Pine W wrote:
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.
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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.
Hi.
Thank you for your reply. To me, it highlights and confirms a number of troubling trends and a few misconceptions that I think really need to be openly discussed and ultimately addressed. However, wikitech-l isn't the most appropriate discussion venue for this, so I'll move to wikimedia-l.
MZMcBride