Extremely important information about the future of our forums (Staff only)

[Antvasima]

Read the first post of this thread please.

 

[The_King_of_Prudence]

The discussion threads are not possible to open in several browser tabs at once. Rather, you constantly have to hit the back button after ever single thread visit, which automatically scrolls back to a much earlier point in your forum overview. As such it is very difficult to efficiently coordinate contributions to several important new threads.

What do you mean by this?

 

[Antvasima]

Well, I admittedly use a tablet, but I am not able to get an option to open the threads in new tabs/windows by pressing a thread title for a longer period of time, as I usually can. It makes moderator organisation extremely inefficient.

 

[Starter_Pack]

Question. Are we going to be able to create hotlinks to versus debates from the off-site forum to the profiles on VSBW? Similar to things like linking to Bulbapedia, for instance.

I'd like to keep visual consistency for after the move, and I don't want all of the links to the versus debates to suddenly become outbound links. It's also bad enough that we're going to have to update every single one of them because of the move, I'd at least like something to make things easier as well.

 

[Antvasima]

I think that we have to use regular links from this wiki to the versus threads in the new forum. I don't know what I can do about that. My apologies.

 

[Ionliosite]

Well, I admittedly use a tablet, but I am not able to get an option to open the threads in new tabs/windows by pressing a thread title for a longer period of time, as I usually can. It makes moderator organisation extremely inefficient.

I use my laptop and I noticed the same problem, so it's not just you.

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you for the information.

 

[Soldier_Blue]

I am not able to get an option to open the threads in new tabs/windows by pressing a thread title for a longer period of time, as I usually can.

When I access vsb on my phone, it works for me. I press down against a thread title and I get the option of opening in a new tab.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. There seems to be a compatibility problem with regular browsing then.

 

[The_King_of_Prudence]

Well, I admittedly use a tablet, but I am not able to get an option to open the threads in new tabs/windows by pressing a thread title for a longer period of time, as I usually can. It makes moderator organisation extremely inefficient.

I can do it on my PC. In your case, try copying the url.

 

[Antvasima]

I have. That doesn't work either.

 

[The_King_of_Prudence]

Do you not have a "new tab" button? I haven't used a tablet in ages.

 

[Antvasima]

Not a specific button. No. But let's stop derailing please.

 

[Antvasima]

The Fandom staff just told me that an archive containing all of the VS Battles wiki forums contents has now been sent to the company that will set up our new external forum, so let's all hope that they will be able to properly convert and set up the files for all the discussion threads.

 

[Bobsican]

By the way, will the links on profiles that link to Vs. threads be automatically updated?

As otherwise they'll become red links, as you could imagine.

 

[Agnaa]

By the way, will the links on profiles that link to Vs. threads be automatically updated?

As otherwise they'll become red links, as you could imagine.

If they were automatically updated, the only way I could see them being updated is redirecting to the discussion forum versions of the threads. Automatically updating them to redirect to the new forum sounds extremely difficult.

 

[Antvasima]

Yes, if the old forum threads are also moved to the already existing Discussions module, and the links automatically redirected, they will still work, although less efficiently.

If the Fandom technical team does not manage to do so though, there will hopefully be copies of most of the threads in the new external forum, but there will be no redirects to them, so all old versus threads will have to be removed from our profiles.

I am definitely hoping for the former though.

 

[Kepekley23]

Ask them about the date covered by the archive (ie. does it contain threads up to November, October, September or what?) so we can start using the Wayback Machine to save threads that are not contained in the archive FANDOM sent over, so that we don't lose any valuable threads from the past few months.

After we've archived the remaining threads in the Wayback Machine, we can create a megathread on the new forums with all the links.

 

[Agnaa]

@Kep I believe all threads up to the moment of transition will be moved to discussions. I believe this archive is just for moving to our own forum independent of discussions.

Or in other words, threads won't be lost to the void, they just won't be copied onto the new forum.

 

[Antvasima]

Agnaa is correct. They likely copied all threads to the point that said copy was made. As such, the ones for the past several days and from now onwards will not be carried over, unless I can convince the Fandom staff to later do an extra copy right before this forum is closed down. I definitely wouldn't count on that however.

Regardless, as far as I understand, Fandom does plan to try to convert all of the forum threads to the Discussions replacement, so the remaining 2 months of threads will hopefully still be possible to find in that manner at least.

Using the Wayback Machine for content revision threads that were/are/will be updated after the backup was made is probably a good idea though, yes.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Not skilled with Wayback Machine, but that is a good idea yes.

 

[Antvasima]

This page might also be useful for exporting discussion thread files one by one, in case we can later send them to the company who will set up the new external forum:

https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Export

 

[Bobsican]

What will be done to the Forum Topic Pages?

 

[Antvasima]

I do not know, but I have mentioned to the company that will build the forum that it would be helpful to keep all of our topics. In fact, me and my friend wrote a document with all the functions that we need in the new forum, which they have inspected.

XenForo should have a much better forum text search function than we currently do in any case.

 

[Antvasima]

@Kepekley

I was just told that the forums were archived up to November 12.

I was also told that the Fandom staff member that I talked to would try to convince the member of the Fandom technical team who converted and archived our discussion threads to do so again right before the old forums are shut down (so the other company that helps us can migrate the updated discussion threads a second time), but she was clear about that she made no promises that this would be accepted.

 

[Antvasima]

An important question regarding the new forum:

We currently host around 234000 image files in this wiki if I remember correctly, and a large part of them have been uploaded to this forum.

So far we haven't received a copy of the image files in conjunction with the regular forum discussions, but the company that is attempting to convert them has requested such an archive.

However, it might demand rather considerable hosting costs for my friend who is paying for this to host so many image files in our new forum, and copyright claims is another potential issue. As such, do you think that it would be a disaster if we set up the old discussion threads without the connected images?

 

[Bobsican]

Could it be possible to just force all past attached images to just redirect to the file itself on the wiki?

 

[Agnaa]

As far as I see it, the vast majority of images in the forum lie in:

• OPs of vs threads (we could go without these images)
• Fun and games threads where people post images, like the out of context screenshots thread (a loss for sure, but not really necessary for running the forum)
• Reaction images in threads (not a huge amount of a loss)
• Certain CRTs

The last one seems like it could be an issue, but since those CRTs should already be concluded it's more of an issue for archival purposes than for ongoing activities, and these forums should be preserved perfectly when moved to the discussion module leaving us with some archive, so I think it should be fine.

Could you try asking about:

• Whether they could, for archival purposes, only host images from the backup of the Content Revision Board? I'd like to stress that I don't mean "only allow images in that board", but to only archive that board with connected images.
• Whether they could run a script to convert the connected images to links of those images in some form. This resolves the connected images issue and should be possible with some technical know-how.

 

[Kepekley23]

I hope our SEO isn't affected by this.

 

[KLOL506]

SEO?

 

[Agnaa]

SEO?

Search Engine Optimization, how highly the site ranks in search results from google and other search engines.

 

[Antvasima]

Just a note that I am not sure yet whether or not it will be possible for the technical team to properly convert the old forum to Discussions, given that it is so different, but I certainly hope so.

I will mention your questions.

 

[Agnaa]

Just a note that I am not sure yet whether or not it will be possible for the technical team to properly convert the old forum to Discussions, given that it is so different, but I certainly hope so.

I will mention your questions.

I've seen in multiple blogs and Q&As from Fandom staff that they'll be able to convert the old forum to Discussions. To try to simplify, they won't actually convert forum posts to their Discussions equivalent - they'll simply put the contents of forum posts into the Discussions system.

Think of it as a more high-tech version of taking a screenshot of the forum posts and hosting those in the Discussions module.

While this preserves the formatting from forum posts perfectly (like collapsibles, buttons, images, hyperlinks, coloured text etc.) we still won't be able to use those old forum functions in new Discussion posts. And if we edit those old forum posts, the formatting will break into the normal Discussions formatting, losing the old forum functionality permanently.

 

[Antvasima]

The wiki itself will have the same SEO as usual, and it will link to the new external forum on the front page and wiki navigation bar.

 

[Antvasima]

@Agnaa

Okay. Noted.

 

[Kisaragi_Megumi]

Question: Are the login in external forum still same with this place or different?

 

[Antvasima]

I helped write a list of requirements to make the new forum work as similarly as possible to our current one, and keeping the sub-forums the way they currently are was one of them.

 

[Kisaragi_Megumi]

That mean still same, alright then

 

[Antvasima]

I don't know how well they will be able to build the new forum according to our requirements yet though.

 

[Kisaragi_Megumi]

Since they are an profesional member we can trust them

Also call me lazy it would be better if we can just transferring our account to the new forum instead making new account