So, looking at the current MVP:
I think the things on the list are fantabulous. They're all pieces of functionality we need - they're things the current setup provides for. However, I worry that on its own, that means the first look people will get at Flow is..."talkpages, only I need to learn a different way of doing things now".
The "talk pages" bit of that is actually great, and it's something I think we should all think about when we're building things (be they Flow or...anything else). I'm really happy that Maryana has; hat-tip to you :). When we're building something, whatever we build, there's going to be some community inertia to redirect - and so our job is to build it in the order that best minimises culture shock. So, we start from the principle of "this is talkpages, but different", and *then* we add in a drip-drip-drip of new functionality, and before you know it they're using flow. The alternative - presenting them with all of the contexts at once - risks having people dislike the whole because of a non-MVP part of it. So it's good to see this tack being taken.
Having said that; I worry about the "I need to learn a different way of doing things now". Minimising culture shock is great, but it's still going to be there - we're always forcing people to adapt, to some degree, and we need to give them something that makes them feel like it's an adaption worth making. Sticking with existing functionality for the MVP solves for a lot of the culture shock, but *only* having existing functionality for the MVP exacerbates the remainder. So I'd like us to explore if we can fit something new and shiny in the MVP, that demonstrates why power users should like (or at least tolerate) flow.
I can think of a couple of things that would do this, and..probably not feel conceptually out of place for the wikiproject release: *Being able to watchlist individual threads, rather than merely see changes for an entire page; *Echo integration
No idea which is easier, or if the entire idea is dumb as all hell, but I thought I'd raise it.
(there's another discussion we were having, re oversight: going to surface that in a different thread to avoid having two TL;DR conversations at once).
On 21 August 2013 20:54, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
Danke for coming up with this so speedily! I'll drop my thoughts on the mailing list later today/early tomorrow.
On 20 August 2013 23:57, Maryana Pinchuk mpinchuk@wikimedia.org wrote:
Greetings,
I've started a draft of the requirements for the first release of Flow to a real live Wikimedia project: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow_Portal/MVP. This is still just a draft and very much open to more input, so please have a look and let me know what you think, either here or on the talk page: http://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flow_Portal/MVP.
As I think some of you know, we've shifted the focus of our first release from user talk to WikiProject talk (yay, pivoting!) to give us some time to figure out how to deal with bots, tools, and user warning/messaging/blocking workflows. Instead of trying to solve all those hairy problems in our first release, I want to be sure we can first and foremost handle the core peer-to-peer discussion/content collaboration that talk pages are meant for, and I think a WikiProject talk page is a good test-bed for making sure we've got those pieces nailed down. The plan is to:
- Build a fully functional prototype on Labs based on the above
requirements, in order to let the community come kick the tires.
- Specifically invite facilitators and members of some active
WikiProjects (on enwiki, but not necessarily enwiki only) to give the Labs prototype a try and see if they'd be willing to trial a beta version on their WikiProject discussion space for some period of time.
- Release to a few WikiProjects that are game, gather data, bugs,
feature requests, and keeping working to make Flow the most kick-ass wiki discussion/collaboration software of all time :)
- When we're comfortable that we've satisfied the requirements for
WikiProject talk, we'll begin working on the next set of requirements for other discussion spaces (probably user talk).
So, that's the short-term roadmap! Right now, Andrew and Erik B. are working on point 1) and will hopefully have something to share publicly in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned, and if you have any comments/feedback on anything Flow related, don't hesitate to chime in :)
-- Maryana Pinchuk Product Manager, Wikimedia Foundation wikimediafoundation.org
E2 mailing list E2@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/e2
-- Oliver "has his pedantry and finnickiness triggered by silent mailing lists" Keyes Community Liaison, Product Development Wikimedia Foundation