Issue: Embed/Use Forum Threads on Wiki Pages

Friendly bump.

Please also see the related discussion in the duplicate request here: https://www.vaultwiki.org/issues/5134/

Yeah I still wish this could be a thing. I would help pay to make it happen if Pegasus could do it.

I had a Skype meeting with my forum staff last night about how to handle the discussions on the wiki pages since we're getting ready to launch. Some of my staff has been running my forums for 15 years, so they're very experienced.

They ultimately felt people on the forums won't discover the wiki discussions. If someone posts a wiki comment (like on a Pikachu card page), no forum member is going to see it. The fact the wiki "threads" can't be included in the subforums means it would be hard for users to discover the discussions unless they go directly to the hundreds of wiki pages. In other words, the VW commenting system is not part of the core forum experience.

They also felt it would be messy ideologically because users won't know where to post -- "do I post a topic on the wiki page for this subject or do I post a thread on the forums?"

So unfortunately we've decided to disable all wiki discussions, which sucks because the whole point of Vaultwiki is that it's integrated with forum software. This is originally why I wanted to get Vaultwiki over something like Mediawiki. The forum integration. Instead we'll just be using the wiki comments for admin page editing discussions.

So what would make for a valuable VW/XF integration? We spent like 3 hours discussing it, but what we ultimately want to pay someone to do is to add the following functionality to the bottom of each wiki page. A "quick reply" for making a new thread on the forum:

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Want to make your own discussion about <page>?

Thread Title: _________________

Thread Content: _____________________
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What forum do you want to post in? (Forum options set per wiki area or on a page-by-page basis)

Wiki Tags: <page>, input others

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This way the threads appear in the correct subforums and forum members see them.

THEN on the bottom of the wiki pages, it lists threads tagged with the page's name or similar keywords. In other words, it scans the forums for threads that are related to the page:

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Here's recent <page> discussions:

- Pikachu Deck, by WPM, Deck Garage forum, 2-1-18
Hey guys here's my new Pikachu deck... (20 likes, 2 replies)

- Pikachu in a Zapdos deck?, by WPM, TCG strategy forum, 2-3-18
I’m testing a new Zapdos deck... (20 likes, 2 replies)

- How valuable is this Pikachu?, Collecting forum, 2-4-18
I have a holo version of this card, is it worth... (20 likes, 2 replies)

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So basically you can make a thread from a wiki page that gets posted to the forum and also see related threads. This way both forum users and wiki users see everything.

Furthermore the threads that get posted to the forum should somehow show the wiki content or link to it at the top of the thread so the forum users see or have access to the wiki page.

On my website we already have a custom Wordpress/XF integration that is similar. I write a news story in Wordpress, pick a forum or existing thread for the story's thread to be posted to, then the thread appears underneath the news story. And on the forums, people see the thread and a link to the news story. Example:

WP news story with thread and full XF functionality on bottom: http://www.pokebeach.com/2018/01/eng...om-ultra-prism
XF thread with link to story: http://www.pokebeach.com/forums/thre...7#post-2919295

I'm wondering what would make users discover a random thread post any more than they would discover a wiki post. Are they just more likely to go to a sub-forum because it appears on the forum list? If that's the case, have you considered listing certain wiki areas on the forum list (AdminCP > Wiki > Content > Integration)? This should help drive your users to where you want them to go.

Or do you have multiple existing sub-forums where the users are already posting what you would expect them to post on the Pikachu page? If that's the case, then I think your idea might be the only viable solution.

On the other hand, if this is an issue with the separation of New Posts vs New Wiki Comments on the find-new page, I can already say that XenForo 2 (once VaultWiki support is finished) automatically resolves this issue. Unlike XenForo 1, XenForo 2 uses a unified find-new system, with the unified results as the default view (something vBulletin 4 -- RIP -- has had since 2009).

Yes, this is part of the problem.

Yes we considered this, but from what we understand...
1. The integrated area pages only show the discussions for that area itself, not a recent list of threads from pages in that area.
2. The page right now also shows the wiki pages, which makes it seem more like navigation than a hub of discussion.
3. It looks and feels different than a subforum, which "breaks" the user experience and makes it feel like something "else."
4. If this or another type of page could show a recent list of threads from pages in that area, that looks like any other subforum, it might work.

However, the problem with doing this is the wiki pages would have to be organized into areas in such a way where it's conducive to being a subforum. Let's pretend there's a wiki area for "Pokemon cards," which makes the theoretical "Pokemon card" VW subforum page on the forums with a list of all discussions created from those pages. If you have a Pikachu card page on the wiki, some people might want to create topics that discuss the competitive aspect of the card while others might want to discuss collecting. While on the wiki page it would be fine to have multiple topics listed of different types of discussions, on the theoretical "Pokemon card" area VW subforum page, you'd have topics of way too many varieties (strategy, collecting, etc.) that on a typical forum would be split into different forum areas. Collectors want to talk about collecting in the collecting subforum while competitive players don't want to see collecting topics in their subforums. So this would make the theoretical VW subforum area page messy and full of different interests whereas usually people are browsing subforums for specialized interests. I haven't discussed this with other people yet since I only just thought of it, but I think that would be the criticism.

I think all in all, you have subforums on a forum for different people. The subforums each have their own interest. People can make general or specific discussions about Pokemon collecting in our collecting forum right now. But what would be better with a wiki integration is if those collecting wiki topics could pour into the collecting subforums, and vice versa with the forum topics listed on related wiki pages, so that both the forums and wiki are supporting each other. I think that's what my aforementioned idea would do.

I don't know any forum user who regularly uses the "Find new" page or many other special pages (I'm not even sure what that page is), I think most people just browse the front forum page, the subforums, and that's it.

We can certainly add a separate listing for recent discussions within an area, and it should be relatively simple to implement. In fact I am surprised I did not think of that earlier. But you are right that it may not solve your issue because of the various ways discussions would be used. In this case, it might be useful to be able to "tag" discussions with premade "themes", where an admin could define the themes and the user would have to specify whether it was "collecting" or "competitive" themed (kind of like thread prefixes). Then users could filter the area discussion list by theme if they desire. This would be more involved to implement.

A problem with this approach is how to make it obviously separate from discussions directly related to the area itself vs discussions of pages within the area (as you noted). Depending on the language that is used, it might be confusing on the area page (which you are right, is more of a navigation hub). However, I think it is a challenge that can be overcome.

I wonder also if we could change the way area-forum-list integrations work so you can specify a specific view to show, rather than going to the navigation hub. In this case, you could specify the discussions-under-area view and have that displayed when a user clicks the forum-list link to the area.

As you have already made the decision not to use wiki discussions, this may not benefit your site, but I am trying to come up with a solution to this problem for the future, as I think it is an important one that affects most sites.

Of course, your other suggestion of linking specific forum threads (and allowing spin-offs) to specific wiki pages as "Related Forum Threads" is very valuable too. I think with a combination of both ideas active at once it can really improve engagement within the wiki.

EDIT: I should also mention that you can already show "Similar" (that is, automatically detected) Threads on each wiki page by activating the wiki's Similar Content sidebar block. This shows threads that are similar in name to the page and its keywords. If you disabled the sidebar altogether or you want to show it in the page body (or below), there are other ways you could do this:
What I am advocating is a much more reliable system that involves someone saying "Yes, this thread is related to this wiki page". Could be based on what the thread creator says (in the thread edit view), could be based on what a wiki editor says (selecting the thread from a list of possibly related threads), and/or could be based on a voting system -- maybe if the thread is not marked as related already, the thread view makes some suggestions, users can vote and a certain threshold "relates" them.

Before I write a reply, can you link me to a few of the largest VW wikis? I want to address the VW discussion system but need to see some examples of big wikis first.

Okay, after looking into it and thinking about it, I think my opinion with the VW discussions is that they should be entirely stored on the forums, or that you should at least have the option to do that. I think using special VW pages for social discussions is a mistake and neglects VW's biggest advantage.

When I first looked into Vaultwiki, I LOVED the features I was reading about and everything you have done. The biggest appeal to me was that it's integrated with forum software -- forums are dying these days due to social media, so the advantage you have is that you could give people a reason to continue using forums and also work on a wiki. Two things supporting each other very naturally, keeping people engaged and part of a community. You discuss your favorite topics as fans and also work together to make pages. That's at least how I interpreted VW on a /conceptual/ level.

But then when I looked into how VW actually does this "social" forum integration, I found myself confused and lost for quite some time. When I would look at the wiki you have up on this site, I'd see a lot of old or dead discussions which made the wiki look messy and outdated to me. They weren't in the style of the forums or on subforums, so I didn't understand how these discussions were organized; I would get lost as I was browsing through the wiki because of the areas, page links, and the various discussions I was seeing. I could only understand what I was looking at after reading your guides or asking you questions. To me, it didn't "naturally" make sense to me what I was looking at. And as a casual user, it didn't give me any confidence to want to use the wiki to discuss anything, especially in seeing the forums you have which I already understand how to use.

In my opinion, there shouldn't be ANY social discussions on VW itself. It's messy. When I look at other Pokemon wikis like Bulbapedia (one of the largest wikis on the net in general), which uses Mediawiki, I see that even they've flat-out banned any social discussion on their wiki pages. It's a major rule for their wiki commenting system because things get messy and disorganized quickly. Even then, when it comes to editing discussions, they have very sparse discussions on their pages and "project pages" (VW = "areas"). So they don't want social discussions there, and when they DO want discussions for editing, it doesn't even happen that often. They also have a subforum on their site for wiki editing discussions and talk on Discord about editing their pages and how to design them.

Another thing to note about their wiki: despite having one of the largest wikis on the Internet in general, they also have the deadest forums for a Pokemon fan site. This is because there is NO bridge between their wiki and their forums. There is no connection between their MW accounts and forum accounts, even. Forum users don't see any discussions related to wiki pages and wiki readers don't see anything about the forums.

I think developing VW's commenting system even further is going in the wrong direction, in other words. I feel it's neglecting the biggest advantage VW has over any other wiki -- the forums that it's part of. I think it would be totally awesome to make accessing recent discussions in an area easier for editors to see potential issues on pages, but for normal user discussions, I think it would get very messy and also neglect the whole forum integration. People intuitively understand how to use a forum. For VW, they have to learn how to use them, what things are for, where they are, etc.

In my humble opinion, I think VW discussions make the most sense when they're just for editors who browse each area and page, know how the software works, take an interest in understanding it, etc. (i.e. not the majority of visitors).

For the end user, what makes most sense to me is that they discuss topics on the forums, a thing they already understand on a conceptual level. So for me, the best case scenario is getting forum discussions created FROM wiki pages, then linked on wiki pages, as I described earlier. This is what could be implemented to make the social integration even stronger. Users can browse the forums like usual. They can discuss general non-wiki topics, then also see wiki discussions (and links to their pages) in their regular subforums. People finding the wiki can see on the bottom all recent forum discussions related to those topics or make their own. In this way, each software perfectly supports each other and encourages the use of each other.

I completely agree. I have already disables the function to create new discussions in VW and am considering to just turn comments off completely. It needs to be in the forum like it was in VW3. It worked amazingly in VW3 when comments were still in forum. All new comments came up in the new-posts function.

Please look at how the xenforo resource manager handles comments in forum.

Please explain what you mean because XF2 does not have a unified find-new system. it is in my experience the biggest let down of XF2. What is has is the useless option to add a widget page with blocks of find-new content. It is not possible to generate one organized stream of new content. Users still need to click dozens of tabs (which no one does) to find all new content. 85% of our users are on mobile with small screens. On XF1 they see a wall of tabs and on XF2 they only see the first 3 tabs.

The best XF2 can do is expose the recent-activity page to guests (which is a step forward). We can then rework this page to come to an activity stream that showcases all new content combined with all trivial activity. The problem with this approach is that it does not show unread content, but all content. So members will still use new-posts to find unread content. But all other tabs on find-new are unfortunately close to useless.

For what it is worth, I too have turned off the wiki discussion feature.

I'd very much like wiki discussions to take place in the form of a standard forum thread. Perhaps for each wiki area, a designated forum area (forum/sub-forum) could be specifed in the settings, with other optional settings like thread prefixes also selectable. Then for each wiki page (with one comment/post or more), a new forum thread could be created? That is one approach of, I assume, many more that could be taken here. Just as long as any changes do eventually have wiki discussions occurring in forum threads

Apologies. I had already changed the link in Navigation Manager so that What's New pointed directly to What's New > Latest Activity. I had forgotten this when I wrote the post above. However, in the default configuration, it was a step forward that this tab was exposed to What's New at all. For a long time, I didn't even know that XF1 had a way to view unified activity; it was buried under the Members tab where I would never look for that.

I'm not sure why XF has not added a way to show only unread activity. Even if different content-types manage read-data differently, it could still be handled as a callback similar to the way it already checks if a user has permission.

Back on the original track, a lot of the ideas here are great; it seems like we might be able to move secondary discussions to the regular forums rather easily. It's the standard comments that I shudder to think about. vBulletin, which although dead, still makes up at least 30% of the market and it does not make this easy; we moved away from using threads because of how complicated vBulletin had made it. We must continue supporting vBulletin 3&4 for the life of VW4.

Can each way of doing VW discussions be an option? That way you could keep it how you have it now or do it in this other fashion we're talking about. Or maybe if it's only possible to program the new way for XF, it could just be an additional feature of the XF Vaultwiki version?

(Also I'm going to hold off launching my wiki until the discussions thing is sorted. It would be AWESOME to launch it with the kind of forum integration I discussed earlier.)

Pegasus how do you see the thread idea working? If you outline how you want to do it I'd love to give some feedback and consult with my team to get theirs as well so you have a range of opinions.

I think that the vbulletin marketshare will shrink rather fast as it becomes more and more incompatible with new versions of PHP, MySQL, the editor, YUI issues and as vulnerabilities are discovered. Fixing the current issues already means turning of essential vb functions. Sites will be forced to move away from vbulletin within the next year. Its quite likely that hackers will now try harder to find vulnerabilities as they know exploits will not be patched. That should make any webmaster very uncomfortable.

I would really like to see an option to store wiki comments in XenForo forum.
I dont want my wiki section to die, but no one is posting in wiki comments anymore.

I don't foresee the discussion thing being "sorted" in a minor point release. I would advise against holding back your launch on that account, as you might be waiting several months or longer for a stable version that includes it.

Regarding how the "thread idea" would work (as far as it's based on your idea):

- Rather than (or as an optional alternative to) current discussions (maybe an option; I haven't decided yet). Have a box on the wiki page labelled "Related Forum Threads". These threads are actually in a forum. Above that box, a "Post New Thread" button. It would require the user to pick a forum to place the thread inside. The forum choices could vary depending on an area setting. The standard thread-creation process would be used.

- You can expand the "Related Forum Threads" box to a list view to see all the threads that are related to the page, regardless of forum.
- Of course, the thread appears in the actual forum it is in, as well.

- In the thread view (which would be the standard thread view), at the top (near where the wiki integration box is), there would be a visible notice (not sure yet on the styling): "This thread relates to the wiki page (NAME OF PAGE - linked)." Also showing the page icon and description from the page.

- When creating a new thread from the forum view (not the wiki page), you can have a new option in the editor (provided the current forum is listed as a related-thread forum in at least 1 area). "Related Wiki Page". With a chooser of relatable wiki pages (similar to the wiki's category chooser).

- For already existing forum threads that are not yet related, you can have a different notice / button at the top (again, provided a forum-area link is found). "Suggest a Related Wiki Page". Then a moderator can approve whether or not the related-link should be made.

Theoretically, we could add support not only to forum threads, but also Resource Manager Resources, XFMG galleries, etc. On the wiki page they would have different headings "Related Resources" "Related Galleries" etc.

I really think this satisfies what you are looking for.

It doesn't solve anything for the main discussion on a page, but my understanding is you prefer to disable that anyway, because it would only appear on the wiki page, regardless of its internal data-format. It also doesn't address the current handling topic-based wiki discussion, which you may have still wanted to use for discussion of editing the wiki page itself. I still need to think more on these.

I'll wait, it's important for me that people understand how to use the wiki's social aspects from the get-go. My website is 15 years old, I'm in this for the longrun and can wait a little more!

This sounds great! However, the only thing I would caution against is making it an actual box or putting it on the side. I think people would ignore it.

Check out one of my news stories here with our custom WP/XF integration:
http://www.pokebeach.com/2018/01/buzzwole-from-sm5. My news story is integrated with a thread on the forum, which is posted in our "Pokemon Trading Card Game" subforum. See on the right side how there's a "Pokemon Trading Card Game" box and lists recent forum threads from that forum?

Well, no one pays attention to those threads or that box. I'll post a news story that literally tens of thousands read and the view count of those threads will go up like 10. People are only interested in the content on the main portion of the page. I'll admit that I myself don't even look at things to the side of news stories on other websites, I'm just looking at the meat.

But what people DO pay attention to is the thread under the news story. After they're done scrolling through the meat, they see the comments and the discussion and they participate.

I think whatever we do here, the discussions and thread creation should be more "in yo face." Perhaps under the wiki page, you see almost a subforum layout. Maybe it goes further than a subforum and shows the full-blown first posts, then you can click a link to see the responses and go to those threads. It would be more enticing to participate that way and engage the users, in my opinion. Make it feel "active" and "alive."

I also think the new thread creation tool should load right away -- again, in yo face, enticing you to make a thread. You just fill-in the topic, contents, tags, etc., then post and it takes you to your forum thread. The power of creation is all right there, right away. I would put it before the list of threads too.

Love this idea! My only concern would be that it might "break" the feel of the forum if there's an extra box on top, like people might ignore it because it's something "extra" or "abnormal" or might view it as "messy" (not sure I'm describing what I mean clearly). I might suggest injecting that note within the actual first post of the thread since people will immediately register it within the post. Everyone knows what the first post of a thread is and how to read it, so if you have that note before the post content starts (where the first line of a post would be), I think that would work. It would just be included before the post content starts in the HTML and be formatted in the same style as the post itself. Almost like the user wrote it themselves at the beginning of their post.

My staff thought the users "linking up" the threads to the wiki pages from the forums was the single most concerning thing, since people aren't always on top of it (though mods can certainly make sure they are). Perhaps it could auto-suggest pages based on the content of their post, then they have to pick a tag or two before it lets their thread be made? Some subforums this could be mandatory, others it could be optional. Maybe other people could even tag the threads directly in the threads or from the subforum view. Maybe just a text box and you begin typing keywords, it lists the wiki pages, then adds them, or something (like when adding tags in Wordpress).

I went back and forth 10 times on this, but here's what I now think about editing discussions.

I think all editing discussions should also be stored on the forum. In other words, I don't think VW should have any commenting system at all. I don't think any discussion threads should be in the VW navigation pages either since it's messy and confusing. In fact, on an unrelated note, I think those navigation pages should be completely redone to be some kind of organized hierarchy thing, like a menu you can organize in Wordpress. But that's another discussion.

I think on the wiki page you should click an "Editing Comments" tab that creates a thread for that page in a designated forum for that page's area. That way, people can click the tab on the wiki page if they need to discuss something about the page and people on the forums who are interested in maintaining the wiki will also see there is a discussion going on. Upon making this thread, it would always be linked to that tab. Clicking the link takes you to the regular forum thread, but it'll have your aforementioned box at the top or as I suggested within the body of the first post, saying "This is the editor's discussion thread for <wiki page>."

I think what's nice about doing it this way is that it keeps the thread out of the way of normal users, who don't care about the editing. Truth is, only a small percentage of people will want to edit a wiki, let alone talk about a specific page. And if they're already smart enough to edit, they'll know where to participate in the editing discussion.

I'm not sure if areas or individual pages need multiple discussions on any wiki, as I'm still starting mine. But if they do, we could take ideas from how we're doing user-generated threads for the wiki pages and apply it here, where maybe the "Editing Comments" tab lists the related editing discussion threads and you can also make a new one quickly and easily.

You have created a fantastic piece of software Pegasus! Keep it up! It can only get better!