Hi!
In LQT, there is a many-to-many relationship between articles and talk pages (which we call 'channels'). When you click 'discuss' for an article, you'll be taken to the article's primary, default channel, but at the top of the page, there will be a list of other channels that are attached to the article.
Can I file a slight objection to this? :-) This idea would entirely get rid of wiki talk pages. Personally, I think they should be kept, and they should be used to give summaries of a discussion, overviews of the different viewpoints in an issue, etc. They should be a collaborative effort like any other wiki page. :)
You can easily arrange a many-to-many relationship by letting people add something like "[[Channel:Blah]]" on a talk page. The talk page would then list these channels at the top or something, but it would still be a wiki talk page. If you want, talk pages could have an inherent "main channel" that you can't remove because there's no [[Channel:]] tag for it.
Obviously, this is just a suggestion, and if sufficiently many people think traditional talk pages are not necessary when we have LiquidThreads, then feel free to ignore me.
So, the URL for a given talk page must include both the article and the specific channel being viewed.
Instead, you could have a URL for just a channel. This channel page could display the articles (talk pages) that link to it. Though I understand the convenience some people see in the tabs at the top. Needs some more thought :)
And I guess we'll have to hack in a Channels: namespace, since channels are not ordinary pages, and since putting it in the Special: namespace would be pretty ugly. Any ideas?
It doesn't have to be a hack, unless you already consider the Special: namespace a hack... But please call it Channel:, not Channels:! :-)
You might also want to think about whether a single Channel namespace is enough, or whether you want "Wikipedia channel:" and others too.
Timwi