Structured Discussions

What is Flow?
Flow is project being undertaken by the Core features team at the Wikimedia Foundation. Our goal is to build a modern discussion and collaboration system for all Wikimedia projects.

Why discussion?
User expectations don't match the reality of talk pages today.

Users expect a modern and intuitive discussion interface. Talk pages—as a discussion technology—are antiquated and user-hostile.

Users are surprised by the cultural norms of the community. Many things about the culture that has grown up around talk pages (such as "talkback" templates or being able to edit other people's comments) are confusing.

We believe that a modern user-to-user discussion system will improve the projects. Better methods for collaboration will improve collaboration, which will improve all of the projects.

Short-term (up to December 2013)

 * ✅ Initial brainstorming and user research


 * ✅ Defining the scope of the first release (Minimum Viable Product)


 * Build interactive prototype of the MVP on WMF Labs


 * ❌ Community testing and feedback


 * ❌ Limited, opt-in release on select WikiProject discussion spaces

Long-term (2014-2015)

 * Wider release to more WikiProject and community discussion spaces


 * Limited user talk release


 * Workflow language exploration