LiquidThreads 3.0

WMF engineering activity

LiquidThreads 3.0

A rewrite of the LiquidThreads extension to improve its back-end and UI

Group:	Features
Start:	2011-01-21
End:
Management:	Alolita Sharma
Team:	Andrew Garrett, Brandon Harris,

Rationale

Currently, MediaWiki discussion pages are unstructured free-form Wikitext pages. There are many disadvantages to this system, including but not limited to:

• Lack of obvious threading
• Lack of consistent user identification
• Lack of intelligent archiving
• Lack of sorting
• High difficulty for new/inexperienced users to engage in discussions
• Inability to "watch" specific discussions; user must watch entire page (which may be sub-optimal).

With LiquidThreads, we attempt to solve these problems while bringing new features to the table:

• A more "standard" approach to threaded discussions, greatly enhancing the ability for new users to engage. This feature includes:
  • Replies are nested within discussions
  • Automatic signing of posts
  • A single "reply to" button and other mechanisms to aid inexperienced users instead of simply throwing them into Wikitext.
  • User avatars
• Ability to sort discussions by differing criteria
• Individual discussions (and posts within the discussion) are treated as single pages (which potentially allows for categorization, individual watching/unwatching, etc.)
• Automatic archiving: older discussions naturally "fall off" the visible page, retaining permanent links.

The ultimate goal of LiquidThreads is to encourage community health, editor participation, and editor retention.

Timeline

• Phase 1 (back-end work) due to complete by August 2011.

Additional documents

• User requirements:
• Specifications: (request at LiquidThreads 3.0/Design issues
• Software design document:
  • Backend update document
  • The fate of various parts of the LiquidThreads code
  • Object model
• Test plan:
• Documentation plan:
• User interface design document: LiquidThreads 3.0/Design
• Task management: Open issues on "LiquidThreads" component
• Release management plan:
• Communications plan:
• Status updates

Obsolete documents

• Old object model: Core
• Old object model: Discussion core