Forum:Message walls
I haven't been on this wiki in a long time. In that time, I've been trying out other wikis, and most of them have message walls and article comments. I personally find that message walls are easier and I'm neutral with article talk pages. There seems to have been a discussion in the past about how "Message walls seemed to promote socialising more than they did for the wiki itself," which is why we don't have message walls on this wiki. User pages weren't 100% designed to help the wiki. They were designed as communication tools. It's one of the few places on this wiki where you can socialize without breaking policies. It'll make socializing easier. I think that we should have some debate over this. For those of you who aren't familiar with message walls, check mine out at Community Central.
Some points:
Message wall pros:
- Only admins can delete other user's messages & replies.
- Easier on devices where you can't use VisualEditor.
- It's simpler.
- Instead of following the whole page, you can follow individual threads.
- You can give kudos.
Message wall cons:
- All previous messages might be deleted.
- Not as advanced as user talk pages.
- Hard to navigate. There won't be a table of contents.
This may be kinda unclear (because I didn't have much time to think about this), so leave a message if you have any questions. Anonymoustyd (talk) 06:48, June 9, 2014 (UTC)
- No actually, this is quite clear and thank you for starting a discussion. Sorry I haven't been able to give you a reply even though I was the one who asked you to bring this to the forums.
- In my experience with Message Walls, I'm not really pleased at what they've been doing for a wiki that serves more as a database for information rather than a casual place for conversation such as the fanfiction wiki. Message Walls and the new wiki-style forums don't take wiki code too well. If I leave a message demonstrating how a piece of wiki code works to a new user on the new style forums or Message Walls, there's an off chance it doesn't show up properly. This isn't the case with talk pages, where the page is treated like a wiki page, and code can often format properly.
- Message Walls also don't seem compatible with mobile devices - I mean, I can view them just fine, but they don't let me edit threads to reply to them, even when I'm logged in. I hope that will change some day.
- On an off note, I really love the new wiki-style forums and was thinking about starting a discussion to activate those on this wiki. They're really good for highlighting threads to all users without having to manually go to their talk page (and basically pick and choose who you want to alert) as well as creating nice Nitrome-centric forums pertaining to a particular type of game. But I suppose that is not the priority for this wiki, so it must be let go for now.
Random-storykeeper 
08:42, June 20, 2014 (UTC)
Ehh, as charming as they might be, I'd rather prefer we didn't have message walls primarily because of navigation issues, the code as Random-storykeeper mentioned, and they do appear less formal in setup than talkpages. (FYI, I have used message walls quite a bit on other wikis.)
Even though I see what you are getting at with socializing aspect, I don't really see how message walls would really encourage socializing. Even though it would organize talk pages to appear more open, the fact is they are contributed as much as talk pages are. Also, we have the chat which is used primarily for socializing and blog post which alternate between official wiki matters and personal posts.
In short, I really don't believe we need message walls but thank you for opening the discussion.
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120927002508/neutronized/images/thumb/d/d1/Sharky!.png/150px-Sharky!.png Grammar Cat (talk)
