Discussions migration is a process of moving from a Forum to Discussions.
How to migrate[]
Contact Fandom Staff via Special:Contact to request the migration. Be sure to include the name of your community (wiki).
Migrated content[]
Migrating a Forum to Discussions means "transferring" its contents to Discussions.
- All posts, threads and boards are migrated
- Forum Boards become additional Discussions categories and will contain all the same posts
- Kudos become upvotes
- Topics (names of associated articles) technically remain, but are not visible
- Users who were watching a Forum thread will be following the Discussions post
- Forum URLs redirect to Discussions; the thread URL will redirect to the post's new Discussions URL, board URLs become redirected to the specific URL for the new category, Special:Forum becomes redirected to Discussions
- Removed/deleted posts/replies are migrated and show in Discussions as deleted, which means they are only visible to moderators and administrators
Potential technical issues[]
When a forums post is migrated, its HTML is reproduced in a Discussions post. Therefore, some content has attributes—italic, bold, links embedded in text, et cetera, and these cannot be managed in the current Discussions editor. Administrators and moderators should not edit the migrated posts unless absolutely necessary, because then the posts will be stripped of HTML markup and revert to plain text. However, the post will not be stripped if the only thing changed is the category.
Potential social issues[]
Discussions' placement on the mobile Fandom app opens it up to a wide audience, which may be unfamiliar with the processes that wikis use to operate on a day-to-day basis. This can be problematic during meta discussions about wikis, their rules, and their staff. For example, while it is completely possible to replicate a dedicated Consensus Track board on the 2.0 Forums on Discussions, the ultra-accessible nature of the platform may result in some confusion among new users as to the purpose and format of consensus decisions.
The above issues might be solved by posting educational information about Fandom and the way it works, as well as increasing wiki awareness.
Some administrators may think that Discussions mean more work for them. Actually, they should appoint a Discussions Moderator instead of assuming they absolutely have to work on Discussions.
Users who are used to Special:Forum might resist the migration and may consider Discussions an inferior product. Every wiki should handle the matter individually, while keeping it in mind that Discussions are a new product that can be a tool to atrract new editors and build a healthy community. Discussions are mobile-compatible, while forums are not, and they have multiple features that can be used by both desktop and mobile users. Due to mobile traffic being significant on Fandom and everywhere else, wikis should take that into account.
Examples[]
The following posts are examples of Forum posts migrated to Discussions: