Current talk pages are extremely unfriendly. I think they should be abandoned and replaced by more "natural" system of posting.
You mean, not a wiki? I think not.
I agree talk pages must remain wiki style for three reasons.
First, adding another system for talk pages makes users learn another system and that makes things inherently more complex.
Second, talk pages are intended to help people make articles, and therefore the requirement to learn wiki syntax to post on talk pages just keeps out those who wouldn't take time to learn to contribute to actual articles.
Ever since Ward's Wiki is that there is some minimum requirement to participate -- namely the ability to figure out wiki syntax. This is not hard, but it does require a little effort. And many have argued that this is one of the reasons that wiki's can maintain a higher level of discourse than newsgroups and web based discussion groups.
Third, an important part of the "wiki way" is refactoring, I have refactored a number of large talk pages removing the dross, keeping sustentative contributions, and putting it all together to flow more naturally. This is only possible because of the flexibility of the wiki system.
On Tue, Jan 07, 2003 at 03:41:53PM -0500, Mark Christensen wrote:
Current talk pages are extremely unfriendly. I think they should be abandoned and replaced by more "natural" system of posting.
You mean, not a wiki? I think not.
I agree talk pages must remain wiki style for three reasons.
And I do not. There is nothing sacred about wiki. We're already doing many things in "not a wiki way".
First, adding another system for talk pages makes users learn another system and that makes things inherently more complex.
Not at all. Almost every Net user knows posts-based discusion systems: things will get simpler, much simpler, not more difficult.
And such system will be more powerful too.
Second, talk pages are intended to help people make articles, and therefore the requirement to learn wiki syntax to post on talk pages just keeps out those who wouldn't take time to learn to contribute to actual articles.
I disagree very strongly with that. First, it's system not syntax that's a problem. Posts will still use current syntax.
There should be a way for readers to comment about articles without having to learn how Wiki system works. I know many Wiki readers who told me on external communications channels that "this is wrong" or "that is not clear", but asked why don't they say that on Wikipedia, they answered that they don't understand this system.
Ever since Ward's Wiki is that there is some minimum requirement to participate -- namely the ability to figure out wiki syntax. This is not hard, but it does require a little effort. And many have argued that this is one of the reasons that wiki's can maintain a higher level of discourse than newsgroups and web based discussion groups.
It's not syntax that's difficult. It's concept that's difficult. "Talking by editing" is something not used anywhere else than Wikipedia. And it's much inferior to "talking by posting".
Third, an important part of the "wiki way" is refactoring, I have refactored a number of large talk pages removing the dross, keeping sustentative contributions, and putting it all together to flow more naturally. This is only possible because of the flexibility of the wiki system.
Current/old/deleted magic will do that. Flow fixes are only necessary because of using system that isn't meant for discussion at all.
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If you find that too heretic to accept, there is less radical option: add an "Add a comment" link to every article page, where user can write a post that will be appended to contents of Talk page (Talk page will be created if it doesn't exist yet).
Also, if user is not logged in, "Username" field should also be provided in "Add a comment" page. Being identified is more important in discussion than in article writing. If that field is left empty, message should say 'From: Anonymous'.
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