Board Thread:Wiki Discussion/@comment-27345308-20170127211231

Hello, everybody! We (the staff) wanted to bring up a (kind of) important topic. As you may or may not know, Wikia is going to replace Forum with Discussions at some point in future. There was a lot of negative feedback on the feature hence why we are starting this discussion here.

You can take a look at Discussions on Pokemon Wiki, Fallout Wiki, Overwatch Wiki or Clash of Clans Wiki. Keep in mind Discussions is still in development. Also remember that we will still apply policies from the wiki and forum to Discussions.

Good

 * 1) It's a completely new functionality, and a lot of bugs from Forum have been fixed in Discussions. Wikia's codebase won't be polluted by the terrible hacks Forum and Message Wall extensions had to introduce.
 * 2) It has the potential to evolve beyond the capabilities Forum had.
 * 3) It is mobile-friendly, and will be integrated in Wikia mobile apps.

Bad

 * 1) It looks like a social network (Twitter, Google+, etc). That could come out as fatal if we take into account Undertale fandom that would use it.
 * 2) It doesn't support wikitext, and by the looks of it, it never will.

Currently bad
These issues are potentially going to be fixed in future.
 * 1) Bad integration with the site. Discussions do not look like a part of the wiki at all, nor do they point much to the main wiki content. Style is completely different from the style of the wiki.
 * 2) No style customization options. That means wiki staff aren't able to add custom CSS or JavaScript into Discussions. If you want to customize Discussions for yourself, you can use browser extensions such as Stylish for CSS and Tampermonkey/Greasemonkey for JavaScript.
 * 3) No highlighted messages. However, this is known to be a feature in development.

Choice
So, what choice do we have, when the time for removing Forum comes? It's simple: We do not have an option of keeping Forum. When Discussions comes out of testing stage, Forum will be gone, and we would have to deal with it. Local staff members aren't too happy with this change either, but there's nothing we can do to change Wikia's mind.
 * Switch to Discussions
 * Move all discussions into wiki-style forums, which are a default MediaWiki feature, do not pollute the codebase, support wikitext, integrate rather well with the rest of the wiki but are much harder for newbies to use.

You can vote in the thread replies, but you must supply a reason for your vote in order for it to be counted. Supportive votes count as votes for Discussions, and opposive as votes for wiki-style forums. If you want to give a neutral vote without any reason, you might as well not vote at all. Rants about Discussions are prohibited.

Thanks for understanding.