There were discussions recently about how to make the forum more known, more active and potentially more interesting to the community. There were also discussions about how to maybe change the wiki, or the way it is being approached.
I would like to suggest to include links to Forum topics if an article is related to a specific project that was being discussed on the forum, or in case a forum thread discussion spawned the article in the first place. So under "References" one could link to the forum, as with "Would you like to know more?" options.
Disadvantages:
- More work for the author, sometimes.
- Links could be severely outdated / link to dead topics. Not necessarily that bad as the topic linked still is related to the article.
- If the article gets updated, the link could lead to false information / a previous state of development
- Reading through the forum topic after reading the wiki article might make it hard for some people to differ between whats really canon and what was merely an idea.
Advantages:
- Makes the progress of Idea development more transparent
- gives more insight due to the discussion that might go along to the article
- More people know about the wiki than about the forum - may make the forum more well known
- People might see how an article is developed, potentially spawning the idea to go to the forum and add their ideas as well -> So it could serve as an inspiration to more people to come here and join the discussions / develop their own things and present them to the community.
What do you guys think?
PS: I wasnt sure whether to place this under Forum suggestion or Wiki suggestions... Please move it to wiki suggestions as that might be more appropriate.