[Foundation-l] We really need to avoid the next Microsoft-Wikipedia bad publicity storm

[Erik Moeller]

On 1/31/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> But we really need something to handle this sort of thing and make it
> widely known. Something as n00b-friendly as possible - just type on a
> page (or in a form) or send an email.

Yes.  I suggested in the past adding a "submit review" form for
external editorial reviews, which is a similar use scenario to
complaints and corrections. However, I don't think that just adding a
tiny new feature is going to cut it. If we want this to be used, it
needs to be visible and tie into the existing talk page process.

The real underlying problem is that our talk page process is
essentially broken. And I don't just mean broken as in "newbies don't
get it, everyone else does"; it lacks all the functionality one would
want from a threaded discussion system. For this particular use,
tracking and categorization of single threads (and assignment of
threads to volunteers who need to look at them) is especially
important.

There exists a prototype system that could largely replace talk pages;
LiquidThreads. It combines wiki elements with threaded discussion,
treating essentially every comment as a wiki page with its own
history. It was developed by David McCabe as part of the Google Summer
of Code. Unfortunately, it appears to be no longer in active
development as David has been caught up in school work, unable to
continue the project. I think WMF should hire a skilled developer to
continue this work, and lead towards integrating our communication
systems.

There are a number of people who would come to mind for this work. I
don't think Slashdot's wisdom, may the IPU bless them, will help us
here; like so many other things, it's really a matter of investing the
resources in getting the tech work done.
-- 
Peace & Love,
Erik

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