Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-5275700-20160130172633

Hello Marvel Database!

I’m here to check in with some questions and notes about the Discussions feature, and of course I’m happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Have no idea what I am talking about? Please see http://marvel.wikia.com/d/f/2233/

Discussions are a feature that's primarily found in the Marvel Community App right now, but there's a web version as well, as you can see.

My first general question is — how are things going? Have any of you used Discussions in the app? I would love to hear some general feedback and impressions. Both about the feature and about the app users that it’s made it possible to observe and connect with. These are also members of your community, though not very visible to most of you yet.

For any of you who have been participating in Discussions, are you finding them to be enjoyable and engaging? Are there differences from the types of conversations that happen in the on-wiki forum?

For those of you who have been moderating discussions, how has that been going? We’re on the cusp of releasing some tools to make moderation much easier, since right now moderators and admins can only delete and undelete single posts. But I would like to know if there are any common issues you're seeing.

Now, on to what’s coming up!

Moderation tools are high on our list, and so very shortly, we’ll be releasing “View all posts and replies” for a user (available to everyone) and “Delete all posts and replies” for a user (available to mods and admins). This will be in the web interface only right now, not coming to the apps until later in February, but web is where most of the moderation is happening right now. “View all posts and replies” is also a top request from the app users, of course.

Other moderation tools coming soon are locking posts to new replies (aka closing threads) and setting up a way for regular users to “report” content for review by mods and admins. That last one is pretty exciting, since it will be the first feature that expands beyond what we have now in the forum.

We’re also finishing up the early conceptual and design work on thread categorization (i.e. subsections, the equivalent of boards in the current forums). That will help users find existing threads more easily. There’s lots more coming up, too.

It's possible that more web users will be finding these Discussions soon, so moderation will become more important. Wikia staff has also been keeping an eye on things, but ideally users from the wiki community and this new app community can begin to connect more and come together as one. If any good moderator candidates emerge from the app user group, I can help you guys connect with them. Right now it can be challenging to contact them directly. The app users don’t always confirm their email addresses, and so won’t get notified about Message Wall posts.

Let me know if anyone has questions! Thanks. 