Hi MZMcBride,
The hypothetical here is that I have a binary choice between Echo and Flow. In practice it's possible to develop them in parallel. With the hypothetical in mind, I'll outline why I would prioritize Echo.
My thinking is that Echo is used widely on many, many wikis and is helpful to users of all skill levels. It must be years since I've heard someone say that they find the nature of Echo to be problematic. By contrast, the reception to Flow is more mixed. Also, as some of us are discussing with Lila, it may be feasible to extend VE to talk pages and/or give some love to the wikimarkup editor at less expense and with less disruption than the expense and disruption involved with converting talk pages to Flow pages.
From a communications persoective, I asked recently for clarification on
the status of Flow and no one from WMF answered my question. If there is so much uncertainty or disorganization with respect to Flow that users don't get answers to questions that are asked in prominent venues, that makes me wonder all the more what is happening, and therefore inclined to oppose investing more resources in a black box until community questions are answred.
Flow has its supporters and I think that keeping it maintained and healthy on wikis where the communities like it is probably wise. Given the choice of investing more resources into further development of a product that has mixed reviews, is used on only some wikis, and about which community questions aren't answered, seems questionable to me when investing in a well-accepted and widely-used tool (Echo) is an alternative.
Pine On Nov 14, 2015 9:11 PM, "MZMcBride" z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Pine W wrote:
Agreed. If I had a binary choice between investing in Echo and investing in Flow, I would be inclined to choose Echo.
Can you please elaborate on why you would prioritize Echo over Flow? The Wikimedia Foundation has made the same decision and it's mind-boggling to me. I'd really like some greater insight into the thought process here.
MZMcBride
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