Tim, do you think that this list of all the useful stuff that talk pages can currently includes things that aren't being done because they are too advanced for newbie editors or too inconvenient for veterans?
Regardless, you make a strong argument for keeping a meta-document that spans threads and/or should be more persistent. A lot of this stuff seems indispensable to recording decisions and linking to stuff that backs them up, avoiding constant rehashing of issues. My concern is how such a documents could be tied to pertinent threads in the discussion oriented software. Maybe we could create anchors in such a document that could make it easier for the right sections to be displayed alongside threads that reference them in the UI.
I know that LT splits a page and allows for normal editing above it, but threads aren't well connected to content above them and only get more disconnected with time as they get pushed down. What if we had anchors and both the discussion and the meta-document acted like they are in two horizontal or vertical iframes so we could view them at the same time (with Javascript mojo we don't need to use iframes anymore, of course)? The mobile experience could be different, since presumably there is less real estate than on a desktop.
This is a tricky problem to solve from a UX perspective, but it maybe Tim's right that we don't necessarily have to compromise flexibility for structure.
,Wil
On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 2:11 PM, Tim Davenport shoehutch@gmail.com wrote:
Having listened for the last week or two, here's what I'm getting as the WMF perspective as the three primary things attempting to be remedied with Flow:
- Newcomers and casual contributors have a very hard time using wiki
markup language and find it difficult to participate in talk pages. Flow will be more intuitive for them.
- The rendition of talk page discussion threads on mobile devices is bad.
With more people using mobile devices and fewer using laptops, this problem is only going to become worse over time. Flow will alleviate this problem.
- Wikitext becomes a sprawling mess on large talk pages, leading to vast
walls of tl;dr text a morass of unsearchable archives. Flow will better organize discussions.
Is this a fair representation of the rationale behind Flow? Am I missing some main (as opposed to utopian and theoretical) rationale for the change?
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Now here is a list of the things which talk pages currently do:
- Mark articles as significant to various work projects and track the
content "grade" for each.
- Provides details and links for BLP and other policies related to the
subject.
- Records the history of each page with respect to Articles For Deletion
challenges, Good Article peer review histories, etc.
- Maintains a record of actual and potential Conflict of Interest
declarations.
Registers reader comments about the content.
Provides a forum for editor debates over content, sometimes including
large blocks of proposed or removed text and including at times binding RFCs over content and detailed merger discussions.
- Accumulates requested edits for protected articles.
In addition, User-talk pages:
- Gather warning templates and notification messages about editing
problems.
- Serves as a de facto email system for communication between editors.
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My outside the box suggestion is this: it seems likely that at least some of the vital functions of talk pages are going to be crushed by Flow and the mass archiving that its adoption will entail. Perhaps it would be better for a new third page to be generated for each article:
MAINSPACE PAGE (the article itself)
ABOUT THIS PAGE (templates and permanent records including 1, 2, 3, 4 above)
DISCUSS THIS PAGE (the actual talk page for discussion of content and requested edits)
Bear in mind that I still have no confidence that Flow will be superior to wikitext in any but the most superficial ways. I do suggest, however, that some future permutation of this or some other new discussion format has a better chance of acceptance by the core volunteer community if it preserves many essential functions of talk pages unaltered.
Tim Davenport "Carrite" on En-WP /// "Randy from Boise" on WPO Corvallis, OR (USA) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe