On Sat, 04 Oct 2003 23:30:32 +0100, Martin Harper martin@myreddice.freeserve.co.uk gave utterance to the following:
I'm assuming there's a really good reason this specific article is being discussed on the list rather than at the relevant talk page?
1) because Wikipedia has been totally unavailable all morning (it's back now) 2) because wiki pages are actually hopeless for conducting a threaded discussion which is easy to follow, and in this forum there is no chance of someone changing what you write. 3) because as soon as there are more than 2 people actively engaged in discussion on a talk page, the chances of hitting an edit conflic seem to rise rapidly towards 100%.
Take it to the wiki pages. That way, you get to avoid rehashing tired old arguments that have already been discussed a million times before, and boring the stuffing out of me. Plus, there's a slim chance that way that comments will be based on the wisdom of the ages, rather than the whims of the moment.
The need to avoid edit conflicts tends to make people write more hastily on talk pages, IMO. And this forum is archived. What I'm saying is, let's look at an impoved system for talk pages. Maybe we could retain a wiki-style talk page for low-level comment, but have the option to switch to some sort of threaded forum once discussion becomes active?