Board Thread:New Features/@comment-168424-20181227041434/@comment-3218221-20190129012358

@Andrewds1021 - I definitely meant the latter (wiki-style), as Discussions was meant to replace Forums direclty. I know wikitext/wiki-style forums aren't meant to be going anywhere, but having the Discussions module so front-and-center naturally made me wonder, "What about wikis which use wiki-style forums and don't have Discussions enabled?" Would the Feeds module simply not exist on those wikis, or would it try and promote activity on the forums in lieu of Discussions?

Perhaps it was a jump to conclusions/a bit extreme worry to think about, but that FANDOM only acknowledges Discussions in that Help page is...well, I couldn't help but be suspicious.

I admit that I didn't think of article comments and the like because the main wiki I admin uses both wiki-style forums and talk pages in lieu of Discussions and Talk Pages (and to be honest I've been thinking about enabling Talk Pages and trying to enable wiki-style forums on the newer wikis I've founded) -- so such features aren't at the forefront of my mind as much. You're right to bring those up, though. I wonder...

@Fandyllic: Glad to see I'm not alone in my concerns. The Community-Feeds wiki I linked earlier rubs me the wrong way in some of it claims. For instance:

Excuse me, but framing a "unified content experience" across all platforms as an inherently beneficial thing seems disingenuous. I understand it from a branding standpoint, but from a usability standpoint? The current mobile experience is purportedly an awful one, but it seems to me that the mobilization (heh) of a 'unified' experience actually means (attempting to) improve the mobile experience at the expense of a desktop one.

As someone who primarily (if not 99% exclusively) uses Wikia content on desktop, this landing page seems detrimental to my experience. It's not particularly aesthetically better, and it's certainly not functionally better. Also, "contribution at the forefront?" With Discussions as the module in the limelight, and the mention of "trending topics," CF itself doesn't seem to be geared toward promoting contribution.

After all, the main selling point on the CF page seems to be cultivating visitor retention, and visitor retention != making visitors/users into contributors.

As for Community Builders...argh. I actually - up to a certain point - get why Staff might be so fixated on a "new editor for non-coders," because I remember seeing a contributor on one wiki stop editing because for whatever reason visual editor stopped being their default editor/they couldn't use visual editor, and that was the only editor they really knew how to use...

..and sure, there are plenty of users like that, and yes, these users sometimes frustrate more experienced/regular editors who use source editor and hate how edits via visual editor mess up wikitext. So I understand why Staff still thinks developing a new editor has potential. As someone who does mostly in source editor, though, I have my extreme reservations about the editor CB is displaying.

Well, I suppose I don't need to rehash that. Or why the top nav as displayed in CB makes me worry for all sorts of reasons (drop-down menu tiers robustness + why do they want to rehaul the header/top nav again after making such a big deal about the recent header modernization we already went through? Something doesn't add up.)

I suppose I didn't mention my concerns about Theming/theme designer] in CB... This seems to be related to the CF-mobile app 'theming' unification FANDOM is interested, and that bodes very ill in my book.

I don't know. So many things about CF and CB are rubbing me the wrong way. Despite the fact that these are experimental, alpha features being tested on very few communities right now, I think we editors should be giving them a lot of scrutiny and attention/spreading the word as best we can right now. Threads like this one are already a good start.