Discussion

Like any part of your wiki, your **Discussion** tab is a flexible tool. It can be a vital **communication hub**, where you record critical conversations and make crucial decisions. Or it can be a casual **meeting place**, giving you a chance to share opinions and gossip with the other people using your wiki. If you want, it can even **disappear** altogether. How you use it is up to you. Understanding your options? That’s where we can help.
 * Where is my Discussion tab? What does it do? What can I make it do?**[[image:http://blog1.wikicdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/discussiontabs.png width="270" height="162" align="right"]]

The **Discussion** tab lets you have a conversation, like on a message board. One person can start a topic or pose a question, then other people can add to that comment, or start new topics of their own. When your wiki is fresh out of the box, there is a separate Discussion tab for every page on your wiki. It’s a great option if you have different kinds of work happening on different pages, or if each page is built for a different group. But if your whole wiki is a single project for a single team, or if you want all the chatter as well as the work to happen on the pages themselves instead of in a separate section, it’s easy to change those settings:
 * 1) When you’re logged in as organizer of your wiki, go to **Manage Wiki**.
 * 2) Under Settings, click **Wiki Info**.
 * 3) Scroll down to **Discussion Settings**and make your choice:
 * **No discussion pages** is pretty self-explanatory.
 * **One discussion page for the whole wiki** removes your Discussion tabs and adds a **Discussion** link to your Actions menu, between New Page and Recent Changes. No matter where someone is in your wiki, clicking this link will take them to the same Discussion page.
 * **One discussion tab per page** will put the tabs back on all your pages.
 * 1) Hit **Save**.
 * What can I put in a discussion post?**

Words, pictures, and files. The words part is simple. To add pictures and files, you need wikitext. Say I’ve uploaded an image to my wiki, and it’s called //happy.png//. If I want to use it as an image, I would add it to my comment by typing,

Words, pictures, and files. The words part is simple. To add pictures and files, you need wikitext. Say I’ve uploaded an image to my wiki, and it’s called //happy.png//. If I want to use it as an image, I would add it to my comment by typing, //happy.png// If I just wanted to link to the image, so that other users could download it, I would add it to my comment by typing, //happy.png// And that will work for any image or any file that you’ve uploaded to the wiki
 * Who can join the conversation?**

That depends on your permissions settings:
 * 1) When you’re logged in as organizer of your wiki, go to **Manage Wiki**.
 * 2) Under People, click **Permissions**.
 * If your wiki is **Public** or **Protected**, only logged-in members of that wiki can post to a discussion — unless you check the “Allow message posts from non-members” box. In that case, any logged-in user will be able to contribute to the discussion, whether they’re a member of your wiki or not.
 * If you have a **Super-plan** wiki or your wiki is on a **Private Label site**, you can adjust your **Custom** discussion settings.
 * If your wiki is **Private**, only members of that wiki will even be able to see it, let alone edit pages or post discussions.
 * 1) Once you’re happy with your settings, click the **Update** button.


 * I like where this is going, but how can I moderate discussions?**

As an organizer, you have two tools for moderating discussions: **Notifications**, and the **Delete** option. Depending on your notification settings, you can monitor all discussions for a whole wiki, all the discussions for a given page, or even just a single discussion topic. Depending on your notification settings, you can monitor all discussions for a whole wiki, all the discussions for a given page, or even just a single discussion topic. If one of your members gets out of line, you can delete the inappropriate post, or a whole topic. And if someone makes a post in error, or wants to correct a mistake, you can delete the original post so that they can re-post their comment.
 * Curveball time: We had a great discussion about this page last year. This year, I want to have a new discussion about the same page.** **Can I do that?**

Sure you can:
 * 1) Rename your page.
 * 2) Create a new page, and give it the name you liked for your original page.
 * 3) Copy everything on the original page into the new page.

Now you’re ready to start over, with a fresh Discussion tab and a fresh History.