Topic on Talk:Structured Discussions

A hyper-partisan website with substantial traffic just LINKED DIRECTLY TO ONE OF OUR TALK PAGES because it wanted its own ATTACK-PIECE inserted into our BIO OF A LIVING PERSON.

The current talk page is currently struggling to sort out what, if anything, should go into the article. The issue here is not about the specific content. I hope I don't have to explain to anyone why this is event is a Very Bad Thing, how this would become common if Talk were ever replaced with Flow, and how the impact would be catastrophic under Flow.

As far as I can tell, this is exactly what the strategy behind Flow is about. If Flow makes it easier for newcomers to edit the talk page, then that is deemed to be a Good Thing, and a success, not a failure for Flow. Of course, it may be that you and I think it a Bad Thing for building an encyclopaedia, but WMF think otherwise. Indeed, the WMB Board chair is on record as saying that

• We want to attract new editors. They don’t have to become heavy editors, they could even contribute once in a while, as long as we get lots of them. We have to make it easy enough for anyone to contribute so that people once again feel that “anyone can edit.”
• If that means changing the dynamic, this might very well be the time that we have to do that.

As long as a proper talk page is still provided, the troll-space provided by flow could simply be ignored by the proper users and editors of an encyclopedia. If one day this troll-space will become the only talk page, it's no fun any longer.

Flow pages are proper talk pages.

Flow is just suited for (very short) conversations, not suited for all the other stuff needed in a talk page. WP is not a forum, and should not be.

There have been long discussions about what Flow needs to deliver beyond chat. See, for example, many threads at w:en:Wikipedia_talk:Flow, such as w:en:Wikipedia_talk:Flow#Workflow_research

That is where I personally would like to see means to weed out trolling from talk pages while not removing it entirely. Having +/- buttons for comments was a thought. Some people rejected it as they think that it would make it harder for people to work. But I see it as an additional sorting criterion (in addition to time created and time edited of a topic) and, if the total "score" is hidden enough (i.e. only used for sorting but is not visible), I think it could be a productive feature.

In the case under discssion that would give yet another means of disrupting the conversation to visitors who want to argue about the topic rather than discuss collegially how to improve the article.

Did you ever read my comments on your discussion page why +/- would be bad?

It's particularly ironic that you're raising +/- again on this thread, with a wingnut site like thefederalist linking directly to a talk page. The wingnuts would flood minus-ratings at all of the legitimate editor's comments. My head wants to explode when you call it a "productive feature".