I really don't like the way that people are referring to Flow as a done deal with an inevitable roll out. Nothing remotely close to workable software has been produced, no case has been made that the purported problems being addressed by this top-down software project are valid issues in the community, the range of unintended effects that will be cause by the mass archiving of talk pages and move to a new "flashy" system hasn't been properly assessed.
With Visual Editor, there was a clear need for WYSIWYG capabilities — although the software rolled out was grossly inadequate and the roll out process hamhanded (not to say incompetent). With Media Viewer, at least there is a clear benefit to a certain percentage of WP readers to offset the inconveniences resulting from mildly inadequate software. With Flow we are looking at the potential of grossly inadequate software with no apparent "saving graces" other than the fact that the old software is old and the new software will be new and that things will look nice.
If this is done wrong, it will be a catastrophe for WMF far bigger than what happened with VE.
Wil Sinclair, an enthusiast for the LiquidThreads/Flow mechanism for talk pages, is in an excellent position to give us some A/B numbers for participation at his site, with in without LiquidThreads being imposed from above.
How did that work out with participation levels at the OffWiki site, Mr. Sinclair?
How many very active editors has the convenient LiquidThreads mechanism generated for your site?
How many edits have taken place in the month after LiquidThreads was installed over "community" objections versus the month before it was installed?
Has the clean up process been easy reconverting to MediaWiki without the LiquidThreads extension?
Bottom line: OffWiki site participation was blown up by a unilateral move to LiquidThreads by the "tech department."
Observe and learn.
Tim Davenport Carrite on WP /// Randy from Boise on WPO Corvallis, OR
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Wil Sinclair wrote:
This somewhat circuitously brings us back to the subject. We have a
chance to rollout Flow the right way. There are some questions that come to mind that might tell us if we're headed for a big win or a bigger debacle:
- Is the WMF working with the community as closely and substantially
as possible to make sure Flow is ready for primetime?
- Is the community preparing itself for a major change, not only in
interface, but to some degree in wiki-philosophy about how discussions are conducted- not to mention the notion that, while wiki software can do almost anything involving asynchronous online communication, it can't do everything as well as other interfaces?
I think Flow will be particularly challenging. I deployed Liquid
Threads on another site. I liked the threaded interface, as did others. But overall it was roundly rejected because it was harder to search (I only found out you have to add the namespace to the searchable namespace in LocalSettings.php later), and it invasively took over all discussion pages, among other headache. Problems like these could easily be addressed before a rollout, but they should be addressed as early as possible. It is notable, however, that the more our users used it, the more they seemed to like it.
What can we do to make the Flow rollout as smooth as starting '''now'''?
,Wil