points would show precisely what not to do on a wiki.


 * With no down voting, up voting is worthless. Lady Aleena (talk) 16:24, September 22, 2017 (UTC)


 * I very much agree. Upvoting & downvoting are good ways to voice agreement or dissent without needing to add another reply or when you don’t have anything more to say beyond simple agreement & disagreement. Without a symmetrical mechanism through which to express basic dissent in the same way as assent, gauging the true distaste for a given statement will always be a skewed process.


 * Downvoted posts and threads with score of -10 (or another negative value) could be displayed greyed out (similar to deleted posts/threads for sysops and mods). Users (but not sysops and mods) could get the option to hide these disliked posts and threads. Agent Zuri Profile   Message Wall   Blog  16:42, September 22, 2017 (UTC)


 * FANDOM deliberately decided against downvoting for the simple reason that it can be used for hate and bullying. Facebook went the same route for likely the same reason -- it should be possible to agree with something quickly and easily, but if you disagree enough to take action, better leave a comment than an anonymous negative vote.


 * Downvoting can be a great tool - for example for pure Q&A platforms, where votes decide which answer is marked as most helpful - but in a discussions context where all (polite) opinions are valid, it's not needed, and could be abused. That's why we have upvoting, but no downvoting. Mira Laime   (help forum | blog) 16:59, September 22, 2017 (UTC)


 * If the attempt is to emulate Facebook, then things look quite bleak. The problem is that forcing dissenters to voice their opinions when otherwise they could quietly downvote means that you are forcing negativity to bubble up into a visible format, instead of as a simple number that could be noted but discarded. It is much more distressing to be told witheringly why you are wrong as opposed to seeing a simple number that indicates you should do better. A number cannot bully someone, it is just a number & when things are anonymous you know to take things with a certain grain of salt, but when someone tells you openly why you are wrong it is much more intense.

There is never a place on earth where all ideas are 100% valid. Ideas do not have protections, people do. There is no idea above scrutiny & peer review, & if something is flat out wrong, then it will be critiqued. Attempting to choke the free market of ideas will just lead to echo chambers. Which, if some Administrators want to foster is up to them, but if other Communities do not want to go down that path, they should have the means to take that higher road.


 * Thank you Agent_Zuri and Ursuul for your support. I really appreciate it.


 * Mira Laime, let me tell you how withholding down voting will hurt in the long run, and how up voting is not always agreement.


 * Imagine me posting a discussion topic that I have researched and sweat blood to write.


 * The first reply is someone who disagrees with me after the same amount of research and sweating blood. My eyeballs are relaxed, and my proofreader's soul is happy. I would give that post ++ (an up vote).


 * The second reply tells my dissenter that she sucks, and then agrees with me. That is unacceptable. So even though it is an agreement, I will give that post -- (a down vote).


 * The third reply is also someone who agrees with me, however, it only consists of images of hearts, rainbows, stars, suns, moons, bunnies, and more. There are only two words in the entire post. As with the last person to agree with me, I will give that post --. The reason, I want a discussion not an emoticon gallery.


 * The last person to reply also agrees with me but can not spell a simple word like "your" completely. There is no capitalization, commas spliced every where, and not a single end of sentence mark making my eyeballs bleed and my proofreader's soul wither and die. Again a --.


 * So you see, a ++ or a -- is not always the best measure of how a conversation is going. I would not want to upset those who endorse my opinion by telling them their posts are utter nonsense. A simple down vote would be sufficient.


 * The ++/-- system works on one site I post on occasionally. I do not feel bullied there, even when two posts of mine were voted down to -2, though there are posts that go down to -28. (I have one post that made it as high as 86.) After receiving down votes, I learned how to properly behave there. I stopped posting angry for starters.


 * We live in a world where saying "I don't like this." is seen as bullying when that is not always the case. It is to the point where if I can not dislike a thing, I will not like it either. Down voting is one of the simpler ways to tell someone to reform. Lady Aleena (talk) 04:31, September 24, 2017 (UTC)


 * P.S. There should also be a maximum amount of votes per day based on activity and even votes. That would make voting more important if people had to chose carefully where they use their votes. Lady Aleena (talk) 04:35, September 24, 2017 (UTC)

Agent Zuri Profile   Message Wall   Blog  04:54, September 24, 2017 (UTC)
 * Good idea and explantation: ++


 * One of downvoting's major flaws is the fact that it can be very difficult to clarify intent. If you upvote, that means you support the post in one way or another. Pretty simple, right? But with a downvote, it could mean a lot of specific and/or vague things. If you have legitimate criticism, leaving a comment explaining what it is does a whole lot more than adding an uninformative number to another very uninformative number. And if someone is just trolling, that becomes apparent very swiftly.


 * It's also important to keep in mind that while downvoting may work on other sites, that doesn't mean it will work everywhere, as communities are very different from each other. As a side note, I've seen several major online communities that aren't social media remove downvoting because it never led to anything constructive. That's my two cents. ~ Vera ( Message me ) 05:29, September 24, 2017 (UTC)


 * Yeah. A notable example is YouTube removing downvotes from comments. ― C.Syde  ( talk  |  contribs ) 07:11, September 24, 2017 (UTC)


 * Discussion about what's good, bad and which could be improved next time leads to meta level discussions instead of the actual topic. That could be very higgledy-piggledy when not having nested answers to post so subtopics can be separeted from talks which are discussion another part of the discussion. Agent Zuri Profile   Message Wall   Blog  11:35, September 24, 2017 (UTC)


 * The problem with downvotes is that they just express anonymous negativity, but don't give a clue about why you downvoted something. A post that just consists of emojis is obvious spam and doesn't need downvotes to mark it as such. Hitting "report" so mods can remove it would make more sense here. Hitting "downvote" on a post because the spelling and grammar are terrible can give the poster the impression you just disagree with their opinion, and they've learned nothing for their next post. And if someone agrees with you but insults someone else in the process, a downvote also doesn't convey that you disagreed with their tone, not their message, especially since they won't know the downvote came from you. Insults should be reported instead of downvoted, so something can be done about them.


 * Downvotes can be extremely useful depending on the context and the community, but for FANDOM, we weighed the pros and cons and really don't consider them a desirable feature. That might change down the road if users use Discussions in ways we didn't expect, but so far, we're happy with how things are going with just upvotes. Mira Laime (  help forum | blog) 15:51, September 25, 2017 (UTC)


 * A topic you did not address was "nested posts" so users can directly answer to a specific post. What about that? Agent Zuri Profile   Message Wall   Blog  16:24, September 25, 2017 (UTC)


 * Agent Zuri, nesting posts is extraordinarily important. At least here on talk pages, I can nest to my heart's content. See my next comment. Lady Aleena (talk) 19:10, September 25, 2017 (UTC)


 * P.S. Agent Zuri, you might want to start a new heading about nesting as this is about voting. 8) Lady Aleena (talk) 19:18, September 25, 2017 (UTC)


 * Veralann, up voting's major flaws are the same as down voting's flaws. Someone comes along and likes one of my messages without telling me why they liked it is not helpful. Did they like the content, was my prose good, or some other reason? I do not always up vote to support a comment, I sometimes do it because it was good no matter what I felt about the topic being discussed in the post. I could disagree with a post almost violently, however, if it was a good post, I would probably up vote it.


 * There could be posts I dislike but are well written that I would up vote. I would rather tell them that I disagree, but I thought they wrote well and set a rather high bar.


 * There could be posts I like but are poorly written that I would down vote. I would rather tell them that I agree, but they really need to get their act together and lowered the bar terribly.


 * Voting in any way takes away from what this is called, Discussions. A vote is not a well thought out comment, it is just a click of the mouse or touch of a finger on a screen. So, take the laziness of the click and touch people away and make them actually discuss things. As I said earlier; if I can not dislike something, I will not like it either. Lady Aleena (talk) 19:10, September 25, 2017 (UTC)


 * Well, I'll share my point of view then. I personally see upvotes as a way to gauge whether or not something is particularly worth reading. I don't let that completely dictate what I will or won't read, but if I'm skimming through stuff trying to find something interesting or funny relevant to where I'm looking, it can be helpful. On the other hand, downvotes don't actually tell me anything, since on a lot of the communities I frequent, people tend to abuse downvotes specifically because they don't like what someone said (for example: "This thing is way better than that thing").


 * The number also can't tell me why the post is bad or not worth reading. And yes, you may say the same thing applies to upvotes, but the way I see it is that if a post has a large amount of upvotes, it's probably either going to be really funny or meaningful. I speak only from my own observations over time, and of course our opinions are allowed to differ on this.


 * TL;DR: I don't think a downvote tells me as much as an upvote does, and that's my opinion. ~ Vera ( Message me ) 20:09, September 25, 2017 (UTC)


 * By the way, I am really enjoying this discussion we are all involved in now. I do not see a reason for a new thing for discussions. Lady Aleena (talk) 19:29, September 25, 2017 (UTC)

How to publicize this service?
Hello there. I am the owner of a few wikis, some of them which had Discussions already enabled when I adopted them. Unfortunately nobody uses them, and in most cases people don't even know or care they exist.

I used to be an administrator of yet another wiki which had Discussions enabled and a Discord server, and both were very active (sometimes Discussions was even way more active than Discord).

My question is, what can I do to make Discussions more popular? On my main wiki, we are expecting an important event to happen later this year and I would like Discussions to be popular enough for people to talk about it via that service.

Thanks for reading. Regards.

-- 20:51, July 29, 2018 (UTC)


 * Hey, there's a recently new feature FANDOM added to publicize not only Discussions but blogs as well. If you're an admin or discussions mod of a wiki you want to publicize an event in, Help:Announcements would reach to people to get to know what's happening. ★ FreeSpirit98 ★ (talk) 21:10, July 29, 2018 (UTC)


 * I find that making content is the most important part of improving your wiki's Discussions - whether that's announcements, game/show updates or just having a weekly post about a particular featured page. That way, people who are interested will join in on the conversation you are having. You can also check out scripts like w:c:dev:DiscussionsRailModule, which adds a feed of Discussions (like Forums), which people will see and click on. no replyz 23:51, July 29, 2018 (UTC)