On 1/31/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
But we really need something to handle this sort of thing and make it widely known. Something as n00b-friendly as possible - just type on a page (or in a form) or send an email.
Yes. I suggested in the past adding a "submit review" form for external editorial reviews, which is a similar use scenario to complaints and corrections. However, I don't think that just adding a tiny new feature is going to cut it. If we want this to be used, it needs to be visible and tie into the existing talk page process.
The real underlying problem is that our talk page process is essentially broken. And I don't just mean broken as in "newbies don't get it, everyone else does"; it lacks all the functionality one would want from a threaded discussion system. For this particular use, tracking and categorization of single threads (and assignment of threads to volunteers who need to look at them) is especially important.
There exists a prototype system that could largely replace talk pages; LiquidThreads. It combines wiki elements with threaded discussion, treating essentially every comment as a wiki page with its own history. It was developed by David McCabe as part of the Google Summer of Code. Unfortunately, it appears to be no longer in active development as David has been caught up in school work, unable to continue the project. I think WMF should hire a skilled developer to continue this work, and lead towards integrating our communication systems.
There are a number of people who would come to mind for this work. I don't think Slashdot's wisdom, may the IPU bless them, will help us here; like so many other things, it's really a matter of investing the resources in getting the tech work done.