On 06.09.2014 13:39, Quim Gil wrote:
On Saturday, September 6, 2014, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
So we think a support forum like the Teahouse, and its equivalent in other languages may be a good place to start -- provided the hosts agree that there are no dealbreaker issues for them.
What about setting up some kind of Flow self-service for projects? Let play to those wiling to play, in the way they think it's best for their projects.
Potential requirements to join the Flow self-service:
- At least one tech ambassador volunteering to act as contact between
the project and the Flow team, summarizing community feedback in the channels agreed (mw:Talk:Flow, etc).
- Community agreement after a public discussion in the project.
- Selection of a first page to try Flow.
Hi Quim,
actually, this is exactly what is happening now and this is what caused this turmoil yesterday night.
FLOW was once deployed on two en.wp WikiProjects in the past, Wikiroject:Breakfast and another one, i do not remember which on off the top of my head. The Wikiproject participants agreed to use their talk pages as a testbed, and it was announced reasonably broadly. Volunteers, including me, tried installed FLOW and discovered that it is substandard and can not be used for any reasonable discussion. The test was terminated, some feedback was generated, some of it was taken onboard, the rest presumably not.
Yesterday, we discovered that FLOW was installed as a test in the Teahouse, a place whose purpose is to welcome newbies. I am not using the Teahouse, but the argument which I have heard was that FLOW was installed on a page inaccessible from the main Teahouse page and thus unlikely to be visited by newbies. Apparently, there was some discussion in the Teahouse, and the consensus was that FOW should not be installed. Since FLOW was installed clearly against the community will and since it is clearly still substandard, we had to act somehow. Danny got a warning at his talkage, the FLOW page was protected, and I had to send a message here, which in the end of the day started this discussion.
This is not the way FLOW should be deployed.
To me, Wikidata deployment was an example of successful Wikimedia project deployment which went relatively easily (even though there are still users having a strong opinion against Wkidata). The reasons it went so smoothly were that (i) it was clear what the end goal is, what should happen at what stage, and what are the needed steps; (ii) there were a large amount of volunteers and ambassadors from the first day sharing the idea and helping to explain it and to fix the bugs; (iii) Support was always and easily available, including Danny and Lydia, and they were really willing to listen to us and to help us, not to impose their vision.
I am afraid with Flow we are still not even at (i). Whereas after Erik's message I understand what he wants in very general terms, the implementation is completely open. In these terms, Facebook or PHP are both FLOW. I guess we start from the concept, and the next step would be for volunteers to instal Flow a their talk pages. If they can survive for a couple of months, we can talk about it further.
Cheers Yaroslav