Current Options

1. Confluence supports threaded comments on pages and blog posts. Comments have many of the properties of a forum thread, such as being searchable, linkable, editable and contained in a content hierarchy. Rather than requiring the creation of long discussion threads for users to scan, wiki pages let users write a summary and answers straight into the page body. Users can easily blog for advice and write the answers up as an instructions page as well, then link pages under multiple topics via [content labels]. This makes wiki pages particularly useful for storing knowledge base, or question and answer entries.
   
   
2. The Community Bubbles plugin scheduled for release in late 2007 is slated to include a forum macro that lists all topics with their latest posts.
   
   
3. You can use an independent forum alongside Confluence and connect the two using standard links or even embed forums portlet inside Confluence pages using the include page macro. The Atlassian forums use Jive.

Feature Discussion

Guy Fraser of Adaptavist writes - This has been one of my long term wishlist features for Confluence.

Then, Jason Dillon made the mistake of rekindling my interest and strong desire to see some forum-like functionality added with this post on the conf-user list:

Um, is it just me or does the new comment handling for pages get confusing. I keep getting lost in page comments, especially when there are a lot of them.

Some suggestions:

1. Why not add a new tab to the page that holds the comments? That page view can then just be a terse threaded view by default, using DHTML you can open/close comments too. This basically turns the comments of a page into a forum topic. Perhaps you could even have multipule topics per page... in fact that would be idea, since there could potentially be several conversations going on about the same page at the same time.
2. Why not also have a nice "detach" mode, which is a nice little pop up, so you can browse the page content and view the comments side by side. I've never really been a fan of all of those comments att the bottom of the page. I mean I like them, its really nice to keep a record of conversations, but from a visual standpoint they kinda suck... and take away from the layout of the page. Yes I know I could hide them, but then I have to un-hide them when I'm interested... and well the entire process is just cumbersome, so I just leave them on all the time.

--jason

I then started writing a reply, and after an hour typing decided it was best suited to a page here in Confluence....

So, here's my email, tweaked to take advantage of Confluence formatting...

Current Functionality / Issues

Confluence already has "comments" which can be added to the bottom of a page. With a setting in "admin > general config", the site admin can force threaded or flat (sequential date order) mode across the entire site.

There are a few issues with the current implementation:

• It looks messy - a growing number of sites are going beyond the conventional wiki concept and attempting to make pages look nice. For example, this is Confluence: http://www.springone.com - recognise it?
• Navigation gets confusing (as Jason pointed out in his mail). The main reason is that long threads have some of their posts hidden to try and maintain some level of order on the main page. When you go and view the hidden comments, most of the other threads then get hidden making it difficult to keep track of where you are.

A quote from an email I just sent:

The issue was recently brought to the fore of my mind when reading the comments on the new "cache" plugin you uploaded and I guess that's what prompted you to make the post. Some comments are hidden, others are not, viewing the hidden ones hides some of the unhidden ones, etc.... Wah! head explodes We're going to end up needing breadcrumbs for comments.

Background

Myself, Dan Hardiker and David Peterson have all pondered over having some sort of forums feature in Confluence and have even discussed ideas for plugins, etc., but came to the conclusion that some new "content type" would probably be required to implement forums properly, for example:

As part of the whole "let's make news = pages with a 'news' label" debate, David posted this on the list:
click here for ideas from David

Jason's idea about multiple topics on a page (ie. more than one root node for the comments to a page) is one that really excites me (I really must get out more...) - I think that approach would work very well indeed!

In all my previous thinking, I'd envisaged a page as the "topic" (with comments like they are now as the posts in that topic), the parent page as the "forum" (containing many "topics"), and the forum's parent page as a "category" (containing many "forums"). Messy, which is why I stopped thinking about it.

However, Jason's idea means that any page is effectively a forum and can contain one or more topic threads. Genius!

The Future

Confluence is already a superb wiki + blog (and hopefully better if we can get news = pages with label of 'news') and the one missing piece of the puzzle currently, in my view, is something akin to forums.

Regarding making news = pages with a 'news' label:

In the early days, the very obvious distinction between news and wiki pages made a lot of sense. These days however, especially since the advent of labels, news would be much better implemented as pages with the "news" label. A separate "Chronological View" in the "Browse Space > Pages" tab would then allow viewing any date specific content (pages, attachments, comments) - why should such a great feature be restricted just to news? There are a vast number of other reasons - if you want to find out more, take a look at: CONF-4010

In a similar vein, having comments bolted on to the end of pages was a good idea at the start, but now seems to be looking rough round the edges as increased use is starting to cause problems. Perhaps as pages and news become more integrated, comments should become less intergrated (ie. still attached to pages, but getting a far more seperate visualisation)?

Management of Threads

One obvious requirement in my mind (having run a large forum with 10,000 users) is we'd certainly need more fine-grained permissions. In normal forums software, you can set different permissions for different forums and I think that would be a key requirement here. Something like Space Channels would make it relatively easy to do (at least from the end user's perspective).

Regarding Space Channels:

In terms of finer grain spaces, I've put forward an idea for "Space Channels" that also incorporates many other common requests such as "spaces in spaces", etc. It would allow multiple permission profiles to exist within a space while keeping things still very simple to understand for the end user (although would likely cause headaches for Atlassian to implement in the code).

To have a read and decide for yourself, visit: CONF-5186

You would also need some way to "lock" a thread if it's going way off topic and also the ability to "lock" all threads on the page (new page priv to define who can add comments?) One of the few (and there aren't many) things I liked about PostNuke is that for any page you could enable or disable comments (when creating or, later, when editing).

Another thing to be aware of is death by spam. I was going to post a link to the TEST space on confluence.atlassian.com which showed a perfect example of this problem, but it seems those test spaces have disappeared (probably to stop the spam). Increasingly, spammers are adding "profiles" to their spam tools that allow spam to be automatically published in to blogs, etc. All it would take is for them to work out how to add comments to pages (which they are already doing from time to time on David's randombits.org) and you'll not only end up with vast amounts of spam, but it will be all over the place (harder to delete).

Another thing that would be useful is the ability to say who can start a thread. The current "comments add/delete" privileges would need to be changed to something like the following:

• Thread: Add / Edit / Delete
• Post (comment on a thread or other post): Add / Edit / Delete

It would be highly desirable if there were an option to allow the person who makes a thread or post (collectively "posts" from now on) to be able to edit their own posts. The number of times I've made a small typo when posting comments and not realised until it's too late, then had to delete the comment and re-add it because I couldn't edit it... Rargh!

Thread or Flat?

I know a lot of people prefer flat, sequential posts in a thread (the forum I worked on had to use that format because it seemed the one that most people were happy with).

I personally prefer branching threaded discussions because that way you don't end up with a reply to the 3rd post appearing 20 posts later and so on. You can see exactly what each post relates to.

One problem with browser based threaded views is that it gets difficult to maintain a visual reference as to what links to what without scrolling way off the right of the screen on big threads. Having something like a treeview for the threads (like my email client does) would solve that problem and in turn I feel that would make the majority of people much happier to use threadded view especially as Confluence can easily generate lists of new comments thus catering for the desire to see "what's new" (which would previously require going to the end of a flat date-ordered thread).

I'd like to see Confluence use threaded comments by default (at least internally) so there would be a "reply to this" link on each post and the association of one post to another would be maintained internally regardless of how things are viewed (does it do that already?). The site admin could choose whether to display those threads in date order (ie. flat, date sequential view) or not. Ideally users should also have an option in their profile as to which view they want.

Where should they go?

As for "separate tab" vs. "detachable view" vs. "comments at bottom of the page", I just don't know...

• Comments at the bottom of a page are certainly a pain when you are trying to make a site look nice (which just happens to be what Adaptavist do on a daily basis), but they have the benefit of ensuring that the page can still be easily referenced.
• Comments in a tab would keep things much tidier (and faster I guess as you're not loading all the comments when viewing the page) but you don't get to refer to the page that easily especially if you are mid way through making a post and click the page tab to refer to it then realise you've just lost your post.
• Comments in a detachable (popup?) window gets the best of both worlds - if you have a big screen or multiple monitors. There are also well documented accessibility and usability problems with pop-up or floating windows when it comes to the Internet.

What if the threads were on their own tab by default, but you could switch to "inline" mode (sticking them at the end of the page) by clicking an on-screen link? Then again, that would make themes a nightmare to create/maintain. Like I say, I just don't know how to get round the problem of keeping threads tidy and still being able to refer to the page content when the need arises.

Enter the rabbit hole if you want to see the bigger picture...

Update - 3rd March 2006

I've recently been involved in two "comment blizzards" and my desire to see "confluence as a forum" has been rekindled once more:

• Theme Plugins
• Confluence URLs

The discussions on both of these pages had the following issues:

• Lots of notification emails - I'm watching the spaces so my inbox was flooded with emails telling me new comments had been added.

• The "recently updated" list on the dashboard (and also the list of things I'd recently done in my Guy Fraser profile) were flooded with comments:

• Beyond a certain depth, the discussions are truncated so I have to click the link to view the rest of the thread, then I lose where I'm up to with all the different branches that are being displayed

Before I get on to possible solutions to the 3 issues above, I want to ponder first how these blizzards arise in the first place...

Perhaps we need both comments and discussions... Our thinking so far seems to have been that there should be one or the other, not both. Read on...

I get the feeling that the problem is the threadded nature of comments (which can be turned off). It promotes branching of discussions and that in turn promotes a cascading, and in some cases an exponential increase, in the comment blizzard.

I have to wonder if the comments area should be restricted to "flat" mode - after all, this is shown to work extremely well on blogs around the world - people tend to make only one comment and it's easy to read everyone's comments in one go as it's just a long list.

But the threadded nature of comments are still essential, especially for knowledge retention as you want to see how ideas branch an need to know exactly how comments relate to one another. This is where a separate "Discuss" tab would certainly come in handy - not a replacement for comments, but a whole new additional feature - threadded discussions for a given page.

On the thread tab, there would be options to start new threads (which could have associated permissions - you might want the teacher or manager, etc., to trigger a thread) and then people with "add post" (or whatever) privilege, could join in the discussions.

This allows a completely custom UI for discussions (due to them being on a separate tab) while leaving the existing format of comments untouched (you could even leave in the threadded comments feature for sites that prefer to have discussions sprawling out beneth a page).

This enables solutions to be found for the three "blizzard" issues mentioned above...

Notification Emails

When people are adding comments to a page (flat mode, like on most blogs), you'd only get one email per visit to that page. If 20 comments were added, I don't need to see them all, I just want to know there are comments I've not yet read.

When people are "discussing" the page, I only need to know when a specific thread has been extended - eg. if 20 people post to the first thread, I'd get 1 email to let me know that something is happening in that thread. If 5 threads are updated, then I get 5 emails, regardless of how many people posted.

You could even have some new notification settings:

• Comments Notification: <group by page> | <every comment>
• Discussion Notification: <group by page> | <group by thread> | <every post>

Recently Updated Lists

Recent updates would be grouped by the page - so at most you'd see one comment row and one discussion row, letting you know that something is happening on the page.

Thread Depth

With flat comments, this issue dissapears instantly.

With a dedicated discussions tab on a page, there would be plenty of room to see the whole discussion. You could have a drop-down at the top that would list the threads and when you select a thread you see it in it's entirety.

Visual Indication of "New Stuff"

When I click links in email notifications, I see the current comment highlighted - obviously, with "grouped" notifications this would limit the visibility of new things...

For comments, that isn't too much of a problem - the first unread comment would generate the email if grouped so it would be highlighted and everything below it would be assumed "unread". When you visit the page, Confluence knows that the next new comment to be added will trigger an 1 email and then no more (assuming grouped emails) so when I click the link in that email, it highlights the first unread comment since my last visit.

For threads, why not use email style indications... An icon could be shown to indicate that a post has not yet been read. Clicking the panel containing the post would automatically mark it as read.

You could also "watch" a thread - click the email icon next to the branch you want to watch and you could be sent notifications of each new post regardless of your general notification settings.

You could "unwatch" a thread - the icon gets faded and you no longer receive email notifications for that thread.

You could add comments, threads, branches and posts to your favorites to remember interesting stuff.

A "report this comment/page/thread/blog/post/etc" option would be useful on CEO's - space admins and site admins could see a list of reported content and go check it out to find out what the problem is (eg. spam, broken link, etc).

Discussion Tab

When first clicking the discussion tab, you could see a table listing the various discussions, indicating which have new stuff in, with buttons to start a new discussion, etc. For each existing discussion, you could also see who started it, who the last poster was, how many posts are in the discussion, etc.

An example can be seen in the PNphpBB2 forums: http://www.stronghold-knights.com/site/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewforum&f=131

New CEO Types

All that would be needed for the discussions tab (ok, I know this is a gross simplification - there'd be herds of work required to implement it) is two new Confluence (or is it Content?) Entity Objects:

Thread:

• Attaches to a page
• Usual CEO fields

Post (or message?):

• Attaches to a thread or another post (can this be done?)
• Usual CEO fields

Obviously, there'd be other fields required but it's nearly 3am on Friday evening and I need to get to bed

Nicer URL's and linking

Comment URL's are currently ugly (see the link earlier for the best place to discuss that) and it's also painful to link to comments. Perhaps some new link notation could be devised to link to comments, threads, posts (and while I'm thinkig about it, email messages in the archive):

[comment|SPACE:Page&CommentID|tooltip]
[thread|SPACE:Page+ThreadTitle|tooltip]
[post|SPACE:Page+ThreadTitle-PostID|tooltip]
[email|SPACE@EmailID|tooltip]

Each comment, post and email could be given a number (ID) as seen on many blogs. This should at least make it easier for people to link to things because they can see on-screen what the associated ID is (it would start at 1 and increment for each new item - if an item is deleted, the counter doesn't change) – you no longer need to try and explain how to chop up the bits of a URL to work out the CEO ID, you just get them to put the number that's shown against an item in to the link.

Page Level Settings

Two tick boxes when adding/editing a page:

Allow comments on this page
Allow discussions on this page

These would allow the page owner to enable comments/discussions for a while, then "lock" the page to stop futher posting. It would also be useful if you could set how long comments/discussions could run for, preferably as a general setting. This would help prevent spammers taking over - pages would automatically get "locked" after a set time?

Obviously, you could have plugins developed that would listen to events of new comments/threads/posts/pages/blogposts being added and apply spam filtering to them – if it's spam, delete them.

Don't allow macros in comments

I think macros in comments are generally a bad idea. I can see the use of macros in discussions, but for general comments shown under a page there are rarely times when you want to use macros (possible exception of the noformat macro, etc)?

Some related JIRA issues:

CONF-5635, CONF-830, CONF-5644, CONF-5643, CONF-5595

Some other related stuff:

• Guy's Wishlist for Confluence 3
• Email Notification Storms - Alternatives

Discuss

Would this new approach work (assuming the extra development work could be done):

• Generally run comments in flat mode to help ensure that they are merely that - comments
• Add a "Discussions" tab which would contain threadded discussions, essentially a mini forum per page

Go on, add a comment with your thoughts....