Gerard, with all due respect, your reply is all based on incorrect
assumptions. I recognize the severe problems that mediawiki conversations
currently have, and my points about Flow acknowledge that it's incomplete
software at its early stages and that it can grow into an acceptable tool
for having discussions, but all that is irrelevant to the conversation
that's going on at this thread.
Both Erik and I are talking about what we expect a finished, full featured
software would look like in the end, and we have both dismissed the current
status of either tool. The idea that I want the new system to be based on
current existing software is a strawman; that's not what I defend. I want a
good, modern document-centric software even if it requires building
something like mediawiki from scratch. This is a high level view of what
either model can grow into if enough resources are poured into it.
Erik has this vision that building a stable and easy-to-use system requires
abandoning the open-ended nature of wiki systems, with which I disagree,
and has committed us to a project with that result in the end, to build a
very good architecture that will solve the wrong problem. From the
conversation so far, I believe such view to be based on an incomplete
understanding of the community needs, and I'm trying to steer the
conversation to take into account perspectives from the wider community
rather than the gut feelings of just one man, no matter how much experience
he has with the project.