Topic on Talk:Flow Portal/Archive2

When I came to Flow Portal I wondered. When reading the first two of the eye-catching headlines I was literally shaking my head and was just thinking "No! What's going wrong here?".

"Users expect a modern and intuitive discussion interface."

No they don't! I (as a user) always loved Wikipedias concept of talk pages which is unique and unbeatable in it's simplicity. You write what you mean and it just works. No need for a blown-up messaging interface, just pure Wikitext. For their purpose the ucrrent talk pages are a perfect match.

"Users are surprised by the cultural norms of the community."

Oh yes, they are! And it might be even a bit confusing in the beginning. But the longer one is contributing to Wikipedia the more one appreciates them. The "cultural norms" are a fundamental aspect of the Community. The fact that you can call it cultural norms should be enough to know that we have something great going. Who else ("normal" discussion forums, etc.) can claim to have an own subculture?

Talk pages made Wikipedia what it is today. The whole threaded mess you're planning will ruin it for everybody.

So, in order:

• "No they don't! I (as a user) always loved Wikipedias concept of talk pages which is unique and unbeatable in it's simplicity. You write what you mean and it just works. No need for a blown-up messaging interface, just pure Wikitext. For their purpose the ucrrent talk pages are a perfect match."

  I totally appreciate this; I enjoy the customisable elements of wikimarkup, and of talkpages as they stand at the moment. But it's worth appreciating that what a single user needs, be it me or you, is not a good predictor for what is needed overall: this is particularly the case when we're having the conversation in quasi-wikimarkup, on a wiki, between community members. By definition, we've limited the conversation to people who can handle and enjoy handling wikimarkup (or enjoy the things that come with it, anyway). For a look at how non-Wikimedians handle and approach wikimarkup and talkpages as they stand at the moment, check out the user tests we ran.

• "The "cultural norms" are a fundamental aspect of the Community. The fact that you can call it cultural norms should be enough to know that we have something great going. Who else ("normal" discussion forums, etc.) can claim to have an own subculture?"

  Also agreed, on the first point; cultural norms are a fundamental aspect. And they're fantastic, most of the time - but as you say, they're confusing at the beginning. It's challenging to get to grips with a site that has 10+ years worth of rules, norms and conventions. What we should be doing is going "okay, this is something people need to get to grips with" and helping them do so, not by reducing the complexity of the community, necessarily, but by reducing the number of other things they have to care about. Complexities around messaging - a communications mechanism for getting help with cultural norms, and understanding them - is an "other thing". It's something else that they have to handle while also getting to grips with policy, our internal slang or conventions, etc, etc. I don't think anyone is saying our culture needs correction: we're saying that we can help people best get to grips with that culture by reducing complexity elsewhere. Less complexity means less time spent figuring out messaging means more time to dedicate to culture, and having conversations about it, and understanding your way around the projects.

  As an aside, actually a lot of discussion venues and communities on the internet have a distinct subculture. Culture is, largely, a distinct way of representing and classifying experiences and elements through symbols, be those symbols slang, internal terminology, or attitudes. A lot of places on the net have this; just from the ones I'm involved in I can point you to b3ta and reddit, for example, which definitely demonstrate features of subcultures. It's not something specific to Wikipedia - and it's not something our talkpages have enabled. Our talkpages and their limitations have just been a vector for some elements of it to develop.

I don't know if you are right. Our talk pages are not necessary for a subculture to emerge – but I'm quite sure that they were an important factor in how our subculture actually looks.

Assume threaded discussion like they are on this page: They are boring. Only text, hard to read in my opinion, absolutely impersonal. Is this what you want a discussion on your talk page to be? Impersonal? It might be efficient for pure discussion (however I'm not even sure about that) but besides that it's even worse than classical forums where you have smileys and avatars to add something personal to your posts (but I don't thing this would be suitable to Wikipedia either).

If you're talking about user tests: Did you run tests on the new system you want to implement? I'd volunteer as a test candidate ;). To already share some of my frustration on threaded discussion (this is basically the first time I get in touch with LiquidThreads):

• I feel like a dumb beginner that is surfing the internet for the first time right now. I don't find the new posts (they are always hidden because they are too deeply nested).
• After reading new posts via the "you have new messages" link I still seem to have new messages, which I don't find though. Actually I forgot to click "mark read" so it probably still were the old messages (although I read them already twice: once on the new messages tab and once in the thread after somehow finding the correct thread again andclicking the "show N messages" link a few times).
• At the same time I'm not quite sure on which thread I'm actually replying (the new messages tab is just too confusing). Where is the direct link with the content just plain in front of me? Right now I'm missing my watchlist sadly.
• Just a few seconds ago I did a very bad error: I scrolled the page. I needed propaply 30 seconds to find the edit field again. It was somewhere "arbitrarily" hidden between a flood of posts.

Edit: It's ridiculous – I'm adding a reply but I don't see it. The replied message is still marked as new however. Where is this anywhere near user friendly? I'm considering myself very skilled regarding anything technical but I'm totally struggling with this LiquidThreads-thing.

Extension:LiquidThreads version 2.0 is a circa 2010 extension, which has ben discontinued. Its usage on the talkpage here (Talk:Flow Portal), is painful, and confusing, and you should pay no attention to it. Flow is a completely different code-base/project, that takes into account the lessons learned whilst creating LiquidThreads.

See Flow Portal/Interactive Prototype (IMPORTANT: Read the first introductory sentences, before clicking the "Open ..." link) for a demonstration of the rough draft of how Flow might work. Note that there's a specific subpage for feedback about that prototype, so don't just append your feedback to this thread ;)

As opposed to...the images that characterise so many discussions on AN/I and talkpages?

And, user tests on LiquidThreads are unlikely to be helpful because LiquidThreads is not what we're implementing.

I assume you were responding to me (after three whole weeks!)?

Yes, I think talk pages are much more colorful right now. It's the simple things that make the community worthwhile: Welcome messages, customized signatures, smileys, barnstars, a huge amount of templates to choose from for all imaginable use cases, etc, etc. Even a deletion notice template adds something to a talk pages uniqueness.

Threaded discussion as proposed by FLOW strips out most of the personality of talk pages, making every comment look exactly like the previous. This might actually increase efficiency of discussions (in theory) but could be detrimental for the community needs, resulting in people being bored by discussions, therefore even reducing efficiency (in practice).

As to the LiquidThreads part: Yes, this was already made clear three weeks ago. Three weeks ago was also the time when Brandon first visibly announced FLOW yelling out: There will be FLOW, the threaded discussion system of the future!
Back then it was much more unclear how it will look, therefore I posted my impressions with the other threaded discussion system I knew by then, namely LiquidThreads, to voice my concerns with threaded discussion in general. I'm sure if you think of it you will realize that most of my points are also valid for FLOW.

It's still unclear what Flow will look like. For all we know, every post will have a different color so you can tell them apart, and every post will have the option of adding a dozen pictures and setting every other word to blink automatically. You're making a lot of completely unwarranted assumptions about what will happen.

Even your assumption that templates won't work is just an assumption. There are limitations in the server set up (which Flow doesn't have any control over) that might make templates impossible. But that's not actually a definite problem at this stage; it's just a possible concern. Even if it's a problem, there's no rule that we can't create a substitute that will achieve the same end but not technically be "a template". The only thing that's been decided about templates is that they will not be supported in signatures, which you might have noticed is already banned by policy, so this represents no change in practice.

Read the discussions more closely (also those on en:WP:VP) and you'll notice that most of my "assumptions" are actually based on design considerations already made by WMF. They are not put into stone yet but are likely to be implemented this way.

If we're not allowed to talk about the things supposed to happen as you propose, we'd have to wait for the final product to be ready and discuss then. I think you agree that this is nonsense.

The fact that the WMF has a concern about templates does not mean that colorful welcoming messages will be impossible. If you want colorful welcoming messages, then say so: someone will figure out a way to make it happen. That method may not involve what we currently call "a template", but there has never been any assumption that these sorts of communication will stop.

In fact, if you look at Flow Portal/Use cases#User talk namespace, you will see that a large proportion of the things that Flow will support are things done currently with templates. Supporting these kinds of messages is in the official plan. The specific method of support might not be exactly what you're used to, but there will be a way to make these things (e.g., a welcoming message, a block notice, a newsletter) happen.

You seem to be of the "relax, everything will be fine"-fraction. That's fine. I can live with that.

But please also accept, that I'm used to be a little more discerning regarding such fundamental changes. I don't question the fact that many things will be possible one way or another. But I want to make sure that development is going into the right direction so there won't be a bad awakening when FLOW is deployed.

The link you gave is an analysis of current talk pages. It's not a feature list of FLOW! It's not sure what will get into the final FLOW and how it will look.

If you interpret "Flow will have to support [this]" and "This is a primary use-case for Flow" and "They have to be handled through Flow" as meaning "Eh, I think we can ignore these things, because nobody needs them", then I don't think that we're speaking the same language.

Patrick, speaking as the person who wrote that document: it's a set of use cases. Things that users do that we have to support. By definition it exists so we can have a list of things that the new software has to include, either directly or by finding a new way to address the underlying user need.

What about the use cases that could pop up in the future? Wikitext, in its simplicity, is extremly flexible. This thing seems instead to lock people in a predetermined structure. It's terrible.

We will be designing all the workflows, using the features that the devs create (including features that we request). They're just making the lego-blocks, and it will be up to us to create the structures from those blocks. See Flow Portal/Architecture#Big Ideas (old and informal, but gets to the point), and Flow Portal/Workflow Description Module, and also the comments at Thread:Talk:Flow Portal/Warning levels detection/reply (10), and Jorm's comment at en.wiki (which I added an anchor to) w:Wikipedia talk:Flow#What Flow actually is, which gives a few more details.