Hello. I realize complaining about the "problems" with the Discussions feature is beating a dead horse at this point, so I decided to make this post to make constructive suggestions for improving it.
I am aware that a Discussions forum overhaul is already coming down the pipe, so if some of my suggestions are already in the works, great, but if not, I hope this can be considered helpful feedback.
1. Page tabulation
The fact that one has to scroll endlessly to find old posts is one of the biggest drawbacks of Discussions over Forums. It creates a sense of lack of permanency for posts, resulting in a climate that encourages rapid low-effort posts and trashposting rather than thoughtful discussion on many wikis. Adding pages of 20 posts per page would help with this issue while making posts easier to find.
2. Pinning or bumping
Many have complained about Discussions not allowing posts to be pinned, but the current Forums feature never did either. However, Forums at least allow posts to be bumped, while Discussions does not. I realize both can be abused but I really feel having one or the other would improve the ability of wiki sysops and moderators to manage their Discussions communities by drawing attention to important staff posts.
3. Board tags
An optional condensed view that would render Discussions more like forums is already coming, but I feel this should be taken a step further where users are required to choose a board category before starting a post, like in Forums, rather than the other way around, as is currently the case. In my experience few Discussions users bother to use correct tags, which contributes to a chaotic and disorganized environment.
Automatically suggested per-page sub-tags should also be done away with in my opinion. I have rarely seen these tags actually fit with the posts they are given to.
4. A separate message wall or DM system specifically for Discussions
On the wiki I help manage, the overwhelming majority of Discussions users come in through the Fandom app rather than the wiki itself, and are basically their own separate community. I suspect the same is true for many other large wikis. We have had trouble getting the attention of users when they break the Discussions rules due to them never looking at their message wall (or talk page in the case of our wiki), many not even being aware that they have a message wall/talk page. The push notification that you have new messages on your wall does not show up in Discussions, and the only other way to get their attention is to reply to one of their posts and hope they read it, or to use the ping/mention feature and hope they read the pinged message.
We've come up with a workaround wherein we issue warnings and ban notices as replies to a dedicated disciplinary notices thread using the mention feature, but this stop gap system is less than ideal. A better solution in my opinion would be for there to be a Discussions analogue to message walls, or a DM system for Discussions.
5. Interface between Discussions and the Main Wiki
On my wiki, we have had trouble with new Discussions users, especially those who come in through the app, literally not being able to find the wiki itself due to lack of a seamless interface between Discussions and the main site. This issue is compounded by the fact that Discussions is now the default landing page for new wiki users, so if they click the wiki name at the top or the favicon they will presumably just be taken back to Discussions.
I unfortunately can't think of any good suggestions for remedying this issue beyond no longer having Discussions be the default landing page for new users, but it's something I felt I should bring up.
6. Greater visibility for the guidelines page
On a web browser, the link to the /f guidelines is obscure to say the least. On the Fandom App, it's nearly unfindable. New users get one automatic notification to read the rules when making their first post, but beyond that visibility for the rules is highly limited.
This is also something that could be remedied by allowing mods/admins to pin at least one post.
Additionally, some wikis including mine have found that they have had to redirect users to a separate project page for the Discussions rules to to the constricting character limit of the guidelines page and lack of formatting options.
7. Other less important suggestions
- Allow admins of specific wikis to disable Discussions polls, to prevent spam and abuse.
- Have a notification that makes it more clear to users who have been blocked that the reason they can't post in Discussions is because they have been blocked, as opposed to the current "Post failed to save" notification which leads them to believe the issue is a site or browser error.
- Add a mass ping/notification feature (/announcements is not likely to get the attention of most Discussions app users, and using /announcements for mass notifications aimed only at the Discussions community would irritate users of the main wiki.)
- Add a dark theme option for Discussions.
- Make Discussions posts appear with just the title with content expanded when clicked on, to reduce the scrolling problem as mentioned in the first suggestion (don't know if this is already included in the upcoming condensed view overhaul or not.)
- Allow sysops to view a full edit history of posts and replies (if this is feasible with the code, which I guess it might not be.) Showing when a post has been edited is useful, but not having a full edit history still allows users to hide wrongdoing by editing their posts and could result in hearsay when it comes to drama.
- Create a system for Discussions-specific bans, similar to chat bans, so that Discussions moderators can ban problem Discussions users.
These suggestions are based mainly on experience with the wiki I admin on, but our wiki is large enough and we've been using discussions for long enough that I feel my experience can be generalized to other large wiki Discussions communities. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and again, I am aware that some Discussions improvements are already in the works.