Category setting: new topics are wiki by default

Wiki posts are awesome, especially for categories like documentation and FAQ. It would be sweet if a category could be set up so that new topics are wiki by default. Currently you’d have to have an admin (moderator?) notice the new post and wikify it.

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Sounds like a good default setting for this forum’s HOWTO category.

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I am putting a status planned on this, its a very simple change, has a lot of people who want it and would fit easily into the category settings.

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Would it be similarly easy to always go to the first post when there are no unread replies?

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Sure, maybe simply call it “wiki mode” and do both, seems like the correct way it should work.

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I just put 2 and 2 together. From the “topic mentions” thread:

If the search set was reduced to “all topics in a WIki Mode Category” then a)it would have a very clear use case and b)would make constructing inter-linked wikis much easier.

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Can I ask how do you track or count how many people want this? A separated trello board? Document? Spreadsheet? Search with some strange operator? :slight_smile: how do you update it?

To me this one is in the “very easy to build” category, also a logical thing to add to category edit preferences. I don’t know that I’ve heard the request a lot.

This is just what I was looking for for my own how-to category.

I would like to expand on this a bit.

There is an open “theme of questions” about how do we “watch” wikis for changes, I think wiki category can cover this.

In particular, when a category is in wiki mode

  • All new topics created in category have the OP as wiki

  • Every edit to the OP wiki, makes the system add a system message like so:

(also link directly to the revision)

  • When click on the topic from topic list (if you have no new notifications) it always takes you to the OP vs last post.

Showing edits in the stream would solve the problem of giving wikis visibility as they are edited, something that is biting me quite a bit with our current usage of wikis. If people don’t like the loud they can simply stop tracking the wiki.

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Wait what problem is being solved for here? I don’t understand the problem / pain point?

  1. No visibility on wiki edits from front page when there is more than 1 post in the topic.
  2. No way to track a wiki for changes
  3. Usability of going to actual wiki from front page for pinned wikis is not ideal cause you are always transported to last post.
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I think this deserves its own feature discussion topic not being buried in some other topic…

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Two related topics / feature requests:

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Want to add my support for this feature. At my job we are currently converting a MediaWiki instance to Discourse, in hopes that we can increase its use. The wiki is our knowledge base and has become very outdated. We’re hoping that by switching to a more modern, interactive platform like Discourse we can get more staff to add and update info. Having most categories default to wiki is key as we need everyone to be able to collaborate on articles without needing a moderator to wiki the topic each time.

I’d also love to see @Tom_Newsom’s idea that users go to the first post when there are no unread replies, but defaulting new topics to wiki is critical.

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Yes that is something that bothers me when using wiki posts as FAQ. I’d love to see both discussed features added.

Glad to see wiki posts are getting some love!

Any chance to get this (the category setting feature, there was a lot of other discussion here that seems more complicated) scheduled for a release?

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Very curious about that. How did you do that? My community still asks me to don’t use Discourse wiki posts because they’re too poor of feature compared with other wikis