Board Thread:Community Announcements and Events/@comment-5275700-20160314184502/@comment-5275700-20160317230745

I would like to address some of the comments related to the idea of retiring the current forum feature and having Discussions take over that role, and about the quality of contributions in Discussions. Several replies above have mentioned that, and I’ll also quote some of the messages from the users who wrote in:

Atvelonis

''We've concluded that the standard for post quality is significantly lower, as people tend to use it as a way to simply chat about how much they love Skyrim rather than using it as a way to have legitimate, thought-out discussions. I think that's what separates it from the forums, which are mostly only accessible through desktop, and thus significantly more selective. The greater convenience on [Discussions] means lower quality posts. They're not that great. They aren't terrible, really, but I think it's obvious that there is a clear difference from that and the kinds of posts on the regular forums. Don't get me wrong, I love the interest in the series. I think this is a very nice way to talk about it. However, after a resignation for our moderator who handled discussions I and some other staff members have stepped in to moderate it, and quite frankly it's not the kind of thing we want on the wiki itself. The consensus we seem to have reached is that the two should remain separate, because we don't want our perfectly fine forums to be downgraded to this extent. Again, I love the interaction, but it's not the kind of interaction we're looking for. The forums on the wiki should, from the way we see it, remain how they are, and discussions should continue to be improved but remain separate.''

Ottomon Hold

''Probably the biggest thing. Please, keep forums and discussions separate. Everyone likes the forums, and are easy to use. At the same time, discussions are good in order to use on mobile devices. There are positives for both, and I think we should keep both as well as separate. We have lots of traffic through them both. If forums were eliminated, a decent amount of our fan base would disappear. Discussions are alright, but they are not a replacement. The format is a little messy, and while fine on mobile, it is not suitable to replace forums, but rather, to work with them. They are both good, and they should be separate.''

I would like to make a couple of points to frame further conversation about this.


 * The Discussions feature is still in its early stages, and your apprehension about having this become the new/only “forum” area for the community is totally understandable. Please be assured that no merger or change is imminent. It’s not happening tomorrow, or next month, or anytime soon. We have lots more work to do, and TES Wiki’s use of Discussions and the feedback you provide will be a huge part of that.
 * However, retirement of the current forum feature is going to happen. The current forum feature has some very pronounced deficiencies -- notably a lack of mobile compatibility and near-invisibility on local search, but there are many other issues that are “behind the scenes” and make our engineers weep quietly in corners. Since correcting these issues would basically mean rebuilding the feature anyway, we are building something that we strongly believe will be much better in the end. Again -- you have a huge role to play in making sure that Discussions will meet your needs, and probably even a few needs you didn’t even know you had! Hopefully the "report post" moderation option can offer a tangible glimpse of how Discussions will exceed the current forum's capabilities.
 * I’ve said elsewhere that a Wikia community is more than just wiki editors, and I know the TES Wiki has plenty of experience with subsets of the community that are more editing-focused vs more social-focused. It’s one of the reasons I was so glad that this community was open to being an early adopter of Discussions. Like the current forum and chat, Discussions can give former "reader only" people a reason to create an account and come back more often. Some may fall in love with the wiki aspect and become editors. But for the ones that may not become editors, it's short-sighted to assume that they will never be able to create "quality" or "meaningful" content in Discussions. Ultimately it's going to be up to admins and mods to set the bar for quality in their community's Discussions. Through moderation, setting up local guidelines, creating areas for the various types of Discussions and leading by example, the quality can be what you make it.

Atvelonis also commented (above):
 * “We would be forced to either use a higher quality standard and have huge numbers of Discussions posts deleted, or use a lower quality standard and have huge numbers of low-quality posts on the forums. Neither option is very nice.”

I suggest that there is very much a middle ground to be found there, it’s not a stark choice between those two options. But getting to that will require more participation and example-setting from the users who are already creating high quality conversations. Many tools/features that can help facilitate this are still forthcoming, so we humbly request patience and open minds before judging this still-new user experience.

This post is already pretty long so I don’t want to ramble on much more. So I’d like to highlight a few specific comments and ask for more details, to help us understand the root of the concerns.


 * “we don't want our perfectly fine forums to be downgraded to this extent.”
 * “If forums were eliminated, a decent amount of our fan base would disappear”

Are these concerns related to the quality of conversation you’re currently seeing? Or related to functionality (structure, moderation tools, etc) that are not yet present? Or both?