Summary: we'll convert some LiquidThreads conversations on
mediawiki.org
into Flow boards on test2wiki. The real move off LQT depends on changing
how Flow pages are enabled, which has further dependencies.
Danny Horn, Erik Bernhardson, quiddity, and I met to talk about next steps
in moving off LiquidThreads, which is deployed on 13 wikis. We will
eventually convert all their LQT pages and threads to Flow boards and
topics.
There are inter-dependencies:
We would need to enable Flow on 8 new wikis in order to convert all those
LQT pages. (We would probably leave wikimania2010wiki as is.) Our initial
focus will be
mediawiki.org.
Kill LQT on
mediawiki.org means 1,500 pages become Flow boards
-> that's impractical to manage with the current PHP FlowOccupyPages
variable
So we need to replace it with a Special page to enable/disable Flow.
-> which depends on *Bug 49193*
<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49193> - "Add
ContentHandler columns to Wikimedia wikis, and set $wgContentHandlerUseDB =
true"
-> which hasn't completed and is blocked by bug 70901
We have a patch that replaces FlowOccupyPages with a bare-bones Special
page to change a page between wiki text and Flow board. Eventually enabling
Flow on a page is going to be a wiki administrative function, a big change
that's a win for decentralization and local decision-making. We would
restrict this Special page to Flow team on
mediawiki.org at first, but
there would be pushback if we do this on other wikis.
As Andrew Werdna suggested, the Special page would eventually handle the
conversion from an LQT page to Flow, and if you disable Flow it would
convert the Flow board into wikitext. Lots to do.
In the interim we are going to focus on the script that converts a LQT page
into a Flow board. We need to show this to people who will be affected by
the change from LQT to Flow.
TODO: change current script to target a LQT page on
mediawiki.org and
convert it into Flow boards and topics on test2wiki, without changing the
original.
(We'll write this conversion script so it can eventually be called from
the Special page to enable Flow.)
We'll create a "Test Zero" LQT page with Flow team members participating,
and convert that. Then we'll convert a few actual LQT pages from
mw.org
onto test2wiki.
Notes on the conversion script:
* It'll produce weird results if run multiple times on the same LQT page.
* Not sure what happens to multiple thread edits.
* Conversion needs to add the converted Flow board and topics to the
watchlists of users wwho were watching the LQT page and threads.
* Conversion will create redirects for common LQT URLs, but not e.g. the
Summary namespace URLs.
* Conversion itself will not generate Echo notifications and e-mails
quiddity mentioned the following as likely concerns of LQT users after the
conversion to Flow:
* LQT TOC (we should have a nice Flow TOC soon!)
* Splitting and merging threads:
* Moving threads to a new Talk page.
* User-friendly Topic names, e.g.
Thread:Extension_talk:Flow/Appearance/reply_(6) becomes
Topic:Rylnpvcpshj9n30s#flow-post-rylnvqsqmjnng558
Project planning goes on in <
https://trello.com/c/0VP635yr/683-tracking-when-should-we-kill-lqt> and
related cards.
Cheers.
--
=S Page Features engineer