LiquidThreads 3.0/status

Last update on: 2012-07-14

2010-12-31
During the latter part of December, WMF designer Brandon Harris focused on the next iteration of this feature, with development slated to begin in January.

2011-01-21
During the first quarter of 2011, LiquidThreads is undergoing a major re-engineering process, that is encompassing both its user interface and its architecture.

The updates will include:
 * Substantial updates to the database schema, code layout, and object model.
 * A re-conceptualisation of the user interface.

All code work will be fully documented before and during development. While some documents are being worked on internally, many are being worked on at MediaWiki.org to allow all developers to participate in the re-engineering process. All documentation will eventually become public at this site, regardless of where it is being developed.

2011-01-31
An evaluation of LiquidThreads is underway, both at the UI and code infrastructure design. We are modifying the design to incorporates input from several community discussions as well as from our engineering staff. We plan to consolidate all of our documentation on these discussions on mediawiki.org in the next month.

2011-02-28
Andrew Garrett has published documentation on upcoming back-end and architecture changes. New design specifications have been published by Brandon Harris as well. A discussion was started on the "gender gap" mailing list about how this new discussion system could improve interactions between participants.

2011-03-31
Main developer Andrew Garrett laid down a timeline for his upcoming work on this feature that brings threaded discussions capabilities to MediaWiki. He will first focus on back-end work, before moving to documentation and front-end.

2011-04-30
Lead developer Andrew Garrett wrote a new object model for LiquidThreads, with support for channels, topics, posts, summaries and respective version objects. He also began work on integrating the new object model with the rest of the extension, starting with a more maintainable reimplementation of the display layer. Integration with the rest of the extension proved to require more time than expected, and an updated schedule was published.

2011-05-31
Lead developer Andrew Garrett continued to work on his new object model for the back-end. Timo Tijhof will be working with Andrew on the new front-end.


 * "Currently, the schedule calls for staged deployments of the rewrite between early July and Wikimania [2]. There's been some slippage on the schedule, but there's also a substantial amount of slack in June, and I think Wikimania would be a reasonable timeframe to expect a test deployment on a number of small projects, of which some will necessarily be in right to left languages."
 * 2011-05-31



2011-06-30
WMF work on this project was mostly on hold in June due to limited resources, that were affected in priority to supporting the 2011 Board Election and the MoodBar.

2011-08-01
<section begin=2011-08-01 />This project was mostly on hold in July, in favor of the MoodBar feature.<section end=2011-08-01 />

2011-09-30
<section begin=2011-09-30 />Andrew Garrett worked on the integration between the LiquidThreads interface and the new back-end. What remains now is mostly to re-implement administrative actions, logging integration, new messages, and other ancillary parts of LiquidThreads on top of the new back-end. Once this is done, there will be a new, more stable version available for use on Wikimedia wikis.<section end=2011-09-30 />

2011-10-31
<section begin=2011-10-31 />Andrew Garrett started working on a conversion script to facilitate the transition from the old schema to the new one.<section end=2011-10-31 />

2012-07-14
<section begin=2012-07-14/>"Further deployments of LiquidThreads are indefinitely on hold because we don't have the resources to support it." – Andrew Garrett (2012-03-19) there is no further development expected. <section end=2012-07-14/>