I'd like to think about how we can clarify the Flow recent changes text.
Right now, the following Flow actions all appear the same:
1. Creating a new topic
2. Initial post to that topic
3. Another post to that topic.
4. An modification to an existing post.
5. Reply to an existing post
In wikitext, 1 is usually easy to distinguish, since people mostly use
the "New section" link on talk, which creates a summary like:
(→<topic title>?: new section)
where <topic title> is user-provided.
3/4 can be distinguished from 1 with wikitext (1 and 2 are combined with
wikitext normally), since 3/4 do *not* have "new section".
To distinguish 3 vs. 4 vs. 5 with wikitext (when writing the post),
people sometimes use simple edit summaries (though other times, they
don't bother to add a custom summary).
E.g.:
(→<topic/section title>: reply
where this is a section edit, and "reply" is user-provided
There is no software support for distinguishing 3 vs. 4 vs. 5. with
wikitext.
Flow can distinguish all of these actions (which is a *BIG* win over
wikitext), but I believe it does not allow custom edit summaries for any
of them. That means you don't have the option of adding a custom
summary of "reply" or "reply to Dan"; probably such custom summaries
are
not needed if Flow provides robust auto-summaries.
But currently, it also does not include automatic summaries or text
identifying the action. So e.g. the following shows examples of 1, 2, 4,
and 3 (in that order. (From
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?namespace=2600&tagfilter=&titl…)Changes):
We're talking about potentially merging 1 and 2 in the various feeds.
So I propose (extending
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Automatic_edit_summaries):
(diff | hist) Test post on Wikipedia talk:Flow/Developer test page;
21:09 . . (+9) . . Mattflaschen (WMF) (talk | contribs) (←Created new
topic with "Truncated body of initial post...")
(diff | hist) Test post on Wikipedia talk:Flow/Developer test page;
21:09 . . (+8) . . Mattflaschen (WMF) (talk | contribs) (←Edited a post)
(diff | hist) Test post on Wikipedia talk:Flow/Developer test page;
21:23 . . (+22) . . Mattflaschen (WMF) (talk | contribs) (←Added a new
post to the topic)
Whether to include content (i.e. "Truncated body of initial post...") is
something to consider.
There could also be:
(diff | hist) Test post on Wikipedia talk:Flow/Developer test page;
21:23 . . (+22) . . Mattflaschen (WMF) (talk | contribs) (←Replied)
It could potentially say who you replied to.
There are other actions (e.g. editing board header, summarizing, etc.
which I haven't tested, but should also clarify what happened).
Matt Flaschen