LiquidThreads (LQT) has not been well-supported in a long time. Flow is in active development, and more real-world use-cases will help focus attention on the higher-priority features that are needed. To that end, LQT pages at mediawiki.org will start being converted to Flow in the next couple of weeks.
There are about 1,600 existing LQT pages on Mediawiki, and the three most active pages are VisualEditor/Feedback, Project:Support_desk, and Help_talk:CirrusSearch.[1] The Collaboration team has been running test conversions of those three pages, and fixing issues that have come up. Those fixes are almost complete, and the team will be ready to start converting LQT threads to Flow topics soon. (If you’re interested in the progress, check out phab:T90788[2] and linked tasks.) The latest set is visible at a labs test server.[3] See an example topic comparison here: Flow vs LQT.[4])
The VisualEditor/Feedback page will be converted first (per James' request), around the middle of next week. We’ll pause to assess any high-priority changes required. After that, we will start converting more pages. This process may take a couple of weeks to fully run.
The last page to be converted will be Project:Support_desk, as that is the largest and most active LQT Board.
LQT Threads that are currently on your watchlist, will still be watchlisted as Flow Topics. New Topics created at Flow Boards on your watchlist will appear in your Echo notifications, and you can choose whether or not to watchlist them.
The LQT namespaces will continue to exist. Links to posts/topics will redirect appropriately, and the LQT history will remain available at the original location, as well as being mirrored in the Flow history.
There’s a queue of new features in Flow that will be shipped over the next month or so:
* Table of Contents is done * Category support for Flow Header and Topics is done * VE with editing toolbar coming last week of March (phab:T90763) [5] * Editing other people’s comments coming last week of March (phab:T91086) * Ability to change the width & side rail in progress, probably out in April (phab:T88114]) * Search is in progress (no ETA yet) (phab:T76823) * The ability to choose which Flow notifications end up in Echo, watchlist, or both, and other more powerful options, will be coming up next (no ETA yet)
That being said -- there are some LiquidThreads features that don’t exist in Flow yet. We’d like to hear which features you use on the current LQT boards, and that you’re concerned about losing in the Flow conversion. At the same time, we’d like further suggestions on how we could improve upon that (or other) features from LQT.
Please give us feedback at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Sdoatsbslsafx6lw to keep it centralized, and test freely at the sandbox.[6]
Much thanks, on behalf of the Collaboration Team, Quiddity (WMF)
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Feedback and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help_talk:CirrusSearch and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Support_desk [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T90788 [3] http://flow-tests.wmflabs.org/wiki/Testwiki:Support_desk and http://flow-tests.wmflabs.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Feedback [4] http://flow-tests.wmflabs.org/wiki/Topic:Qmkwqmp0wfcazy9c and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Thread:Project:Support_desk/Error_creating_th... [5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T90763 , https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T91086 , https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T88114 , https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T76823 [6] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Sandbox