Issue: functionality/design/appearance that makes clear that a wiki discussion is different from a forum thread.

Since VW4 article discussions are a separate content type from threads, they will not show up in the normal 'new post' and 'whats new' functions as they currently do. They will have their own separate functions where it's already clear 'whats new in the wiki' or something like that.

This is the main solution to your problem. I see now there are two sides to the multiple discussion argument, but I feel that once users recognize that the discussions are not normal threads, it will be easier to deal with off-topic comments if you have multiple discussions, since there will be more appropriate places to put certain kinds of comments.

I will leave this open since we still need to add the 'whats new' functionality when we do the search integrations.

If wiki articles and discussion would no longer come up in the 'whats new' function, then activity will plunge.
By way of comparison: on my basically no one uses blog, photopost, documents, videos. Simply for one reason: users do not encounter it in their normal browsing experience. I'm pretty sure that this change would cause a 90% activity drop.

I feel like you misinterpreted what I posted. There would still be a 'whats new' function for the wiki, but it would be a separate link than the one that shows new forum posts -

Unfortunately vBulletin 3 does not have a mechanism to show multiple kinds of 'whats new' results on one page automatically. I believe this is possible in vBulletin 4 due to the changes they made to the search system, but either way, as a separate content type, VaultWiki needs to add its own search functions and links, including 'whats new'.

Hi,

I am currently reviewing the forum to see whether out site would benefit from this product.

I came across this thread and have interest in understanding clearly what the situation is.

I have yet to isntall the product so I'm not sure.

Am i right in reading that currently in VW3, new wiki activity is displayed on the forums what's new link? - Now you are planning on removing this function and replacing it with VW specific whats new, effectily seperating the two?

If this is correct, could you make it an option for us the customer to choose whether we want new wiki activity to be displayed in forums whats new or not? - I as Alfa feel that if its removed, activity within the wiki will decrease.

Thanks
B

I have new content buttons for photopost, vb albums, social groups, documents, videos, etc. Unfortunately practically no one uses that. People will not click different buttons for each content type. 95% of the users on my big board only use the forums 'new post' button.

I assure you that if you do not include wiki content in vbulletin 4 its 'whats new', then wiki activity will take a nosedive. Unless you find alternative solutions to increase new content discovery.

I understand that vb3 does not allow any integration of non-vb content types with vb's 'new posts' function. The only solution for vb3 may be to use vbadvanced modules to serve up a new real time content feed. a la i-spy.

To be clear, we are not removing this functionality for the sake of removing it. But we are moving the wiki content to its own data tables as has been planned and coded for the past 2 years now.

In vBulletin 3 there is no way to accomplish what you ask. Again, due to the way the search system was designed, and due to VaultWiki 4 now saving its content in its own tables, this is just not possible. I am looking at vBulletin 4 now, and it seems there is also no way to show results of different content types in one list. Instead it looks like this:

[What's New]
New Posts - New Group Messages - New Events - New [CMS] Articles - New Blog Entries - New Wiki Pages - New Wiki Comments

Here, the "What's New" link defaults to the first option, and once you are on that page you see the other options on the first line. Short of asking vBulletin to change their system again to show multiple types of results in one list (which, coded properly, could have been done), this is the best we can do.

I think the solution lies in digitalpoints his sphinx search product. Its a $20 bucks product so anyone can afford it. It does need sphinx to be installed on the server.
Sphinx allows other content types to be included. How about creating a sphinx addon for VW4?

IIRC, I don't think it's necessary to have a VW4 sphinx add-on if you are using digitalpoint's solution, at least in vBulletin 4. If there's one for vBulletin 3, I'm not familiar with it.

Please explain. By default DP's Sphinx addon will not show VW4 content. Or am I missing something?
Maybe you can release a modification to the DP sphinx product that will include VW4 content into the vb new posts feed.

What I mean is that I believe digitalpoint's product should be able to index all searchable content types automatically (in the contenttype table there is a field 'cansearch'). If this works correctly, there should be no need for a plugin unless we have custom fields other than userid, title, text, etc that we want to be searchable. We just need to have our search classes written as we would have to anyway for vBulletin 4.

However, this is based on what I remember, the product could have been changed since last year or I could be mistaken. And the more I think about it, I imagine that our fields have somewhat unorthodox naming and storage conventions, so a plugin would probably be needed after all.

Okay with all the "Discussion for Page: X" nonsense, it would be pretty hard for a user to confuse these search results with a regular thread now. Marking as complete for 4.0.0 Alpha 1.