Discussion Forums + Wikis = Wetpaint

Posted by Alex on November 8th, 2007 7 Comments

When you think about it, discussion forums haven’t fundamentally changed that much in the past ten years. True, there have been some nice iterations, but one can argue they’ve been products of evolution rather than revolution. Sticky posts are now fairly common, as are WYSIWYG editing capabilities. Administrative controls have certainly improved, and new technologies like AJAX have spurred interface designers and developers on to achieve (arguably mixed) results. However, many of the problems of the original boards persist to this day. Why is that? If content is “King,” and message board and wiki pages produce content, why hasn’t a better model presented itself?

Let’s break down the chief problems of old-school discussion forums.

Discussion forums can be an information discovery — and design — nightmare. For starters, finding relevant posts is generally the definition of tedium. Sifting through post after post — or worse, searching for a specific post — is time-consuming. Second, finding the right place to post your own query or content when initially joining a message board community can be a punishing and daunting proposition. Many a new community member has been reprimanded for posting in the wrong place. (I’m still smarting from a somewhat recent experience on a James Bond Fan discussion board: “Don’t post that there, post here!” A fine “How-do-you-do,” indeed!) Want to follow a particular topic, including existing threads and future ones? Good luck, friend! You’ve just committed yourself to continually surf through page after page of threads or watch all going categories (and don’t forget the emerging ones). Who’s got the time?

Lastly, discussion forums and content sites are often siloed. Content resides in this tab, discussion forums that tab. No matter that the content is highly related — it’s managed by a different application, housed at a different URL, and often administered by another user account. Yeesh.

The above-detailed gripes were but some of the foundational disappointments we sought to address when we set out to enhance the comments and replies functionality of the Wetpaint wiki platform. So how did we rise to the challenge?

Forthwith, the top five message board-ish problems we identified and our answering solutions:

Problem #1: As readers of this blog no doubt know, Wetpaint has from its beginning provided free hosted wiki applications, one that features blog-style page commenting functionality. But, while they have their place, we think associated page-level comments are more appropriate for augmenting news updates and “soap box” moments. We acknowledged that there was no centralized area on our wikis to engage site-level discourse.

Our Solution: One-stop shopping for threads. We integrated a new global area on every Wetpaint wiki to capture and organize all comment threads: the Discussion Forum was born. This area dashboards all threads from across the site, including page- and user-profile-associated threads, as well as free-agent global threads that simply live in the forum. The Discussion Forum provides easy access to most recent comments and most active threads.

Problem #2: Finding the right post in a long thread can be a needle-in-a-haystack affair.

Our Solution: First we added the ability for our keyword-happy users to tag their posts for relevance. Not content to stop there, we created a super-handy conversion tool that allows posters to export the entire contents of meaty conversation threads to wiki pages. Yes, threads, thanks to a couple of clicks, can now be converted into editable wiki pages. Once converted to a wiki page, erstwhile threads can be easily pruned of textual noise to create a handy and perennial summary of the discussion. If dialogue on the converted thread continues (threads are not closed upon conversion for this reason), it can simply be resaved as a page again.

Problem #3: Posting a new thread in the wrong place leads to messy boards, incremental cleanup for moderators, and censure from other members.

Our Solution: Every Wetpaint thread has a native location on the site, but this location need not be permanent. Threads can be associated with a content page, a user’s profile page, or be “global.” Want to move a thread from a content page to a discussion area? No problem. Move it just like you would a wiki page.

Problem #4: Content and discussions are siloed.

Our Solution: Wetpaint threads, like content pages, can be tagged. The most obvious benefits of tagging functionality are keyword search and tag-based browsing. We decided to go a step further. If a page and thread are tagged with the same tags (ex: “Bond girls,” and “Pussy Galore”), a link between the thread and page is automatically created. A poor man’s CMS? Maybe. A handy way to kick down the artificial walls that often exist between community features? You bet.

Problem #5: Following discussions on certain topics takes work. You might be able to get updates on selected threads, but keeping apprised of new threads is a manual task.

Our Solution: We’ve enabled Moderators on Wetpaint sites to create keyword groupings. Keyword groupings are essentially user-generated queries. Want to follow any and all threads tagged with “Goldfinger” and “Odd-job”? Create a keyword grouping that includes those tags and all associated threads will thereafter appear in a handy-dandy reference list. You can even decide if corresponding threads need to match just one or all of the tags you specify.

Is the end product of our Wetpaint Wiki discussion forum 2.0 endeavor perfect? Of course not. Is it fraught with usability issues? Probably a couple. We look forward to hearing from our communities and engaging a set of design and functionality tweaks inspired by their feedback. A few things are on deck already. We’re looking into adding WYSIWYG editing capabilities and widget embedding to posts, for example. We’d also like to improve the algorithm used to determine which pages get flagged as related content.

In the final analysis, have we created a better discussion forum? We think so. We hope you agree!

Keyword Tags: General

Comments

[...] Wetpaint wiki have announced two innovative new features in their free hosted wikis. The first of these offers a great way to organise comments from your wiki pages onto a central discussion forum. The wiki discussion forum allows you or your readers to access comment threads from the forum in three ways: [...]

By allthewikis.com » Wetpaint wiki: new features Nov 07 on November 9th, 2007 at 3:15 am

Great job on adding the Discussion Forums feature. This will help out greatly!

cheers,
Jeff

By Jeff on November 10th, 2007 at 9:54 pm

hi,

are there any plans to have a pro version / an account upgrade in wetpaint? i love the functionality, but i’d love to have an ad-free version because i’d like to use it in an education context (and cant have students and faculty staring at ads)
bye

a.e.a

ps: your solutions to those problems are really great, which is why we have started experimenting with wetpaint. some pro features (like change permissions for multiple users at the same time) are missing though

By a.e. acar on November 21st, 2007 at 4:39 am

Great Job! > Thanks for the New Features (Especially Discussion Forums) they will be very helpful.

Josh

By Josh on November 23rd, 2007 at 8:14 am

Hello my friends

By agiguefientaP on April 10th, 2008 at 3:20 pm

I’m the only one in this world. Can please someone join me in this life? Or maybe death…

By Proodysnisy on April 23rd, 2009 at 2:50 pm

Hey Folks

I’ve been passive on this forum for a while now, so here goes my first post! a great site I’ve found for Wallpapers etc. is Esnips.com I’ve found everything on my list…

let me know what you think!, Hope this helps

Cheers

By soamuhthant on June 11th, 2009 at 4:06 pm

freshcoats, the wetpaint blog

Discussion Forums + Wikis = Wetpaint

Comments

Post a Comment

Start a Free Wiki

Recent Posts

Archives by Date

Archives by Category

freshcoats Feed