Hi all, I'm new to this list, but I'm sure this topic has come up many times before. In short, wiki syntax is inadequate for structuring discussion pages, and Mediawiki needs a forum system. LiquidThreads is the most significant effort in this direction, and it's a big step forward, but the project is apparently dead and it's not being adopted by WMF. Other wikis have been quite successful with forum systems, like the highly active YKTTW forum on TVTropes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/ykttw.php). I believe that the current system substantially impedes usability of WMF projects, particularly for new users, in some of the following ways:

* New users may fail to get attention because they post at the wrong place in the page, forget to sign their post, or incorrectly format their replies. Users new to wiki syntax may be so intimidated that they don't post at all. They may also repeat questions already asked many times because the relevant threads have vanished into the archives and there's no effective search functionality for threads. * Discussions may falter because interested contributors can't watch individual discussions, sorting by creation time encourages short threads, archiving edits mask real edits on watchlists. * Inconsistent formatting causes confusion in threads (e.g. indentation resetting, arbitrary section breaks, comments running together), which occasionally leads to avoidable conflict.

For many years we've dealt with kludgy solutions for these problems on En, like archiving bots, signature bots, and so on.

A common objection I hear is that wiki talk pages are better for discussing drafts of portions of articles. But as long as the contents of posts still use the same wiki syntax this is still straightforward.

There's still significant disagreement about a few specific issues like whether users, just admins, or no one should be permitted to edit comments of others, or move threads from one discussion page to another; a good permission system would allow this to be left up to the individual wiki.

There's a significant migration problem: what to do with the massive reams of content existing on discussion pages and in discussion archives? There may also be scalability issues with creating a system that can handle the kind of load Wikipedia currently sees.

In short, I'm looking to revive the much-delayed effort to get real forum support implemented and deployed to major WMF projects, and offering to contribute and head up this effort myself. What will it take, and what's the best answer to the hard design questions? What have we learned from LiquidThreads? Considering all the schema changes since LiquidThreads, is it better to use it as a starting point, or to do something new? Any feedback is appreciated.

-Vivian

P.S. I'm posting under an alias due to my work's open source contribution policy - I'm an undisclosed administrator on the English Wikipedia.