These discussions suck. Why is Wikia doing this? I found it odd enough when they changed everything to a Fandom powered by Wikia instead of Wikia, but that wasn't directly harmful.. Replacing forums with this would be.
These discussions suck. Why is Wikia doing this? I found it odd enough when they changed everything to a Fandom powered by Wikia instead of Wikia, but that wasn't directly harmful.. Replacing forums with this would be.
Does 'Wikia' even exist as a wiki platform?
Wikia still exists just the same, it's now just called FANDOM.
Recneps, what specifically about Discussions bothers you? Is something not working? Are you missing features? Since we're not done building it yet (not even now, five months after your question), there is a chance that something you're missing might still be added to Discussions in time. But it'd be interesting to hear what you and the others here think so far.
The general layout seems very poor compared to the actual forums. Would wikis' staffs be given the same customization powers, such as subdividing of the discussions? Could the discussion activity feed be incorporated into the wiki like the forum feed can? Could the background be changed to be the same as the rest of the wiki, instead of this plain white? Could user and wiki CSS be applied to the discussion posts?
The layout is indeed very different and much simplified - that is because it was built with mobile devices in mind as well, whereas the forums are great for desktop, but really cumbersome for mobile users. Those make up more than half of all users, so we consider it really important to keep this area usable for them, too.
You can subdivide Discussions into categories, much like you can create separate forum boards for different topics. Users can then filter whether they want to see all posts in all categories, or just the ones in specific categories. If you'd like to do that, there's more information here: lotrminecraftmod.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Admin_and_Moderator_Tools_in_Discussions
We decided not to include Discussions activity in the Recent Activity feed because Discussions tends to be a lot more active than the forums were. On a pretty busy wiki, Discussions activity would otherwise completely flood Recent Changes, and make it hard for the admins to still see all the article edits that actually need monitoring.
Discussions is opinion-based and users can't edit other users' posts (unless you're a moderator or admin), so it's not necessary to monitor every single post there. It's important for wiki articles and other content that just anyone can edit (or vandalize), but there is no need for admins to look at every Discussions post. To deal with troublemakers and spammers, there is the "report post" feature, so admins can still spot those posts that need to be deleted.
If you feel you absolutely need to keep an eye on everything that happens in Discussions, though, there is a script on dev.wikia.com that you can use to set up a Recent-Changes-style feed for Discussions activity: dev.wikia.com/wiki/Discussions_Feed
Other customization options, such as changing the background in Discussions or applying custom CSS, aren't available at this point, unfortunately. You can upload an avatar and header image and change colors via the Theme Designer, but that's all you can change about the appearance of Discussions right now.
Discussions certainly is different than the forums for sure, even though they're both conversation spaces, and requires admins and users to be open to doing things differently. We do think it can be really useful to keep communities active and growing, though, and do some things better than the forums could. If you're curious why exactly the forums needed to be replaced in the first place, you can read up on that here (with more details coming soon): community.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Discussions_FAQ#Why_does_Forum_have_to_be_removed.3F
The main issue I'm concerned with now is the feed.. I see your reasoning for not including it in the general wiki activity feed, but a separate way of reporting the feed from it - like we have for Blog and Forum activity - would be nice. They allow users to see the most recent activity, and join in new topics of conversation. They also allow anomalies to be spotted easier, and can help tie the discussions into the Wiki proper better, instead of being an insular system like they are now.
One way of checking for new content is just to look at Discussions (well, that is obvious) since you can remove any category filter and see all posts in one feed. Conversations that particularly interest you you can follow, and then see them all listed in the Following tab, sorted by most recent reply.
Since most users don't really need a way to be informed about every new post that is made, and prefer to check at their leisure or subscribe to notifications from their favorite conversations, an all-encompassing feed hasn't been a priority for us so far. Though as I mentioned, one of our volunteer developers has created a script just for that. If you want to see what it looks like implemented, check out Elder Scrolls: elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Special:DiscussionsFeed
Your concern that Discussions seems really separate from the rest of the wiki is very understandable. Right now, it's not easy to go back and forth between the two and apart from the header and footer, they look really different. We are working on tying them better together via the navigation and better linking options, first of all. Stay tuned for that!