Exactly what I was thinking.
Doesn’t mean it would necessarily work, but you are not alone...
Cheers,
Peter
Actually, if I get it correctly, Wikinews uses three pages per item
(news, talk, and smth else).
Cheers
Yaroslav
-----Original Message-----
From: wikimedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tim
Davenport
Sent: 10 September 2014 11:12 PM
To: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] To Flow or not to Flow
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:
1) 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.
2) 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.
3) 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?
=====
Now here is a list of the things which talk pages currently do:
1) Mark articles as significant to various work projects and track
the content "grade" for each.
2) Provides details and links for BLP and other policies related to
the subject.
3) Records the history of each page with respect to Articles For
Deletion challenges, Good Article peer review histories, etc.
4) Maintains a record of actual and potential Conflict of Interest
declarations.
5) Registers reader comments about the content.
6) 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.
7) Accumulates requested edits for protected articles.
In addition, User-talk pages:
8) Gather warning templates and notification messages about editing
problems.
9) Serves as a de facto email system for communication between
editors.
====
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(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
-----
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG -
www.avg.com
Version: 2014.0.4765 / Virus Database: 4015/8192 - Release Date:
09/11/14
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>