Often the writing of an article needs some discussion, brainstorming on forehand or just a mention that a certain topic needs to be covered.
Does Vaultwiki have some kind of solution for this? What is the standard way to deal with this?
I used to have a Wiki discussion forum, but I am considering to delete that, as all discussion related to existing articles has been moved to the article discussion itself.
Currently there is no separate discussion for requests/plans that is separate from regular user comments like "Great article!"
If you want to create/keep a separate forum area to discuss what's to be done, by all means do so. If you don't think it will be necessary, or doesn't deserve a separate forum, then maybe there are other options. For example, maybe you would suggest that all wiki editors join one of vBulletin's social groups, and you use the social groups discussions.
We left this relatively open for now, because many admins have different ideas on managing or delegating tasks like this.
I do have a wiki writers social group. But I currently have a number of threads in my forum that relate to 'upcoming articles'. Its not possible to move threads between groups and forum.
My question only relates to such discussion where there is no article yet.
Is there a Special: function for upcoming articles or requested articles? If yes: how does that work?
There is Special:Wantedpages. This is simply a list that is populated whenever someone links to an article that doesn't already exist. It lists all wiki links that don't have content at the other end.
There is no way to add discussions to this page, but it is definitely a page you can reference in your discussions.
There is also Special:Lonelypages. This lists all pages that do exist but aren't linked to in any other wiki pages. Articles that are in categories or books might still be listed here.
There is also Special:Deadendpages. This lists all pages that do exist but don't link to any other wiki pages.
Special:Doubleredirects lists redirects that need fixing because there's too many in a row.
Special:Brokenredirects lists redirects that don't go anywhere.
In terms of Special: functions that have to do with wiki health, this is all I can remember for now. You can get a complete list of functions at Special:Specialpages.
Thats awesome stuff. My staff will love this.