A few people now have suggested that article comments should be disabled in favor of talk (discussion) pages. There are pros and cons to both--for instance, comments are easier to use and therefore invite more discussion, but talk pages are more likely to be a more "professional" environment (i.e. focused on improving the article as opposed to talking about its topic)--which is why I've created this thread to bring the discussion of this issue to the community. I'd like to know how people using the wiki as editors and/or readers feel about this. I'm personally in favor of disabling comments and having this wiki use talk pages, in large part because I really want to try to foster an environment that encourages creation and improvement of our material.
It should be noted that if comments are switched off, we need to figure out a good replacement area for the "talking about the article's topic" type of comments. I'd say forums would be a good replacement (especially with some sprucing up), but then that brings us to our next topic...
the potential future of forums and message walls.
This topic is mostly about whether or not article comments should be switched off, but I thought it was a worthy topic to bring up forums and message walls since a previous admin (Josephyr, now retired) mentioned preferring user talk pages and the previous incarnation of forums as opposed to walls and the current forums (these forums), though he saw the use in what we're using now (easier for the end-user to participate in if they're not technically inclined, etc.).
It's quite possible the forum extension in use now will eventually be replaced with the Discussions extension, but that's not in use now so... Either way, I'm personally of the mind that walls and forums should not be disabled because they have more useful features for both improving the wiki and discussion in general than comments do and are easier to use for things like quickly notifying users and such. It's possible that might change/need to be revisited if the Discussions extension ever comes about but yeah.
In short:
- How do you feel about the idea of disabling comments in favor of talk pages (for discussion of article content/improvement)?
- Can you think of a better place than the forums for discussion of article topics (i.e. excitement over WIR2, how cute Vanellope is, etc.)? Or is the forums the best place?
- Do you have any opinion about forums/message walls? You don't have to have one--this topic is mostly about whether article comments should be switched off, so if you only want to share your opinion about that, that's fine.
If this topic receives little to no discussion by a week from now, article comments will be disabled and replaced with talk pages, but message walls/these forums will not be disabled and will continue to function as-is.
(I may need to edit this later because part of it isn't reading right to me, but I'm putting it up lest I forget to for several months again.)