I'm not sure about anyone else following this conversation, but I applied to this project for the Google Summer of Code. It sounds like you put a lot of thought into the subject and I would be pretty interested to hear some of your ideas (or a see demo).
Come to think of it, the stereotypical forum software doesn't do anything to reach consensus, except maybe for polls. Compare that to Wikipedia, where talk pages are rarely used for conversations. Having a conversation and arguing have always been very different. Designing this feature to facilitate "conversations" might be a mistake.
If you would like, I encourage you to post your thoughts on this somewhere. Perhaps along with LiquidThreads or simply link to information from there. If I am not selected or the project is not picked up for summer of code, it could still be incorporated in whatever is developed some day.
- Phil Harnish
On 5/9/06, Robert Rapplean mythobeast@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/8/06, Uwe Brauer oub@mat.ucm.es wrote:
Your tool is an experiment? Is intended to be included in media wiki?
Experiment is the right word for it. I've identified a lot of uses for it, and the talk pages on Wikipedia are an ideal typification of why it would be valuable. Like most online communication tools it's designed to facilitate communication between individuals, but has no built in facilities for the organization of thoughts, nor for the aggregation of the participant's ideas into a single central consensus.
This is especially true for the wikipedia, where one discussion page is being used to determine the consensus on a myriad of ideas presented in any single entry. I think it would be an excellent proving grounds for the tool. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l