Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25073873-20160916150826/@comment-24510587-20160919231417

So earlier today, I contacted the Wikia stafv about this whole business, and they were so kind to clear up some things (with a remarkably quick response time: they answered in less than two hours, rather than the usual two-three days).

ReDquinox wrote: Hi,

I'm sure you've heard this a million times already by now, but I wanted to put it out there anyway: the idea of replacing the forums with Discussions is absolutely bogus. For a PC user, like the probably majority of the forum users including myself, there is no use for a mobile-optimised system. Only those using phones for the forums actually benefit from it. I understand that you want to upgrade the system, but can't you just improve the current forum so mobiles can use it too? With a lack of Wikitext and a far too narrow space for the threads (two-thirds of the web page is empty when you're using a PC), Discussions simply cannot compete with the existing forum. You see, I mainly use Wikia for roleplay and roleplay-related topics, and as such I am part of several wikis that exist for the sole purpose of roleplaying, such as the Elder Scrolls Sandbox (http://tes-sandbox.wikia.com) and the Fallout Gravel Pit (http://fallout-gravel-pit.wikia.com), and I am aware of the existence of many more similar wikis. If you were to replace the forums with Discussions, you would be sentencing those all to death, as Discussions simply is not a viable platform for roleplaying. You would destroy a large amount of blooming communities or force them to seek a different website to serve their purposes. I implore you, the staff of Wikia, to take into consideration these consequences your decision will have.

Thank you, ReDquinox Wikia staff wrote: Hi ReDquinox,

Mobile-compatibility is by far not the only reason why we want Discussions to take over from forums. Another big reason is search - currently, you can't search for posts or threads, with Discussions, you'll be able to.

A third reason is that the notification system is very susceptible to bugs and costs a lot of effort to maintain. With Discussions, we'll be rebuilding the notifications system, too, and be able to offer more reliable and different kinds of notifications that users can customize to their needs. This should also benefit desktop users.

You are right, of course, that Discussions still has deficits, especially for desktop users. We plan to address many of those in the near future, for example by introducing text formatting. We're also working on other improvements for the desktop layout that will hopefully alleviate some of the concerns you listed.

Once Discussions does replace forums, we hope that it will be better able to handle all those things for which users use the forums today, and even have some advantages over forums. Remember, Discussions is still far from done, there are still a lot of features in development for it.

Best,

Eva Niroomand Community Support Manager So, if they are going to do what they say they are going to do, Discussions could be a viable replacement for the current forum after all, I guess. Thoughts?