| abstract
| - __NOWYSIWYG__ With the growing use of the new forum as a main means of discussion, I think it's time we reconsider disabling article comments on mainspace articles. The main arguments against removing comments last time were: 1.
* The potential loss of traffic and community dispersion that could occur by completely cutting off communication. 2.
* Fanon authors could not get feedback/reviews for their work. 3.
* Comments attract unregistered users, who constitute the vast majority of visits to this site. 1.
* The current proposal does not cut communication at all. The ability to discuss remains intact. It merely centralizes it in one place. There are already plenty of topics being discussed in the forums. Most of the times, there are more forum posts on the RC than comments. In fact, the only highly commented article is The Legend of Korra, which is basically being used as a hub for all things "LoK" and general observations. If you peruse the University board, most topics are tied to LoK. There can perfectly be a forum that takes over the broad discussions taking place in that article. 2.
* I asked Wikia and it is possible to keep comments on selected namespaces. Fanon authors would still get to keep their main source of feedback. 3.
* With COPPA, this is moot. Unregistered users can't comment. They need to create an account. If they are willing to create an account to comment on articles, then they will as easily do that to comment on forums. Most forums on the Internet require an account creation anyway. And even if #3 was still applicable, nothing would change; anons could post on forums as they always have. Other points to consider: 1.
* It is incredibly redundant to have two different venues in which to discuss topics. The same subject could be discussed in two different places without the participants of each debate knowing that the same discussion is taking place elsewhere. Centralizing discussion promotes community cohesion, which is the point of communication on a site like this. 2.
* The related discussions module is placed above comments and it features two topics and the latest two posts for each, and a "Start discussion" button. Therefore, discussions are easy to find (in the same place where users became accustomed to see them) and thus visitors are redirected to related discussions and incited to share their theories/opinions or start new topics. 3.
* Discussions on forums are easier to manage: 4. 1.
* Entire threads of discussion don't get purged when the first post gets deleted, which is what happens on article comments, whether because the user posted it on the wrong place or because it was inappropriate. Forums can simply be moved or closed. 5. 2.
* Inappropriate posts can be deleted (more like hidden) and double checked more easily. (Looking for deleted comments is a nightmare.) 6.
* There are more ATLA/LoK discussions taking place on Walls than on articles, so there's a clear affinity with that format. And the whole point of Wikia creating the new forums was to replace the comments. 7.
* It's easier to follow discussions on forums. The only way someone can follow a discussion on high traffic articles is by bookmarking their posts or by using their own contributions as a shortcut to track down their posts and see if anyone else replied. This was how we followed conversations on talk pages and this was one of the biggest reasons why we replaced them with Walls. 8.
* Forums don't have pagination, so comments don't get pushed down and forgotten. 9.
* And finally, from an aesthetic standpoint, comments look terrible at the end of a carefully written and put together article, IMO. They are grossly un-encyclopedic and without them, and with forums, we can have the best of both worlds: keep communication flowing and keep our arduous articles professional. I also believe that this is the best time to do it. With the new season coming up, there will be an influx of new users, as it always happens to wikis about shows on the air. The regular commenters can easily acclimate themselves with the changes (they already know and use the forums anyway), but it would probably be discouraging for new users who start using comments and then lost them all of a sudden. In a nutshell, the proposal aims at centralizing discussion in only one format and place, in which discussion is already occurring, without losing the advantages that article comments bring to fanon authors. ― Thailog 10:54, August 23, 2013 (UTC) I wholeheartedly support this proposal. You've summed it up rather nicely, Thai. I definitely agree that forums would be better, as something I've noticed is that comment threads tend to descend into irrelevancy, which seems to be less common on the forum threads. One issue/problem/thing to consider is how to define when to protect a page, as currently, once a page reaches 100 comments, it is move protected. Is there another system that could be implemented? But other than that, I don't see an issue with it. 11:28, August 23, 2013 (UTC) Articles are protected because when they are renamed, all the comments are renamed as well, which means major RC flood. I don't even think this still happens. I'm sure that comments are renamed via bot, i.e. hidden. Regardless, that wouldn't be a problem for forums either. When forums get moved, that doesn't affect the RC page. And only admins can move them, unlike articles that can be renamed by anyone, hence the move protection. We can however lay down some rules in terms of forums length. But at the YJ Wiki we have forums that go beyond 400 posts and it isn't a nuisance in any way. ― Thailog 11:44, August 23, 2013 (UTC) I am not sure about my stance yet, however there is something I would like for people to take into consideration. Do not support because of making sifting through comments easier. A couple of weeks back, Thailog made a post on the General Noticeboard, saying that comments such as "^", or "...", or "lol", are not substantial comments, and will be deleted. With Korra coming, it means we will get a lot of these comments. In order to help out SparkySparkyBoom (of IRC) and I are currently building a bot (GitHub Repo) for handling these comments. It will delete comments under 5 characters, and will flag other comments for deletion, thereby streamlining the process. The bot is not done yet, but SSB and I hope to have it completed before Sept. 13. So I urge all that vote, not to take the fact that it is less work into consideration as a fix is being built right now for it. EDIT: I do realize that the proposal is because of centralizing discussion, so sorry if my message came off like I felt that the proposal was about making things easier. Srijay K - TechFilmer 12:08, August 23, 2013 (UTC) Don't you need permission to run a bot? And, taking "less work" into consideration is not the main point of this. This proposal is to centralise discussion, as I believe the point of the forums was to one day replace comments. The reason it hadn't was due to the fact that, until recently, it was believed that all comments would be removed, which would affect feedback on the fanon portal. Currently, it isn't difficult to moderate the comments. There are very few insubstantial ones - they tend to drift off into irrelevant comments that would have a better place on message walls. That is not something you can use a bot for. 12:15, August 23, 2013 (UTC) Yes, I do need permission to run the bot. But who's to say I can't write it and test it on my sandbox wiki? Also, see the edit I made, about the fact that I know it is not the main point. Yes, right now it isn't hard to moderate comments. Come Book 2, we will have a lot more commenters. Even with a release date, we are still somewhat is a slow time, but come Sept. 13, I guarantee you, that the amount of commenters will rise. With more commenters comes more insubstantial comments. But anyways, we are drifting from the point of the forum, which is to remove comments from mainspace articles, so as to centralize discussion, which is something I see a probably a good idea. Srijay K - TechFilmer 12:21, August 23, 2013 (UTC) My only concern is the checkability of all the threads on the university board. As you've probably seen, some of the threads there can get to crooked numbers of replies totaling well into the hundreds - one thread I saw now on the activity feed is over six hundred, for example. Those threads can take quite a while to load. Thus, if we now have to look into university threads to make sure nothing's going wrong, that means constantly having to go back into said long threads time and time again, which would really reduce effectiveness of dealing with potential issues on the rest of the wiki. 14:05, August 23, 2013 (UTC) I'm in favor of this change, but maybe not for the goal reason of centralizing discussion. However, my reason was stated above: to keep ugly, often vehement, comments away from the articles. As everyone knows, the comments of the LoK page have basically been a boiling pot of users just getting angry at each other, and frankly I was tired of it a long time ago. By putting free discussions on forum walls, such bickering on any article across the wiki will be separated from our exceptionally polished articles and make it a lot easier to track the back-and-forth arguing threads. I was against removing comments a while back, but doing so now allows for a valid alternative that will centralize discussion and make the articles look so much more professional. About the length of board threads, we could set up a general notice on the threads that says, after exceeding a certain number of posts (whatever number of posts would make it load slowly, say, 300 or so?), a new thread should be begun and a link to the new thread should be provided in some sort of final post. I know Thai said 400 is working easily on YJ Wiki, but maybe 300 or 350 would be best just to keep things in check. 14:10, August 23, 2013 (UTC) I agree it's this chane, basically per PSU and Krazy. My only problem with threads in the forums that has already been brought up is the problem with loading, and the fact that it's often hard to get involved with a thread when it's at 200 posts and the conversation has taken a dramatic turnaround from the original discussion. And like PSU, I think that moderating conversation would be a little more tough. File:Waterbending emblem.png Water Spout 14:28, August 23, 2013 (UTC) I know what you are saying, and I agree, however there are select users who always comment. Sure, other ones may randomly add their thoughts and whatnot, but overall, people are either avid commenters or they aren't. The people who do comment on pages also tend to be the ones that use the forums. The point I'm trying to make is that a lot of the discussions and such that take place in articles are very similar to the ones that take place on the boards. Another thing I've noticed it's that the boards don't tend to become irrelevent as often. Water Spout, you mentioned that it can be hard getting into the flow of conversation when the topic has shifted, but that happens too on the comment sections. Oh, and I like Krazy's idea for a post limit. 14:38, August 23, 2013 (UTC) Some good issues have been brought up. They are valid concerns, however, they would still be so if we kept comments. Remember that during Book One, we didn't have the new forums, only comments. If we keep comments, there will still be an increase of forum activity when Book Two comes. Naturally, the activity will be exponentially bigger if we get rid of the comments, because forums will become the only venue of discussion. But wouldn't checkability be an issue regardless? I can't say for sure that there would be more forum posts than article comments... then again, per what I said above, the forum module is strategically placed to veer visitors from the comments into the forums. Heck, the comments only appear if you scroll all the way down the page and wait for it to load. The related discussion module is always there. Take Amonoatak, for example. New user, less than a month old. 80.74% of his edits were forums posts; not one single article comment. Wanna bet new users will make more comments or more posts? As for loading problems, a limit would certainly be a viable solution. It's not that hard to check on the board and see what threads have surpassed whatever limit we establish. I can also ask Wikia if rollbacks can have the ability to close forum threads. That would ease the workload. Finally, about moderating conversation: any user can delete forums posts. I trust that the responsible commenters will uphold the discussion policy to the best of their abilities. And the deletion of posts is certainly a red flag for us to check what's going on. There's also the admin notice board to report issues. Again, this would still be an issue if we keep comments. More so, we'd have to moderate discussions on forums and articles (you can't see entire article (large) comments on the RC page anyway). And don't forget that comments have that sort of "live chat" feel that prompts users to post irrelevant posts, such as the "lol", "^^^^", and so on. On forums you hardly see that because they can acknowledge that they favor a certain post or remark by liking kudoing it. I believe that the forum system is dissuasive of that behavior and does diminish the number of irrelevant posts. ― Thailog 16:27, August 23, 2013 (UTC) Hmm, I think I can support this, one question, just like when COPPA was changed, we added a notice to the comment box, could we do that for this forum, and the people who will be most impacted are the commenters, so I do think that we should let them know, as they may not be aware of the War Room, and may not know to check this page? Srijay K - TechFilmer 19:57, August 23, 2013 (UTC) That's flat out special treatment. Just like we don't pop in on IRC to warn the regular dwellers that we're discussing policies that may affect that channel, commenters who consider themselves part of this community need to be attentive to active discussions as well. That's why I updated the community messages when I opened this forum. That should be enough. I don't want to open a precedent of feeling obligated to warn users connected to a particular facet of the site every time we decide to change something there. Removing comments and locking the site to anons are apples and oranges. COPPA blocked unregistered users and/or forced them to create an account. This proposal would not shut anyone out that radically. ― Thailog 20:12, August 23, 2013 (UTC) i think we should leave the comment on the articles. Intelligence4 (wall • contribs) 21:10, August 23, 2013 (UTC) Why? Is there a reason for your opinion? 21:32, August 23, 2013 (UTC) I have full support for this notion. Last time this came around it was during the activity boom for Korra and I was feeling more neutral towards it. However, now this will not be hindering activity as people who comment only occasionally have insightful things to add to the page, and those can easily be added to a university post. Now that anonymous users are now gone and commenting isn't becoming a "welcome to the wiki" to accountless users, I see no reason not to. In addition to all of the points above, there has been a growing split between users that tend to comment and users that tend to edit. I think that removing comments and allowing discussions on the University could help close the gap between the two "groups" of users. However, since this thread is gaining a lot of support and from what I can tell there is only one oppose, it's only fair that we let those who tend to comment more know about the forum if they don't usually check. I think we should link to it in the box thingie above the comments, similarly as we did to the COPPA discussion. 23:47, August 23, 2013 (UTC) I've already addressed that suggestion, ATFF. ― Thailog 00:08, August 24, 2013 (UTC)
* Facepalms* I see that now. Sorry 'bout that, I guess I just skipped that little spot of the conversation. 00:15, August 24, 2013 (UTC) Seems about time for this! I agree with this proposal per the arguments presented by Thailog. Just as an aside to TechFilmer however - I wouldn't waste your time creating a bot script if its sole purpose is to do something as inconsequential as deleting/flagging specific comments. If there was a huge problem with those sorts of posts - and I don't believe that is currently the case - it could easily be solved without including a bot at all... Such as actually disabling the post button on the site itself if the comment is under a certain character limit or contains certain characters. And no offense, but I trust the human judgement of our rollbacks more than any kind of bot or automated system in regards to identifying and handling inappropriate comments - it just isn't necessary when we have a team of users who do this job both regularly and effectively. KettleMeetPot • wall 03:27, August 24, 2013 (UTC) Excellent proposal, Thailog. Commenters usually have 2 big complains: 1. they can't really keep track of their posts, and 2. they are sick of people posting the same thing, starting the same conversation -without knowing that they're the fiftieth person to post that- over and over again. Referring people to the forums will effectively solve that problem. We are not hindering communication, we are not taking away the option for people to talk, we would just be referring them to another place. If this proposal posses, which it seems to be doing, perhaps we could further accommodate our boards to allow for easy navigation, like perhaps create a board for each of the links you see on the from page, thus create an ATLA-board for discussion about the first series, a TLoK-board, a comics-board, and perhaps a TLA-board (and as such perhaps also include a link to the relevant board on the main page). That way, the commenters don't have to peruse through all the threads that will be created to find a topic they like and hopefully people will then know more clearly on which board they are supposed to comment (as supposed to on the general noticeboard). 07:55, August 24, 2013 (UTC) "include a link to the relevant board on the main page" You mean on the slide for each show? ― Thailog 12:52, August 24, 2013 (UTC) Yes, that's what I meant. 14:34, August 24, 2013 (UTC) Sounds doable and a great idea. ;) ― Thailog 14:56, August 24, 2013 (UTC) KMP: I've been doing this for multitudes of reason, not just to assist the wiki, and even it isn't used, I've still got some stuff I can do with it. Right now, as you said there is no need for it, but in the even that something like last summer happens, where comments became many and they had to be moved to a special blog, this will help assist. IIRC, we can't not allow for posting unless it is a certain character limit, and that violates ToU. It also flags comments that might require deletion, as it does recognize, that humans are more capable than a bot. But anyways, we digress. I do support Lostris' idea to add the board pages on the main page, though, do we really need a board for TLA? I think for TLA we should keep comments there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TechFilmer (wall • contribs) August 24, 2013, 15:14 (UTC) Minor factual correction: the comments were centered on a blog because they were pushing down the edits made, making it very difficult to check the pages for new information added. They were not moved because of irrelevancy or anything like you are saying now. Also, please remember to sign your posts with ~~~~. And yes, we need a board for TLA, I don't see why it should receive any other treatment, just because some people don't like the movie. 15:23, August 24, 2013 (UTC) Though I am not arguing for the measure, I would like to correct your point that any minimum controls placed over posting comments would be against ToU - provided there is community consensus, we are allowed to make minor variations of function in order to facilitate our local policies. The solution I outlined is just as permitted as temporarily disabling comments for specific namespaces and, I would contend, more viable than a bot. KettleMeetPot • wall 15:46, August 24, 2013 (UTC) Lostris: Gotcha, my memory is somewhat foggy of that time. Kettle: m'kay, thanks for telling me. Srijay K - TechFilmer 23:15, August 24, 2013 (UTC) Is there any way to archive the comments from every page? While there's no practical reason to do this, I think it would be a shame to lose all of the discussions and things that have been here for forever. Just a thought. 16:58, August 27, 2013 (UTC) Not for the time being. For now, disabled comments are hidden, but not deleted. ― Thailog 17:09, August 27, 2013 (UTC) That works just as well for my reasons – I'm a sentimental sap, so I've always been one for preservation. As long as they're still here, I have no issues with anything. Even so, if it came down to choosing one or the other, I'd side with the plan of using the forums. 04:06, August 28, 2013 (UTC) For most users, hidden or inaccessible comments are as good as lost. Long-term, I suggest you request Wikia to have the means to convert "archived" Article Comments into Forum threads. My 2 cents. — Hasdi Bravo • 05:10, August 28, 2013 (UTC) I already asked them. Hopefully, long-term, something can be done about that. ― Thailog 13:42, August 28, 2013 (UTC) I was gonna worry about that later. I figured that only admins might be able to access them, but as long as someone can access them at all and they're not gone forever, then we have time to deliberate over how other users can come to view them. As to what we should do if the old comments become accessible to everyone, I was thinking of something along the lines of the archived user talk pages, like at the bottom of any article it would say "See archived comments". 13:49, August 28, 2013 (UTC) Absolutely. ― Thailog 13:59, August 28, 2013 (UTC) Seems unnecessary, but I'll throw in my support as well. It's great to see that the introduction of the forum feature has had the effect that we intended from the beginning, thus making comments less and less important. With regards to splitting the current University board into different boards, this is something I've had in mind for a long time. I suggest we rename them into different faculties of the university in keeping with the theme. The 888th Avatar (talk) 04:52, August 29, 2013 (UTC) I'm glad to see how the resolved and relatively unified vibe at this forum stands in contrast to the flare of the forums from last summer. I think it's safe to say that the new forum features have helped us past a great dilemma, with the dynamic character of discussion on one side and what some have called the negative consequences of the comment feature, not to say I agree. Never thought I would find what Thailog has to say about comments agreeable. Anyhow, I think splitting and possibly revamping and reorganizing the board system may be in order, if they are truly going to fill the place on here that mainspace comments fill now, which is a large one. I think, though, that we shouldn't make such large changes in the board system too soon, or rather, that while we can make some changes, we shouldn't be rigid in what changes we originally make. Ultimately, the needs of the wiki should decide whether to split the university board and how much, and we should be flexible about that in the next couple weeks/months, since it's hard for any of us to predict to what extent that will be needed until after the change is made. -- 05:09, August 29, 2013 (UTC) Obviously needs will always be changing and that will determine whether a split is needed at any given time, yes. For now I suggest a general University board in addition to new boards just for LoK and the original series. Demand doesn't seem to require more at the moment. The 888th Avatar (talk) 06:24, August 29, 2013 (UTC) That sounds fair to me. -- 20:35, August 30, 2013 (UTC) Although I wholeheartedly disagree with this proposal, I feel as if it's a losing battle and there is no point in trying to fight, because I really don't know what my valid reason for wanting comments is. However, if the comments are disabled, does that mean that Fanon article comments are disabled, too? Or is there a way to disable one and not the other? 19:50, September 1, 2013 (UTC) Thailog has contacted Wikia and he says there is. -- 20:18, September 1, 2013 (UTC) Yes, the discussion hinges upon only removing comments on mainspace articles. Fanon is unaffected. It's a fairly simple CSS fix as long as we're permitted to do it. The 888th Avatar (talk) 13:25, September 2, 2013 (UTC) Normally, I would disagree with the proposal, but I've seen the quality of comments on mainspace articles deteriorate over time. Therefore, this has my support. XIII 15:57, September 2, 2013 (UTC) Hmm, I just thought of something, when new episodes air, people congregate on the episode article to discuss it. The way this proposal sounds, is that we would make a thread for each episode. There are about three options I see here being, will we make one "official thread" or will people be allowed to make threads galore or we keep. However, another option is to make a blog for episode discussion. I'm not exactly sure what option I would choose, but I just wanted to get my question out there. Srijay K - TechFilmer 21:33, September 2, 2013 (UTC) That's an issue regarding forum maintenance and logistic and to be discussed accordingly on its appropriate place. This forum is about whether or not comments can be disabled, which is not contingent on forum management issues. ― Thailog 21:51, September 2, 2013 (UTC) Considering that you pointed to the new forums in your initial statement and that many users had it effect their position, I would hardly call it irrelevant. As I said before though, I think we'll get a better idea of how to restructure our system accordingly once the initial changes are made and we can assess where we stand. -- 22:00, September 2, 2013 (UTC) All right. I guess we will just play it by ear. Srijay K - TechFilmer 22:02, September 2, 2013 (UTC) I would hardly call it irrelevant either, and you'll see that I didn't. But it is something to discuss later, because there are many ways to go about it and neither will affect the resolution of this proposal, seeing as if comments stayed anyway, we'd still have to decide on how to handle forums once the new season came, because with or without comments, there will be threads about episodes, probably duplicate ones, so we'd need to discuss how to manage those regardless of comments. ― Thailog 22:13, September 2, 2013 (UTC) A small request if I may, since this resolution only affects the mainspace, there is one page (The Last Airbender) with film comments originally from Film:The Last Airbender). If the JS code can be tweaked to only disable comments on that disambiguation page instead of hiding them, it'd be great. At least until we can restore/convert the comments. As of last week, The Last Airbender trademark now refer to both the original animated series AND the movie. Later. — Hasdi Bravo • 17:17, September 3, 2013 (UTC) Actually, comments would only be enabled for fanon. I know I didn't mention filmspace, but since one of the arguments to keep comments on fanon has to do with the fanon reviews, comments on filmspace and mainspace are just as obsolete. I know I didn't make this perfectly clear, but I did emphasise leaving comments only on fanonspace. Can you think of any reason why there should be comments on film articles when we're trying to centralize discussion in the forum? ― Thailog 18:05, September 3, 2013 (UTC) Now that you clarified it, yes, I do support centralizing film comments in the forum as well. However, I'd like to VIEW past comments with news comments DISABLED, as we have done last year. My comments are not all ramblings and ventings, but sort of micro-blogging with links and references that I check back from time to time. Kinda sucks to see them all "gone" until Wikia finally got around converting them to forum threads. — Hasdi Bravo • 18:55, September 3, 2013 (UTC) Yeah, I know it sucks, but disabling them with JS is not a viable solution, because mobile devices don't work with JS, which means that those users could still comment, and what's even worse is that we wouldn't be able to delete them (at least not easily), which happened a lot last year. ― Thailog 19:07, September 3, 2013 (UTC) Oh gods. Three years of my life just... gone. I wonder if I can temporarily circumvent that using my own JS code for my own viewing pleasure. xP — Hasdi Bravo • 19:32, September 3, 2013 (UTC) Lol. I don't think you can do anything about it in your personal JS, since Wikia is going to disable comments in the through internal setting, but I'm pretty sure you've managed to convince someone that TLA is not that bad, so not all is lost, and you'd still have to keep defending TLA on forums anyway. So, still plenty of work for you to do. ;) ― Thailog 19:40, September 3, 2013 (UTC) I actually have a new proposal that goes along with the idea. What if we were to just disable commenting on the mainspace, but leave the comments visible so people could go back through and read intellectual conversations about the topic, view funny comments people made about the article, or find an answer to a question they couldn't locate in the article? It would be like the blog posts, where the comments are disabled after 30 days, or what we did to the LOK article last spring when it came out. Thoughts? 23:48, September 5, 2013 (UTC) Thailog just explained why that wouldn't work above— people on mobile could still make comments and it would be hard for us to delete them. Besides, I feel like that would be defeating the purpose because at this point very few comments are intellectual and relevant, and are more a form of social interaction that vaguely relates to the original page. 01:13, September 6, 2013 (UTC)
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