Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-1251315-20160904135950/@comment-4271790-20160904171301

(Shishishishi... Funny how I was just conversing with a staff member about this new feature 2 weeks ago).

But yeah, he's right. This new feature will replace the forums in the long term, but it's currently in its beta stage. Found out about this feature after contacting staff when I tried to enable the Special:Forum feature on another wiki I work on, but it didn't work.

To relay what I was told and my responses: Staff Member wrote: Hi WindStar7125,

I am sorry, but I am not sure we'll be able to resolve the Forum issue in a timely manner for you.

However, what I can do at this time is offer to help set up the Discussions feature for your community. Discussions has been in a "beta" stage and we have not talked widely about it yet. But the long term plan is for us to retire the current Forum feature and Discussions will take its place.

[...]

You can read about the general functions of the feature at http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Discussions and read about the admin and moderator tools at: http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Admin_and_Moderator_Tools_in_Discussions

This coming week, we'll be releasing the option to create discussion categories, which will be the equivalent of boards. But that's not required to start using the feature. One benefit of this feature is that it's highly mobile compatible, unlike the current forum. Take the Discussions window and shrink it down to "phone" size and shape and you'll see that the layout changes seamlessly and offers all of the same options. Development on Discussions is ongoing so we'll also want to hear from you about how the feature is working for your community.

What do you think? Feel free to try it out, you can always delete your test posts. This feature was also enabled on the other wiki I work on, rather than the Special:Forum feature I had been asking for to get fixed for quite a while. To continue: WindStar7125 wrote: I see... very interesting. I definitely will test it out. So there's this plan to replace the new forums altogether with this discussions feature? Hmm. Curious, how long would it take for this to take place?

Also, just as a suggestion, but I think the desktop version of "Discussions" looks well... too "mobile" in terms of layout. A bit plain in my opinion.

It also appears that this is completely separate from the wiki itself, given how my test post doesn't show up in my contributions list nor the recent changes feed... is this intended, or just effects of this feature being in its beta stage? Staff Member wrote: The Discussions feature is not built on MediaWiki at all, and so we don't have any plans to integrate the activity into the RecentChanges feed. We know that there is a desire for a full chronological feed of posts and replies from some admins. This is visible per-user in Discussions, but not as a view of all activity. Remember that regular users in Discussions can "report" content for review by mods and admins, so problematic content should ideally be surfaced that way. Since these are not articles, consider that it may not be necessary to review every single post and reply the way that you might review every article edit.

The desktop layout will continue to evolve and use the space effectively. The feature was developed with mobile in mind, since the majority of readers are now using mobile. And it's easier to start small and then get bigger with the layout, rather than start big and then have to decide what to take away for smaller screens.

We'll be doing a staff blog about Discussions in a few weeks and will publish an FAQ around that time as well. We'll be migrating the Forum content to Discussions in batches, starting with inactive communities. Larger and more active Forum communities will probably come a big later once Discussions has had a bit more development. The timeline for completing all migration is still open, but we would like to have made significant progress by the end of the year.

Let us know if you have any other questions. Definitely intend on knowing more about the upcoming feature.

Zehahahahahaha!!! Let's just hope this change won't cause as much controversy as the introduction of the Oasis skin did years ago, causing like, 30+ wikis to leave Wikia altogether. Doubt it would get to that, but you never know.