Thread:がか/@comment-24851773-20171129200219/@comment-5275700-20171215205917

Hello! I'd like to provide some answers and offer some suggestions.

Regarding the capabilties of Discussions, we do expect to add standard text formatting in the future (bold, embedded links, etc.) But it's not likely that Discussions will have wikitext integration and template rendering, or full HTML capabilties.

The Discussions user interface will continue to evolve, though I don't think the main post list(s) will ever have the same content density as the forum boards do (seeing 10 on the screen vs 3, etc.)

It's also unlikely that we will support direct editing of the Discussons CSS and JS files the way that we do for wiki pages.

So, with all that said, what is the best solution for this communtiy?

The Forum content will eventually be migrated to Discussions, that much is certain. And we will have a feature that replaces Forum's 'highlight' function.

For threaded conversations that have full wikitext/HTML formatting available, the wiki-style forum will be the best option. These will also be fully customizable with CSS and JS since they are wiki pages.

Normally those forums are set up at Forum:Index but that's not a requirement. The Forum namespace will remain archived and editable only to admins until Special:Forum is disabled, but the wiki-style forums can be in another namespace. This way you could set them up now and begin a transition.

Discussions can then serve more as a place for new/casual users to engage, especially those who use the mobile app. It can be a placed for editor recruitment and maybe some fun interactions. We will be adding a new poll feature to Discussions soon which may also have many uses for both the editors and readers.

As my colleague said, we can enable Discussions at any time, the Forum migration can come later.

Let me know what you think of the "wiki style forum + Discussions" vision for the future. I suspect it may be the best option for this community.