Hi @Moviesign
I want to ask about and give feedback on the Fandom tools like Discuss, WikiActivity, SocialActivity, etc. A lot of these feel really clumsy and unpolished/unfinished. This is frustrating for me because I'm here every day to answer questions, and it makes doing so a lot harder.
I imagine the developers always have their hands full, but if they don't get feedback then they won't know what could improve, so I feel it's worth the effort. Hopefully this is received as feedback and not just criticism. Though some will be criticism -- these issues sometimes drive me crazy.
Discuss
This feature still has no connection to the rest of the wiki, so a link to another page in the wiki is the same as any external link. That's still a terribly missed feature.
The auto link preview panels are annoying and I'd like to turn them off. It's also frustrating that they're listed in the opposite order they're added, so if I link to Boba Fett, then Concussion Missiles, then to one YASB list, then to another YASB list, they'll all be in the wrong order and that's both unhelpful and sometimes confusing. I find myself just deleting them usually.
Overall, there's just no quality of life connection to the wiki in Discuss, not links nor templates etc. The only connection is being listed in SocialActivity and being under articles; otherwise it's just a totally separate feature from the rest of the wiki.
I'd also love to be able to thumbs-up/commend/heart people's comments in the discussions under articles, but that's removed on article discussions, sadly.
And in both the forum and article discussions, the text area itself is... weird.
As an example of a weird "feature" (or bug?) that confuses and drives me crazy in my daily use, try this:
Write a sentence like this.
Select text in the sentence.
Tap space.
Instead of replacing that text with a space like literally all other text editors on the internet and in traditional apps, Discuss has decided the spacebar deselects text. So if I hit space to start typing replacement text, the text I wanted to replace is still there, plus the new text. This constantly catches me by surprise because, again, literally nothing else out there works like this. I do a lot of typing on and off the wiki, and this bizarre discrepancy in behavior is a constant annoyance.
I'm guessing it happens because they trim the incoming text (e.g. to trim the whitespace off text being pasted in), and this rule also applies to single key presses, which means space comes in as an empty string and just deselects the text as an error? I don't know, but as a programmer I suspect it's something along those lines. But it could also be a moon-logic feature someone thought was brilliant.
Another complaint is CTRL+K is the hotkey to create a link when editing an article, but not in Discuss. Not sure there even is a hotkey.
WikiActivity
This feature is amazingly slow. 10 to 15 seconds feels like a DB query optimization problem. It's essentially displaying the same information and RecentChanges, but less of it? So it may have been hastily thrown together to try to help users who wanted it, but never revisited to get the DB query right.
I was initially grateful for the effort, but WikiActivity hasn't been improved since it was added long ago, and that makes it feel like an abandoned half-effort. Ultimately it should be solving the design problem of RecentChanges by formatting the data cleanly, but between too little info displayed and being surprisingly slow, it's just hard to use in its own way.
SocialActivity
BTW I'm talking about Special:SocialActivity, not Special:WikiActivity/feeds (which never successfully loads).
Along with Discuss, this is the feature I use the most. I'm mainly focused on answering questions, giving advice and encouragement, and trying to convince people to not bring their angry politics here. :) I occasionally add or improve articles, but many times a day I visit SocialActivity to watch for people needing help (my browser bookmark goes straight there because of that focus).
One frustration is it feels a bit like a wall of text. It can be visually exhausting. It really needs to be organized into a table. This can be done without needing to take up a ton of space, and it would solve a lot of problems.
Second frustration, the main thing I need to interact with is the "(view)" link at the end of every entry. However, since it's at the end of whatever other text is being barfed out, the position of the view link dances all over the page from line to line.
IMO it'd be worth it to have the timestamp or the icon next to it be the same link as view (instead of static text). Or use a very simple, compact table format to structure this page (and RecentChanges) so each piece of information is always in the same place per line.
Third frustration, edits and new posts look the same save for a couple of different words. I have to pay close attention to that because we have some users who post, and then edit their post 5+ times. :D Italicizing edits or making their background or row border a different color or... something would help a lot here.
Following some basic design principles would help a lot here. Where does the eye go? How can we densely compress information but keep it readable? What organization is least exhausting and most useful? etc. It feels like wikis are often designed and run by programmers, and hey, I'm a programmer, I get it. But hire a proper designer and the difference will be amazing.
RecentChanges
Same complaints as SocialActivity, in that links and individual bits of info dance all over the page, and it's exhausting. There needs to be an extra line after each entry that previews the change (don't inline it -- that's part of what hurts SocialActivity's readability; put it on a new line). The preview often helps me tell at a glance if their change is helpful vs vandalism. When we talk about why we loved Special:WikiActivity so much, this is a big part of why (that and just having a much nicer design and organization of information).
I stopped trying to follow wiki changes when we got converted over, and haven't gone back. It's just too exhausting to visit and review this page regularly to watch for vandalism or bad changes etc. I've left that to others and focused on social stuff, and that page's design is enough work already.
Again, I know some of this is harsh critique and I don't want to be rude to the devs. I get that they're probably busting their butts to handle all kinds of stuff and put out fires, and some of this may sound petty in comparison. But to me it feels like fundamentals. IMO solving these issues will bring more people to the platform, and better retain them. And on a personal level, it'll make my day easier. :D