On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 1:54 PM, Marc A. Pelletier <marc(a)uberbox.org> wrote:
On 09/07/2014 01:57 AM, Diego Moya wrote:
a major property of a document-centric
architecture that is lost in a
structured one is that it's open-ended, which means that end users can
build new features and flows on top of it, without the need to request the
platform developers to build support for them (sometimes even without
writing new software at all; new workflows can be designed and maintained
purely through social convention).
And yet, after over a decade of open-ended design through social
convention, the end result is... our current talk pages. Perhaps
another decade or two will be needed before that document-centric
architecture gives us a half-decent discussion system?
Or maybe it will take a decade to deliver a discussion-centric system
that meets the needs of our community to replace the document-centric
discussion system we currently have.
Sorry if that sound snarky, but I have difficulty
buying an argument
that the current system has the potential to suffice when it has
demonstrably already failed. It does no good to have the hypothetical
capacity for a good system if, in practice, it's unusable.
While it may not be everybody's dream system, talk pages are quite
usable, as demonstrated by a lot of people using them every single
day.
I am all for the addition of a discussion system, effectively the next
iteration of Liquid Threads, but it worries me to see the *deployment*
objectives are already articulated in annual plans to be complete
replacement of all talk pages in 2015.
This potential problematic deploy could be very easily de-escalated by
a WMF decision that Flow will not be forcibly deployed onto an
unwilling project, and can be deployed per-page. If it is good
software, the projects will *ask* for it to be deployed, like they did
with LiquidThreads, and users will want to use it on their user talk
even if the wider community isnt ready to migrate. e.g. once it is
beta quality, I am sure Jimmy Wales will want it enabled on his user
talk page, which would increase exposure to, and acceptance of, Flow.
--
John Vandenberg