Forum:New "Discussions" Feature

Hello One Piece Wiki. Wikia posted a blog about a new way to interact with the community and they revealed a new feature called "Discussions" (read about it here.) Are we going to transition to the new feature or stay at our present state? Just wanted to start a discussion about it Meshack (talk) 00:53, September 9, 2016 (UTC)

I've looked into it before, but I don't it's something the wiki needs right now. Sticking to what we have is good. It's very new and there's bound to be bugs and other issues surrounding it. Right now http://youtube.wikia.com/d/f?sort=trending is one of the only wikis using it and as you can see it's not too popular 01:03, September 9, 2016 (UTC)

I know the Naruto Wiki is about to transition Meshack (talk) 01:39, September 9, 2016 (UTC)

Yes, but we're not the Naruto Wiki.

At any rate, I'm 100% against the new feature. It looks terrible, ugly on desktops, and from the comments, miss a lot of features you can do on the forums and have a lot of bugs. No thanks. 02:29, September 9, 2016 (UTC)

^What Jade said. Also if you take a closer a lot of users from there aren't too happy about the forced transition. 02:31, September 9, 2016 (UTC)

We don't need it anyway since we can just click on something and then start a discussion easily. SeaTerror (talk) 02:33, September 9, 2016 (UTC)

I didn't say we should do it because the Naruto Wiki was. I was just stating they were doing it. Meshack (talk) 03:45, September 9, 2016 (UTC)

Yep, screw this new Discussion crap. Let's stave it off as long as possible.--Xilinoc (talk) 06:12, September 9, 2016 (UTC)

^ Let's start a new wiki and link to it and then if anybody removes the links get mad and then don't come back if the wiki dies. SeaTerror (talk) 06:22, September 9, 2016 (UTC)

I think there is a big misunderstanding on this: this wiki does not have the "new forum" active (what we are using is the so-called wiki-style forum which won't be affected in any way by discussions ever) therefore is not really affected by it (although I do not understand if Discussions will be eventually active by default on every wiki or just replace the new forums. I'll investigate). That said, I think this community will greatly benefit from discussions since we have a dedicated app and a very large fan base. And by this I mean we can clearly separate the "wiki aspect" from the "fandom aspect", meaning let's leave all the "fan-related things" to discussions and blogs and use the forum for community discussions and the wiki community. By the way, Discussions does not appear in RecentChanges (which I think is both a plus and a con), so if we leave the fan-discussions to that feature (and blogs) it translates in less crap in RC and maybe more new users.

Contacted Staff today via email and here's there response to me about it:

''Right now, it's optional to try out Discussions. You can request to have them enabled for your community, but if you don't, you won't see Discussions there. However, our eventual goal is to replace the current forums with Discussions (all content will be copied over, so you won't lose any existing forum threads). That won't be optional. The reason for this is that the forums have several shortcomings that would be very difficult for us to fix - most notably the fact that they don't work well on most mobile devices, and half of all Wikia users are on mobile. We've developed Discussions - and are still heavily expanding on it with more features - to offer a replacement for the forums that will hopefully work for more users and give each wiki a better communication space. At the moment, Discussions is still missing several important features that the forums have, so it's not quite ready to replace them - but we'll get there. I see your community doesn't use Wikia's forums, so you'd lose or risk absolutely nothing if you tried Discussions. On the contrary, since your community also has an app, and many mobile visitors discover your content there, you might gain lots of new community members (and article editors) that way.'' 21:47, September 9, 2016 (UTC)

My point exactly.

Well, might as well try to see how it goes, if we don't necessarily have to use it. It's not like it could be bothersome either, from what I've heard from the posts above. 22:13, September 9, 2016 (UTC)

Or we can just enable it on our unofficial test wiki and play around with it. And if we happen to like what is has to offer enable it here ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 22:26, September 9, 2016 (UTC)

Nobody cares about mobile users anyway. SeaTerror (talk) 23:27, September 9, 2016 (UTC)

We don't need it. 11:27, September 10, 2016 (UTC)

"Nobody cares about mobile users anyway." - 50% of the viewers on wikia use mobile and the app has between 500.000 and 1.000.000 installations. I don't think there is any point in turning that on on the test wiki since there is no userbase there. Just try it here for some months and see what happens. It doesn't show up in RC so you literally won't notice it. Most of the comments on the announcement blog are pissed off because they don't want to give up the new forum which we don't have (and it's hilarious IMO because the new forum was literally hated when it was first announced).


 * or we could also wait some months before trying it so it will be more developed and widespread. Let's say when it will have completely substitute the wikia forum.

Levi has a good idea there. There's no harm in delaying our decision on this until they get the feature working properly.

12:06, September 10, 2016 (UTC)

I think there is no harm in trying it since it's literally doesn't change anything for us. However, maybe it's a good idea to try it once it completely substitute the wikia forum because when that happens more users will be aware of that function and will be already used to it, not to mention it will also probably be more developed.

Sure, let's do that then. 12:37, September 10, 2016 (UTC)

I've enabled it on my wiki, and it looks and functions much better than the current forums. I see no harm in enabling it to test it out on the OP wiki. MavikVCT (talk) 01:29, September 14, 2016 (UTC)

What Drake said. It couldn't hurt to try it out on the spam wiki since nobody cares if we trash it anyway. 21:16, September 14, 2016 (UTC)

So the discussion feature is now live on the Spam Wiki. http://onepiecespam.wikia.com/d I only customized the banner and badge for now, but I'll play around with it some more later. So, go ahead and test it out when you have time. Also, it seems the French One Piece Wiki has been using this feature for a while http://fr.onepiece.wikia.com/d/f?sort=trending 18:33, September 20, 2016 (UTC)

It looks nice. I don't see a problem using it Meshack (talk) 19:48, September 20, 2016 (UTC)

Well I think I just found a way to have the discussion feature on the wiki while keeping our current forums at the same time. You can use the discussion feature now to talk about the new chapter or anything related to the wiki or One Piece. Just keep it appropriate please~ Also I just found out that the CSS from the MediaWiki namespace isn't loaded for the discussions right now, so there is currently no way for me to customize discussions beyond the banner and badge I'm afraid :/ 17:09, September 21, 2016 (UTC)

Mediawiki forum won't be substituted by discussions, just the new "wikia forums". If you are actually interested in trying discussions, please active it here. I find no point in activate it on a test wiki, because that wiki has no audience beside us. If you try it here, we can also test how well it will interact with new users and such.

Well I went ahead and just added it to the menu navigation bar. You can go to discussions by clicking Community > Discussions This is better than activating here directly I think 17:18, September 21, 2016 (UTC)


 * By which you mean you've linked to the Spam wiki discussions and not actually enabled it here yet.


 * 17:20, September 21, 2016 (UTC)


 * Pretty much yeah. If you want to enable it here directly then we need to have more of a discussion since it's a big change. The point of this right now is for users to play around with it, get comfortable with the interface, and make suggestions on how it should be improved 17:23, September 21, 2016 (UTC)

So seeing that there are some uncertainties on this forum, I present you the following PSA: Discussions is not going to delete Forum:Index... aka the Forum:Space this discussion on this page, is being held in the Forum:Space. It's a wikitext forum, and it is not like the Special:Forum you see on wikis like Community Central. Special:Forum, will be disappearing to be replaced with /d/ (discussions). Slay(Talk)(wiki)(website)(discord server) 00:08, September 22, 2016 (UTC)


 * So yeah, adding discussions to the wiki won't change anything in terms of how we do things on a daily basis. I don't see any harm in adding it. If people want to use it then they can use it. It will be a new medium to gather a larger audience and it will be a nice edition for our mobile page since it's lacking in content right now 00:16, September 22, 2016 (UTC)

It's pretty useless anyway for getting new users. It doesn't show up on recent changes and anything you add to discussions doesn't show up under your contributions. SeaTerror (talk) 00:44, September 22, 2016 (UTC)

"It's pretty useless anyway for getting new users." data so far from other wikis tells the opposite. Readers and new people don't check RC anyway, especially those on mobile.

I support the addition of discussions. Looks cool HiddenAssassinxxXX (talk) 03:09, September 22, 2016 (UTC)

Of course they don't check recent changes on mobile. There is no recent changes button on mobile. SeaTerror (talk) 03:32, September 22, 2016 (UTC)

Might as well get it enabled here as a test run. 14:15, September 22, 2016 (UTC)

Discussion over? Meshack (talk) 21:14, October 30, 2016 (UTC)

Looks like it HiddenAssassinxxXX (talk) 21:32, October 30, 2016 (UTC)

Needed?
We've had the feature up for a while now, and now I guess we decide if it should stay. Personally, I think it should go. It's helped bring in some users, but most of the posts are introduction posts or discussion topics that are basically the stuff brought up in blogs but would get deleted if they were in blogs due to being too short. Plus many of them are the same questions asked over and over again over the years, like "What's the One Piece" and "What's the D. mean" and "Who's the strongest". Ultimately, it doesn't seem to be worth keeping. Kaido King of the Beasts (talk) 14:17, November 4, 2016 (UTC)

Discussions is a great feature and I happen to like it very much. If you're trying to remove them at least make the effort to make a post on the Discussions Page to get those users opinions HiddenAssassinxxXX (talk) 14:28, November 4, 2016 (UTC)

Let them stay. They don't cause any harm and could be used in many ways. 14:39, November 4, 2016 (UTC)

It's a great tool to have and it's a place for new users to ask their questions without violating any blog guidelines. Also it's been growing in the past few weeks and we are approaching 200 posts 14:42, November 4, 2016 (UTC)

I think it's useful to have since it acts like a mini forum and also a mini blog spot for users who want quick talks. Plus it seems easy to use and it's not like it's harming the wiki or anything. It still keeps the wiki active. Jborg007 (talk) 14:55, November 4, 2016 (UTC)

Only reason why I joined the wiki in the first place was because of discussions. I might edit here more in the future, but that's only if it stays DiamondKnight42 (talk) 15:01, November 4, 2016 (UTC)

Kaido, I think the main point of discussions was to supplement the blog format that the wiki is known for. Here, conversations can occur that may not warrant their own blog post because a lack of content, but they could be just as important to users. It allows people to throw around ideas about the series or how to improve things here in a casual, open format without the judgment many new users face when they make blog posts for less important questions. I may not be on here much anymore, but, from what I've seen, the feature is a great way to bring in users and, hopefully, keep them here and convince them to help out. User retention has continued to decline, and, with many veteran editors decreasing their activity, this could be a great gateway. 15:51, November 4, 2016 (UTC)

I personally like the discussion feature because it lets u talk about the little tiny matters that are not worthy enough to be blogs but still worthy enough questions or theories for the type of people that are into this. "Is it needed?" nothing is really "needed" in this world but its more like "Will it make things easier?". Yes, it is making things easier by givin the fan-comunity editors more "freedom". Anyway the discussion, feature got introduced to us a few months ago and to be honest people are enjoying it and is a cool add on the way it is at the moment. Give it a few more months to see how it develops and if more people start using it... Peace :3 Dinosel (talk) 16:17, November 4, 2016 (UTC)

If the issue is with the content, then maybe the topics should just be more moderated. 16:43, November 4, 2016 (UTC)

Basically we either strictly moderate it or we let it go wild and stop caring. Me, I'd be up for letting the randoms be random and anyone who goes there goes at their own risk.

16:45, November 4, 2016 (UTC)

I have been moderating the Discussions for a long while now and I believe it is a good thing that things like "who's stronger blablabla" can be put in one place and kept away from the rest of the wiki where they don't belong. I stand behind Nova's notion: whoever goes there goes at their own risk. I haven't seen any trouble happening and the only posts I did delete were the ones in foreign languages. There really is no harm in having a place like this. 17:10, November 4, 2016 (UTC)

It should bring new users... Slay(Talk)(wiki)(website)(discord server) 17:44, November 4, 2016 (UTC)

I personally think that its really important to ensure its moderated against spam and people breaking the policy. The Discussions feature may be closed off from the wiki but it is heavily integrated into the Community App...which ends up unfairly affecting their perception of the wiki and the reviews on the app.

-SPD ☎  ✎  22:19, November 4, 2016 (UTC)