| Forums: War Room → Turning off Forums test | 
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| This discussion is closed. The result of this discussion was: |
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| Forums will be kept on and used for the Admin Noticeboard and the War Room will be moved to the Project namespace. |
| Please do not edit this discussion. |
Hi folks -- there was some discussion on a Forum thread about whether to continue with testing the new Forums project. I responded on that thread, offering to let you guys opt out of the testing if you didn't want to use the new Forum system as it currently works. Lord Lostris replied, saying that the community consensus is that you'd like to stop using the new Forums for now, and you'll discuss what features you'd need in order to feel comfortable switching to the new system.
For the sake of clarity, I'll repost my message from earlier, and Lady Lostris' reply.
- Hi --
- I'm glad you guys are talking about this stuff, and I'm sorry that you didn't get any notice that the old Forums were being archived.
- We're finishing up the beta-testing period, and getting v1 of the Forum ready for Wikia Labs in a couple of weeks. There are a few more features that we're adding for that Labs release. Once it's in Labs, then there are a lot of things that we want to keep adding and improving, so that v1 version isn't final -- it's just the place where it's good enough to make it available to any wiki that wants to use it.
- You guys have been a huge help during the testing period, giving feedback and road-testing the feature. We're really grateful for that -- and we definitely don't want you to feel like you're stuck with a feature that doesn't have everything that you need yet.
- So as this testing period comes to a close, it's totally okay to bow out of the test, if that's what you decide to do. For the next couple weeks, that means give us a heads-up and we can turn the feature off -- once it's in Labs, then admins will be able to do that themselves.
- Turning the Forum off would mean that the old Forum namespace becomes editable again, without the box at the top saying that it's archived. The conversations that you've had using the new Forum will be archived -- not super easy to access, but they're not deleted. If you decide to turn the new Forum back on, then all the Forum threads will become live again. Nothing gets deleted either way.
- Please let us know what features we'd need to build for v2 to make it really work for you as a replacement for the old Forums. It's important to us that we end up with a feature that you guys will be really excited to use -- one that feels like an upgrade and not a punishment. :) Let me know what you think.
- -- Danny
- As per practice done on this wiki: community consensus has the last say in everything, meaning that the community has to decide whether or not they all want to continue with testing this. The new forums are what we've been using so for on the administrator board and all the others. The general opinion here seems to be that we do not want that comment wall to replace the forums we currently use, so it would be appreciated if it could be turned back. A forum will be opened then to truly present this feature again like last time and see whether or not we want to continue testing. If so, then we'll get back at you and continue to test out the feature and give comments about it, but at this moment we do not want our old system to be replaced by this one.
- To sum up the comments we voiced above already that many of us would life to see fixed before most are willing to let it replace the old system:
- an automatic updating system: unless there is a way to let the comments show up the moment they are made -so also show up while you are writing your own without having to refresh the page- this system is not suitable for proper debate. Too many comments get lost due to the need of constant refreshing and too many arguments will be missed or already addressed as you have no way of knowing whether or not someone already answered your concern or not.
- a way of neatly showing the comments made. Now, a discussion would just be one huge wall of text that is hard to follow. In the old forum, the system of indenting allowed a clean way of discussing an knowing when a new remark was made.
- -- Lady Lostris
New reply by me :)
- Okay, that makes sense. I've turned the new Forums off for now. The threads are actually still accessible by going to the Thread:## URL, so existing Forum notifications will still point to the right thread. The "Forum" link should disappear from the wiki nav in about a day. There are some minor weird effects on the thread pages -- showing that they're on "General noticeboard's wall" instead of the Board -- but I don't think they pose too much of a problem.
- Just to respond to the requests... The automatic updating system hasn't come up before as we've been working on the Forum. I didn't realize that was going to be a real sticking point for you guys. We'll have to take a look to figure out how to make that happen.
- The second point, about making the different replies more distinct, so it doesn't look like a wall of text -- that's a good suggestion, and I'm glad you mentioned it. I'll talk to the designers and see if we can figure out something that gives you less of a "wall of text" feeling.
- So -- thanks for testing it, and for your feedback! I'll be following the community discussions that go on from here, and if I can answer questions or respond to ideas, let me know! -- Danny 23:51, November 16, 2012 (UTC)
- Hehe, thanks for the swift reply, but I was actually just talking about turning these forums back ^^". It seemed that in general the new style of forum was accepted for the administrator board and the general notice board etc, just not to replace this War Room. For the other boards, the systems works fine since it is a plus that you can highlight threads to make them publicly known. It is also good that the administrator board is very accessible, so that also the new users can use it easily. However, our remarks were strictly in reference to the War Room, a place where we hold all our discussion, cause -as mentioned before- the new forum style doesn't properly accommodate such thing.
I agree with the general sentiment that the new forums have proven to be a great asset for highlights, notifications, the admin noticeboard and other general purposes. They're a great tool and I'd like to see them continue to be used here on our wiki for the foreseeable future. However, in their current form, the traditional War Room forums have some clear advantages. Personally, I don't mind the wall of text since the names and icons at the side clearly indicate which user is speaking. However, it would be nice to get comments to appear faster, kind of like they do on our recent activity page every few seconds, so it's easier to see who is responding to whom.
For now, I'd like to do something like Godsrule and Hasdi proposed in the conversation preceding this, and set a new provisional location for discussion in the Project space, another namespace or maybe even a new namespace. That way we could use the War Room like we did before without the "forum" prefix. At the end of the day, that's just a word attached to it. We can use the same coding and everything in a different namespace as we can do here. At the same time, we can continue the test with the War Room in the provisional location and the new forum feature taking over the forumspace.
Later on we can discuss it again if we feel the new forum feature has become something we can replace the old system with. --AvatarRokus Ghost (Message me • Read my fanon) 
00:55, November 17, 2012 (UTC)
- The feature that would replace the War Room would be the same one that we were using on the general and admin board, right? So wouldn't it then for us not be the easiest to continue using that, see what changes are made there and the see whether or not we want to let it replace the War Room forums? Moving the War Room to the project space and testing out the new forums at the same time does not seem beneficial to me as you are then dividing the places where site discussion, so people might not know where they should go with their ideas etc. Lady Lostris /
SOAP 07:16, November 17, 2012 (UTC)
I think the most efficient thing is to have both. I rather liked having the new Admin Notice board and having message highlights. If we have to switch the namespace so be it. But we need both. – TechFilmer🍍 07:26, November 17, 2012 (UTC)
- For me, Admin noticeboard comes in handy when it formatted like message walls, keep the Admin noticeboard and keep War Room. That's my two cents. Acer Evan Seek anything about fanon!
08:05, November 17, 2012 (UTC)
- Okay, just to clarify: I do mean keep the admin board etc in the style of how it's been for the last few weeks, but I do not want to have two places for discussion, namely the War Room (or then moved to the project pages or whatever) and another forum like it was earlier when the War Room was archived. Lady Lostris / SOAP 08:06, November 17, 2012 (UTC)
- Okay, just to clarify: I do mean keep the admin board etc in the style of how it's been for the last few weeks, but I do not want to have two places for discussion, namely the War Room (or then moved to the project pages or whatever) and another forum like it was earlier when the War Room was archived. Lady Lostris /
- While we are at this, should we convert the Fanon Noticeboard also. I agree we need War Room and noticeboards. But the noticeboard should NOT be used as a War Room replacement. – TechFilmer🍍 08:11, November 17, 2012 (UTC)
- The only issue I have with the new forums is the lack of auto update. But since this is the case with pretty most forums in general on the internet, it's not a huge thing for me. I don't see how it's hard to see where a new message starts and such as far as indentation goes, or lack thereof. Perhaps a thicker border between messages? Again, I'm not really seeing it as an issue. The name is above the message showing a clear stopping and starting point (if the line isn't enough). Not seeing the message right away without refreshing is something that's been around for a long time as more of an issue with the forums in general. It's not like IM'ing someone/IRC where it's all right in front of you. The new forum is basically the same as the old one, just a little fancier and easier to use. Instead of having to go in and edit a page as if making an article edit, you just use the reply box and it automatically places it, with your name and time too. I can see where Lady Lostris is coming from though. The lack of an indication that someone else has responded already can get a little tedious while writing your own reply. But think, if a popup, lets say, in the bottom right corner appeared and told you someone had posted, it'd really be no different (discounting the helpful highlighting notifications and such). In fact it'd be slightly better as it'd tell you right away someone had posted, sometimes avoiding having to rewrite entire replies, merely half or something. The only thing I see as being needed is the auto-update feature, something I doubt would be too much trouble.
Ruen 08:22, November 17, 2012 (UTC)
- All I'd want to do now is continue doing what we've been doing since we first agreed to test this. We would reenable the new forums with the admin noticeboard and the general noticeboard in place and continue having our War Room discussions in the project space. It allows us to experience the development of the new feature, and the main discussions to decide things for the site would continue to be held at Project:War_Room for the time being. --AvatarRokus Ghost (Message me • Read my fanon) 12:19, November 17, 2012 (UTC)
- All I'd want to do now is continue doing what we've been doing since we first agreed to test this. We would reenable the new forums with the admin noticeboard and the general noticeboard in place and continue having our War Room discussions in the project space. It allows us to experience the development of the new feature, and the main discussions to decide things for the site would continue to be held at Project:War_Room for the time being. --AvatarRokus Ghost (Message me • Read my fanon)
- The only issue I have with the new forums is the lack of auto update. But since this is the case with pretty most forums in general on the internet, it's not a huge thing for me. I don't see how it's hard to see where a new message starts and such as far as indentation goes, or lack thereof. Perhaps a thicker border between messages? Again, I'm not really seeing it as an issue. The name is above the message showing a clear stopping and starting point (if the line isn't enough). Not seeing the message right away without refreshing is something that's been around for a long time as more of an issue with the forums in general. It's not like IM'ing someone/IRC where it's all right in front of you. The new forum is basically the same as the old one, just a little fancier and easier to use. Instead of having to go in and edit a page as if making an article edit, you just use the reply box and it automatically places it, with your name and time too. I can see where Lady Lostris is coming from though. The lack of an indication that someone else has responded already can get a little tedious while writing your own reply. But think, if a popup, lets say, in the bottom right corner appeared and told you someone had posted, it'd really be no different (discounting the helpful highlighting notifications and such). In fact it'd be slightly better as it'd tell you right away someone had posted, sometimes avoiding having to rewrite entire replies, merely half or something. The only thing I see as being needed is the auto-update feature, something I doubt would be too much trouble.
- Per all I think what ARG says is the best. – TechFilmer🍍 13:29, November 17, 2012 (UTC)
I would not mind something along the lines of what Ruen suggested, specifically the idea of having a popup appear in the corner of the screen (sort of like how when you have a new notification and scroll down from the top of the page, you see the message in the yellow box saying you have new messages) that says that someone has replied. However, I still really want something that at least resembles the indentation system that this forum has going for it right now. That function of the War Room makes for great organization and clear knowledge of who's replying to what, or if, for example, the user is just making a new, independent message to give his input on the big picture. Krazykid51 13:58, November 17, 2012 (UTC)
- Do you guys know about the Forum's "quote" feature? If you click Quote on any message, then it takes you to the reply entry field and pre-fills it with a quote of the message you're replying to. When you post the reply, it adds a link up to the message you're quoting/replying. Brickipedia is using it a lot -- here's an example.
- To chime in a little -- the one option that we can't do (on the feature-development side) is to keep both the new Forums and the old Forums open simultaneously. One of the goals of these communication-feature updates is to make it easier for people to figure out where to talk -- especially new people who want to participate in the community. Having two different features called "Forum" wouldn't help much with that. :)
- That being said -- obviously, it's totally possible for you guys to move the War Room discussions temporarily to a different namespace, while we work on the improvements that would help to fit your needs there better. Is the sticking point for the War Room the indentation/replies/quoting? -- Danny 15:34, November 17, 2012 (UTC)
- I am open to the idea of this compromise; our discussion format would still be more or less preserved under a different namespace while we would still retain use of the new system, mainly for our admin and general noticeboards (as well as that nifty highlight feature)... Though I would have preferred our War Room to remain open under the current namespace - a bit of re-linking for site navigation will have to be done in the meantime.
- As for the sticking point, it's not only the indenting - for a cleaner looking, systematic discussion - but also the editing conflicts, which, though annoying sometimes, still gives clear indication for new replies to be read over, and eases a lot of the redundancy by repetition that can come from a lot of the more active discussions. Ofc, I would not mind if this was completely removed in substitution for something that achieves the same thing, namely the auto-updating features Lady Lostris was talking about. KettleMeetPot • wall 03:18, November 18, 2012 (UTC)
- I don't think the indenting is much of a sticking point. We don't use it to distinguish replies, only to provide a visual aid for where a post ends, and it's quite easy to do that with the new forum feature. Neither is "formality", really, since that's more of subjective thing. However, as I think was discussed at the very beginning of this test, the key problems with putting the War Room on the new feature are the lack of an indication of where there has been an intervening post (as others have said), and the impossibility of creating replies that are editable by everyone ("community-editable space") so that we can do things like votes. If those kinds of problems can be solved or at least mostly mitigated, I'd strongly support making the forum feature permanent here.
- For now, it is technically possible to put a "forum" of sorts in the project namespace while we reactivate and then wait and see whether the forum feature can match our needs. It will have limitations, but it'll work as a temporary solution. I can probably start building that right away. The 888th Avatar (talk) 11:05, November 20, 2012 (UTC)
A voting feature for the Forum is very high on the list for what to build once we're in Labs. The idea is to create a poll/vote thread, which will have a main post with a description/explanation, and then a radio-button poll. There'll be a regular thread of replies under that for the discussion. We'll have the ability to open and close the vote, to change your own vote if you're persuaded during the discussion, and to see a list of who's voted for each option.
Voting has been an important use case for me as we've been working on the Forums, because I've always been frustrated with the talk page-style version of voting -- people crossing out votes and putting them in again, people not signing properly, all the stuff that can make the discussion messy and confusing. Does that sound like it would work for you guys? Am I forgetting something important about it?
Again, thanks for your feedback and thoughts; it's super helpful. -- Danny 20:51, November 20, 2012 (UTC)
- Depends, does the voting system includes reasoning in the poll or does one have to go look for someone's reasoning behind their vote by searching the comments below? Cause if it's the latter, than I am not on board with that. The talk page system may perhaps make things look more messy for some, but it also provides a lot of clarity in the fact that you can see where people come from and can clearly see who voted what based on what reason. Lady Lostris / SOAP 21:01, November 20, 2012 (UTC)
- Excellent point. If a summary of one's reasoning could be appended to their vote for why they decided on whatever issue, it would be far more conducive to the ease-of-accessibility style you guys are going for. It supplements discussion and makes it very easy to get the gist of the main points of voting contention for people who may have just joined in or are on the fence etc. Also, it makes life a whole lot easier for the moderators to count/discount votes based on adequate reasoning and so-forth - at least, for those people who solely vote, and do not enter into the discussion. For people that did discuss the issue and don't want to make a lengthy summary, they could always point to their reasoning in the discussion section itself as an addendum to their vote. KettleMeetPot • wall 01:55, November 23, 2012 (UTC)
- For this feature you should also be able to quote multiple previous posts in your reasoning.
- Excellent point. If a summary of one's reasoning could be appended to their vote for why they decided on whatever issue, it would be far more conducive to the ease-of-accessibility style you guys are going for. It supplements discussion and makes it very easy to get the gist of the main points of voting contention for people who may have just joined in or are on the fence etc. Also, it makes life a whole lot easier for the moderators to count/discount votes based on adequate reasoning and so-forth - at least, for those people who solely vote, and do not enter into the discussion. For people that did discuss the issue and don't want to make a lengthy summary, they could always point to their reasoning in the discussion section itself as an addendum to their vote. KettleMeetPot • wall 01:55, November 23, 2012 (UTC)
TheLoKnessmonster
04:37, November 25, 2012 (UTC)
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Hasdi Bravo • 11:51, November 25, 2012 (UTC) |
Does anyone have issues with the loss of horizontal space in the new forums? I mean, with the wikia skin that we have to live with, a full page width gives you 660px to work with, and lose that even more in the replies. You end up having to squeeze details into a narrower column, which you can avoid by unindenting in the old forum. 
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- It's not a huge issue as far as I can tell. On original posts, only three indents worth of space is lost on the left side of the page, and that's only as much room as is needed for the user's avatar. Still, I suppose some reformatting could be done to lessen the gap, possibly by moving the avatar above the username. Sparks • From • Hades 17:03, November 25, 2012 (UTC)
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Hasdi Bravo • 01:03, November 26, 2012 (UTC) | |
| Although, placing the avatar above the username would take up more vertical space. I think having the body text always start at zero-offset regardless of "indenting" would help. I also don't see why we cannot place the time stamp next to the user name and save some vertical space.
Perhaps wikia can offer some customization on how the comment is laid out, possibly using a template? | ||
- We would indeed lose vertical space by placing the avatar above the username, but the only alternative formatting to that would be to push the avatar and username right and align to where the text begins (in order to have a zero-offset). Not that I'm not completely opposed to that alternative, but wouldn't it bring us back to the issue of having a wall of text to read? A plus of having the current indented formatting is that since the users' avatars are on the indent space, the thread is nicely divided and organized, detracting from the problem of having a wall of text. By putting the avatar out of the indent space and next to the username, the thread no longer has the same division. We can still go along with what you said, but I would recommend still leaving a slight indent or just placing the avatar above the username for a more clear divide. Sparks • From • Hades 22:13, November 26, 2012 (UTC)
- We would indeed lose vertical space by placing the avatar above the username, but the only alternative formatting to that would be to push the avatar and username right and align to where the text begins (in order to have a zero-offset). Not that I'm not completely opposed to that alternative, but wouldn't it bring us back to the issue of having a wall of text to read? A plus of having the current indented formatting is that since the users' avatars are on the indent space, the thread is nicely divided and organized, detracting from the problem of having a wall of text. By putting the avatar out of the indent space and next to the username, the thread no longer has the same division. We can still go along with what you said, but I would recommend still leaving a slight indent or just placing the avatar above the username for a more clear divide.
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| Hasdi Bravo | ||
Well, maybe not a complete "wall of text", but alternate the body text with indented headers that include the avatar, user name and the timestamp.
 The other option is maintain 660px for the body text but indent anyway, so the oasis layout has to "expand" with more indenting, hence push the widgets and ads further to the right and eventually out view but wikia may not like that. Personally, I rather not scroll down to see more text. | ||
| • 15:54, November 27, 2012 (UTC) | ||