Thread:Nusdan/@comment-5645428-20170130082553/@comment-5645428-20170130145535

Alright, I've done a run of stuff and am in the zone.

We're still waiting on some conclusion to that whole profanity discussion. We need this so we can refine the policy surrounding the issue.

Since you've taken to scripts and that, can you find or have one developed that can have the forum spring cleaned prior to our shift to Discussions? I sent an email a while back to Fandom staff and got a thoroughly detailed response from the kind Eva Niroomand. I think it's worth a read.

Mira Laime, Jan 13, 1:59 AM UTC:

Hi Hackey5,

If your community requests to have Discussions enabled, you'll have the chance to try it out and develop a moderation routine before the forums are merged and closed - this could give you an advantage and make the transition smoother.

We're still working on many features that the forums have and that Discussions currently doesn't have (topics, quoting, highlighted threads, text formatting, etc.), but it's not quite decided how many we can finish for Discussions before the merge. You may be aware of why we need to close the forums: They're very time-consuming and complex to maintain, and since they're not very mobile-friendly or searchable, we lose potential user views while they are around. So we can't afford to wait until Discussions is absolutely complete before closing the forums.

However, the most important features will be in Discussions before forums are closed, for example on-site notifications and a way to highlight posts for all users. The notifications should be out in a month or two, though I don't want to promise a specific date. The merge will not happen before then.

This is how the merge will happen: All forum content will be copied over, including any posts that you delete until then. The deleted posts will appear deleted in Discussions as well, and you could restore them, if you wanted to. Your boards will be transferred to Discussions categories. It's not clear yet how exactly that will work, but most likely you'll have a new category for each board, and it's then up to your admin team to consolidate and rename those categories as you see fit.

In case topics aren't ready by the time the merge happens, you won't need to do anything about those. But the information is stored, so if we release a Discussions equivalent to topics later, all the thread topics that were there before will reappear.

A Discussions-type replacement for Message Walls is still far off, and we have no concrete plans for that yet. And please note: Depending on the amount of forum content you have, the merging process won't take long. It could be as quick as a few minutes, or take several hours, but it won't take longer than that to move everything over. Once it's done, your forums will be closed.

I'm afraid we can't help with mass-deleting threads. But if you're interested in using a bot, and don't quite know how, why not ask for advice on the forums on Community Central: http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Board:Support_Requests_-_Getting_Technical ? If any users have done something like this before or are knowledgeable about bots, they will help you there.

Best,

Eva Niroomand Community Support Manager