On 7 September 2014 23:54, 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?
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.
-- Marc
I suppose the question really is, has it failed? On what basis are we
saying that our current discussion system is unusable?
Simply put, I'd suggest that the problem isn't the system, it's the
discussion process itself that has points of failure. The replacement of
actual discussion with templates is a point of failure, and that will not
be improved by a change in the platform if all that happens is we use
basically the same templates to have the same non-discussions. Nothing in
the technology, either document-based or open-ended, will change the nature
of the discourse itself; rude people will still be rude, erudite people
will still be erudite, and none of will change the snark on Jimbo Wales's
talk page. A significant percentage of Wikimedians rarely use talk pages at
all (and a goodly number of those identify as exopedians), but no evidence
that the percentage of Wikimedians who eschew social interaction has
changed significantly, or that those with a low level of contribution to
discussion space are doing so because they find the *technology*
unappealing.
Risker/Anne