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Over the last few weeks, I have been talking in private with Wikia's staff.
It started as a follow-up discussion about the new wiki app, but then turned into a more serious topic, the fact that our forums are going to be replaced by a new version, late this year or early next year, once the development has been finished.
I have been trying to strongly underline that it is extremely important that we keep all of the current forum functions, such as reply notifications, highlighting threads, topics/tags that link to different profiles pages, and being able to monitor new additions to the forum in the wiki activity, and recent changes pages. As othervise our work with managing this wiki would turn far harder, and very incoherent.
I have also asked that it should be possible to order it into the same types of sub-forums as currently, and that all of the old threads should be moved there into the corresponding section.
Here is the information from the replies that I have received:
Hi Antvasima,
Users being able to edit articles from the app is still far out at this point. However, once it does become possible, and we find that lots of mobile users make unproductive edits, we'll be sure to add an option to disable this for those communities that are affected.
We're well aware that the contributing culture from mobile might be different, due to smaller and less comfortable screens and keyboards, and that me might have to do something about it. If it turns out that your community has particularly severe problems with mobile contributors because of its unique setup and subject matter, it's entirely reasonable to look for a solution specifically for your wiki.
As of right now, we don't know yet how everything will turn out, or how we'll want to deal with those potential problems. I suggest going ahead with the app and Discussions for now, and when mobile editing becomes possible, and does turn into a problem, I hope you or your successors won't hesitate to talk to us about it. We'll work on a solution together then!
Users can already edit from mobile, in their mobile browser, though not from the apps. We see them take very little advantage of this, though, probably because any kind of text work is pretty tedious on small cell phone screens and keyboards. Mobile users generally prefer to just read, or write posts in places like Discussions where grammar and spelling don't matter as much as in a permanent article.
Because of this, we don't expect there to be a huge influx of mobile editors when article editing comes to the apps as well. We do already have a switch we can flip to disable editing from mobile browsers, and the same thing will likely work for editing from the apps, so you should be covered, if our assumption turns out to be wrong. I think it's fair to give mobile edits a chance first rather than keep them out preemptively, though.
We expect your mobile visitors will post in Discussions much more than they'll want to edit articles - after all, even in the desktop community, "VS" threads are hugely popular. It's entirely possible that that will be the main attraction in the app as well. If you wanted to prepare for the launch of the app (which will still take a while), you could start directing users to Discussions instead of the forums for their vs battles. That way, you and the rest of the admin team will have a routine down for moderating there, and the new app users will already see plenty of content as an example for how to use Discussions properly. Discussions has some advantages in the moderation department, too, such as the ability to see reported posts in one feed, lock posts, and delete all posts by a bad user in one go - and we're still adding more features.
You could place a link to Discussions in your top navigation for example, and/or ad a note to the forum board asking users to please stop posting there, and direct them to Discussions. This can be done via CSS. If Discussions become the new platform for the users' vs battles, that'll also simplify things when all forum content migrates to Discussions. (That is still far off, but it doesn't hurt to think about it.)
Please let me know if you still have concerns!
I understand your concern for better organization, and I have good news in that department: As early as next week, we'll be releasing categories in Discussions, which means you can organize conversations there pretty much like you would with boards on a forum. Users can add one category to their posts (just like they'd choose a board), and they can filter the feed by categories. That way, you can choose only to see conversations from a specific category, or several categories at a time.
Once the feature is released, all you'd need to do is set up the categories you'll want in Discussions. You can make them the same as the current boards you have, or see if a different system arises from the conversations you end up with. I think it's a good idea to discuss how you'll want to set this up with the other admins, so you're ready when categories become available. (Of course you can still change and rename categories later, too.)
As for topics that help link forum discussions with certain articles or characters: We're planning on adding tags to Discussions conversations as well. That way, your previous topic organization will remain intact when forum content migrates to Discussions, and you can also link new Discussions posts with article pages that they're relevant to. This feature is still farther out than categories, but we're working on it.
Locking threads is possible in Discussions. Moderators and admins have that right, and it stops users from adding more replies to a conversation.
We haven't planned out every detail of how forums will migrate to Discussions yet, but we'll do it in a way that keeps organization and links between content intact. For example, you'll be asked to decide which board content goes into which Discussions category, if your categories end up being different than your current forum boards.
If you have more questions, I can recommend these help pages - they may may answer a few more: http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Help
iscussions http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Helpiscussions_Moderatio
If anything's still unclear after reading those, don't worry about being a pest and just ask me!
Highlighting threads as in the current forums isn't planned, but we are planning a feature that should achieve basically the same - users seeing important posts. We're still working on the details, but it will essentially be a way to ping specific users, or user groups, so that they receive a notification when you post something aimed at that group. For example, as an admin, you may have the option to "ping all users" with a conversation you start, which we hope will give it even more visibility than a thread highlight.
The search function is one of the current forums' weaknesses, that's true. Discussions sadly doesn't have any search function yet, but we're working on one, and hopefully it will make searching in Discussions easier and yield better results than the forum search has done so far!
The old forum will migrate to Discussions, but that's not quite the same as shutting it down. It means all the content will stay, and will still be readable, and users can still respond to it - but it will be within the code and the layout of Discussions.
This won't happen for a few months yet. We don't have a set date, since there are still many improvements to be made to Discussions before it's ready for the merge, and it's difficult to predict how fast those will get done. It may happen towards the end of this year or spring next year.
Hopefully, the merge won't mean too much work for you at all. You may need to decide which Discussions categories replace which current forum boards in terms of organization, or rather, which board's content should be redirected into which Discussions category, if your categories are different from your boards. The rest should happen automatically via a script.
Discussions posts don't show up in Recent Changes so far. For very active Discussions, this would flood the RC feed, and regular article edits might get overlooked, so Discussions remains separate for now.
We just released email notifications for Discussions, though, so you can receive notice when you have a reply or upvotes. We're also planning on adding a "follow" feature, so you can subscribe to other conversations that are not your own and be notified about changes.
What's more, you can filter by reported posts in Discussions. So if things become too hectic to monitor every single post, you can have Discussions show you only those posts that users have flagged as problematic.
Some other large and active communities (Fallout, Brave Frontier, The Walking Dead, and others) have worked with Discussions for almost a year now, and haven't seen any major problems for their wiki. On the contrary: So long as Discussions sees a minimum of moderation and the mods and admins understand that Discussions is a separate entity from wiki articles, with a different dynamic and different goals, it's generally proven a very fun and valuable addition.
Your forum's extremely popular VS threads really are a phenomenon. However, those features for moderation and organization that work for other active communities should work for you, too, even if your forum's activity level goes above and beyond most others.
So far, we only have email notifications for Discussions, but once it's ready to be merged with Discussions (or earlier), we should have on-site notifications incorporated, too. Those are the ones on the top right of the site that you're already using now.
Your concerns and feedback about what Discussions will have to be capable of is very helpful to our product team. They want to make sure Discussions is an improvement over the current forums, not an inferior "light" version - so thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Are you referring to on-page notifications and topics/tags that link Discussions threads with article pages?
Those are in development, but I can't give you a release date when you can expect to see them live yet, unfortunately.
Yes, those are all features that are firmly planned, although the final versions might look different from what we have right now. We're hoping Discussions will offer better functionalities than the previous forums, and therefore, just reproducing exactly what was there before wouldn't make much sense.
Our planned features should fulfill your needs for maintaining and monitoring what goes on on the wiki, while opening up some new opportunities for admins and contributors. Otherwise, it wouldn't be much of an improvement!
It started as a follow-up discussion about the new wiki app, but then turned into a more serious topic, the fact that our forums are going to be replaced by a new version, late this year or early next year, once the development has been finished.
I have been trying to strongly underline that it is extremely important that we keep all of the current forum functions, such as reply notifications, highlighting threads, topics/tags that link to different profiles pages, and being able to monitor new additions to the forum in the wiki activity, and recent changes pages. As othervise our work with managing this wiki would turn far harder, and very incoherent.
I have also asked that it should be possible to order it into the same types of sub-forums as currently, and that all of the old threads should be moved there into the corresponding section.
Here is the information from the replies that I have received:
Hi Antvasima,
Users being able to edit articles from the app is still far out at this point. However, once it does become possible, and we find that lots of mobile users make unproductive edits, we'll be sure to add an option to disable this for those communities that are affected.
We're well aware that the contributing culture from mobile might be different, due to smaller and less comfortable screens and keyboards, and that me might have to do something about it. If it turns out that your community has particularly severe problems with mobile contributors because of its unique setup and subject matter, it's entirely reasonable to look for a solution specifically for your wiki.
As of right now, we don't know yet how everything will turn out, or how we'll want to deal with those potential problems. I suggest going ahead with the app and Discussions for now, and when mobile editing becomes possible, and does turn into a problem, I hope you or your successors won't hesitate to talk to us about it. We'll work on a solution together then!
Users can already edit from mobile, in their mobile browser, though not from the apps. We see them take very little advantage of this, though, probably because any kind of text work is pretty tedious on small cell phone screens and keyboards. Mobile users generally prefer to just read, or write posts in places like Discussions where grammar and spelling don't matter as much as in a permanent article.
Because of this, we don't expect there to be a huge influx of mobile editors when article editing comes to the apps as well. We do already have a switch we can flip to disable editing from mobile browsers, and the same thing will likely work for editing from the apps, so you should be covered, if our assumption turns out to be wrong. I think it's fair to give mobile edits a chance first rather than keep them out preemptively, though.
We expect your mobile visitors will post in Discussions much more than they'll want to edit articles - after all, even in the desktop community, "VS" threads are hugely popular. It's entirely possible that that will be the main attraction in the app as well. If you wanted to prepare for the launch of the app (which will still take a while), you could start directing users to Discussions instead of the forums for their vs battles. That way, you and the rest of the admin team will have a routine down for moderating there, and the new app users will already see plenty of content as an example for how to use Discussions properly. Discussions has some advantages in the moderation department, too, such as the ability to see reported posts in one feed, lock posts, and delete all posts by a bad user in one go - and we're still adding more features.
You could place a link to Discussions in your top navigation for example, and/or ad a note to the forum board asking users to please stop posting there, and direct them to Discussions. This can be done via CSS. If Discussions become the new platform for the users' vs battles, that'll also simplify things when all forum content migrates to Discussions. (That is still far off, but it doesn't hurt to think about it.)
Please let me know if you still have concerns!
I understand your concern for better organization, and I have good news in that department: As early as next week, we'll be releasing categories in Discussions, which means you can organize conversations there pretty much like you would with boards on a forum. Users can add one category to their posts (just like they'd choose a board), and they can filter the feed by categories. That way, you can choose only to see conversations from a specific category, or several categories at a time.
Once the feature is released, all you'd need to do is set up the categories you'll want in Discussions. You can make them the same as the current boards you have, or see if a different system arises from the conversations you end up with. I think it's a good idea to discuss how you'll want to set this up with the other admins, so you're ready when categories become available. (Of course you can still change and rename categories later, too.)
As for topics that help link forum discussions with certain articles or characters: We're planning on adding tags to Discussions conversations as well. That way, your previous topic organization will remain intact when forum content migrates to Discussions, and you can also link new Discussions posts with article pages that they're relevant to. This feature is still farther out than categories, but we're working on it.
Locking threads is possible in Discussions. Moderators and admins have that right, and it stops users from adding more replies to a conversation.
We haven't planned out every detail of how forums will migrate to Discussions yet, but we'll do it in a way that keeps organization and links between content intact. For example, you'll be asked to decide which board content goes into which Discussions category, if your categories end up being different than your current forum boards.
If you have more questions, I can recommend these help pages - they may may answer a few more: http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Help
iscussions http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Helpiscussions_ModeratioIf anything's still unclear after reading those, don't worry about being a pest and just ask me!
Highlighting threads as in the current forums isn't planned, but we are planning a feature that should achieve basically the same - users seeing important posts. We're still working on the details, but it will essentially be a way to ping specific users, or user groups, so that they receive a notification when you post something aimed at that group. For example, as an admin, you may have the option to "ping all users" with a conversation you start, which we hope will give it even more visibility than a thread highlight.
The search function is one of the current forums' weaknesses, that's true. Discussions sadly doesn't have any search function yet, but we're working on one, and hopefully it will make searching in Discussions easier and yield better results than the forum search has done so far!
The old forum will migrate to Discussions, but that's not quite the same as shutting it down. It means all the content will stay, and will still be readable, and users can still respond to it - but it will be within the code and the layout of Discussions.
This won't happen for a few months yet. We don't have a set date, since there are still many improvements to be made to Discussions before it's ready for the merge, and it's difficult to predict how fast those will get done. It may happen towards the end of this year or spring next year.
Hopefully, the merge won't mean too much work for you at all. You may need to decide which Discussions categories replace which current forum boards in terms of organization, or rather, which board's content should be redirected into which Discussions category, if your categories are different from your boards. The rest should happen automatically via a script.
Discussions posts don't show up in Recent Changes so far. For very active Discussions, this would flood the RC feed, and regular article edits might get overlooked, so Discussions remains separate for now.
We just released email notifications for Discussions, though, so you can receive notice when you have a reply or upvotes. We're also planning on adding a "follow" feature, so you can subscribe to other conversations that are not your own and be notified about changes.
What's more, you can filter by reported posts in Discussions. So if things become too hectic to monitor every single post, you can have Discussions show you only those posts that users have flagged as problematic.
Some other large and active communities (Fallout, Brave Frontier, The Walking Dead, and others) have worked with Discussions for almost a year now, and haven't seen any major problems for their wiki. On the contrary: So long as Discussions sees a minimum of moderation and the mods and admins understand that Discussions is a separate entity from wiki articles, with a different dynamic and different goals, it's generally proven a very fun and valuable addition.
Your forum's extremely popular VS threads really are a phenomenon. However, those features for moderation and organization that work for other active communities should work for you, too, even if your forum's activity level goes above and beyond most others.
So far, we only have email notifications for Discussions, but once it's ready to be merged with Discussions (or earlier), we should have on-site notifications incorporated, too. Those are the ones on the top right of the site that you're already using now.
Your concerns and feedback about what Discussions will have to be capable of is very helpful to our product team. They want to make sure Discussions is an improvement over the current forums, not an inferior "light" version - so thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Are you referring to on-page notifications and topics/tags that link Discussions threads with article pages?
Those are in development, but I can't give you a release date when you can expect to see them live yet, unfortunately.
Yes, those are all features that are firmly planned, although the final versions might look different from what we have right now. We're hoping Discussions will offer better functionalities than the previous forums, and therefore, just reproducing exactly what was there before wouldn't make much sense.
Our planned features should fulfill your needs for maintaining and monitoring what goes on on the wiki, while opening up some new opportunities for admins and contributors. Otherwise, it wouldn't be much of an improvement!
