Hi there.
So as many people know, this wiki does have a very small community base and getting people to see these threads is close to impossible, without just canvassing on every user talkpage and that's not even guaranteed to generate a good enough response if the user's do not read their talkpage or don't bother to respond in the discussion.
I would like to recommend that we convert this old wiki-style forum to the Wikia threaded forum module. More information about the threaded system can be found here: Help:Forums
There's a useful feature that the threaded forums include: the ability to highlight a discussion. This means that every user who comes to the wiki will see a notification at the top right: therefore, there cannot be any chance of users complaining about "not getting a voice in a discussion", since they will have been clearly notified.
This will help immensely when it comes to important, wiki wide discussions, whether that be policy changes or discussions involving standard practice.
Please use this discussion area to give your opinion about this proposal. Note that, when the threaded forum system is enabled, these older forums will be archived, but you'll still be able to read them: just won't be able to post in them further.
Leave your opinion in the discussions area.
Thanks! --Sajuuk 14:02, March 24, 2016 (UTC)
Discussion
Use this section to discuss the proposal. --Sajuuk 14:02, March 24, 2016 (UTC)
- I´ve read it carefully and I know the system from other wikis. Highlighting discussions could become quite useful. I assume that the "Only discussions to improve articles" policy would also be applied to this? I can imagine some people would write comments like "My Patronus would be..." or "She is my favourite character!" But this is, I think, the only thing I am concerned about.--Rodolphus (talk) 15:45, March 24, 2016 (UTC)
- That's a difficult question.
- There's a wiki I'm a member of which had a similar policy, but after implementing this, ended up allowing other discussions. Now granted that wiki is a completely different topic to this one and therefore, it's fandom is much more volatile: however, there's a chance that topics about the series in general may pop up. I have no issue managing all of that stuff if needed, but if that happens, it might be important to control the types of topics that come up by restricting it to specific topic subsets.
- On the other wiki I mentioned, we had enabled the chat as a "non wiki discussions area", but that didn't work at all. This wiki already has chat but it's pretty much unused and I've never really seen users in there (just the odd one but that's it) so it's quite unlikely anyone will use that as a place to discuss the series.
- Hope that helps! --Sajuuk 16:05, March 24, 2016 (UTC)
- I put off the vote itself until after there has been some discussion on the subject, as that has been standard procedure before.
- About the conversion, if we enable the threaded forum system, is there a way to keep using these older forum? From what I've seen of the threaded forums, they don't seem to be the ideal place to tally votes and striking voters that don't comply with the Voting policy, and all that. What I am proposing is a middle-ground in which we'd have discussions in the newer forums, and votes in the old forum-format (that can be archived and is plainer to read for easy reference) -- would that be feasible? -- Seth Cooper owl post! 18:43, March 24, 2016 (UTC)
- No worries about the vote.
- That isn't possible I'm afraid. When the threaded forums are enabled, the whole Forum: namespace is locked and only people with a specific user right can edit them.
- There are ways around that problem, such as creating straw polls and making voting threads "after" a discussion has been done.
- One method that is quite common is a vote tally script and using support/neutral/oppose templates. The script would be able to count the use of the templates and show coloured bars, with totals for each. That might be one method (which is actually quite popular with threaded forum users).
- Something I felt I didn't answer completely was the point that Rodolphus made: I've personally got a dislike for such policies, as that what talkpages are really meant to be used for. Obviously the forums should be used for wiki-wide changes like policy, but I don't personally feel they should be completely restricted to just wiki discussions only, they could be a great way to build up the community of the wiki. Users such as Starstuff have expressed an interest in trying to build the community up some more, as it is pretty quiet around the wiki. --Sajuuk 19:04, March 24, 2016 (UTC)
- One benefit that I've not mentioned about converting to the forum module is that there would no longer be any need to sign posts in forum topics, as the forums do that by themselves. So that would make it easier for people to ask questions without having to worry about wiki signatures. --Sajuuk 14:11, March 26, 2016 (UTC)
- I could easily go either way on this. I have been on wiki's that use the new system, though none of them were particularly active. So in regards to knowing how to use them and being comfortable with them I certainly am, in regards to being for a switch over on a wiki so used to the old way, not 100% sure. I definitely see the benefits to being able to highlight discussions easier to get more opinions on it and important discussions noticed quicker. Now while things hadn't been entirely stagnant on this site in regards to new information coming out, there was a lull in how much for a bit, during that lull this site has never really done too much to proactively encourage people to come hang out here, as chat was never utilised as much as it could have been, I began to think of this wiki as more of a 'monitor if a troll pops around, maintain general upkeep' but overall when I had nothing really to add to the site, I didn't see it as a place to come every day and just hang around or discuss things. Now new information has been coming out in larger chunks recently, but I'm sure at some point it's going to change again and we'll have less information coming in and things could go stagnant again, and when there isn't a lot of reason to be here besides monitor for vandals, general upkeep, it makes it harder to get important discussions, votes, etc noticed by everyone. So I really think there could be some useful benefits of the new forum system that could invigorate things around here, presuming enough users were even interested in that. In response to Seth's comment about having both, there is always the possibility of coming up with a new namespace to maintain the older style of discussions/voting if need be, might not be able to call it "Forum:" but we could maybe come up with something else for it. Just a thought, something to think/talk about. User talk:BachLynn23 17:51, March 26, 2016 (UTC)