Talk:Flow/Comparison of threading models - Classic

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It's more difficult than it used to be to figure out who is responding to whom
Original conversation

I have this philosophy about taking time away from new extensions after I've played with them a bit and given feedback, because otherwise I get frustrated when things don't move at "my" pace. And usually, when I come back weeks or even a couple of months later, I can see improvements and am happy to try them again. (Heck, it worked for VE and MV - They both got noticeably better and more usable over time, and the improvements were more obvious when I stepped away then returned.)

This extension is almost the opposite. I've yet to return to it to find it improved as a communication tool. I read the sections below, and I honestly cannot tell who is talking to whom, who is responding to what, without really having to work at it. It is significantly more difficult for me to figure out this page than it ever has been in even the most convoluted discussion on a normal wiki talk page. It's one of the few times where I've looked at something and been completely unable to give any constructive criticism. I've been able to figure out dozens of discussion systems pretty quickly over the years (going all the way back to the bulletin board days, probably before some of you were even born)...this is the most difficult one I've run into for at least 10 years. I know lots of people are really working on this, but from what I'm seeing here, your objectives are so divergent from what I as a user expect from a discussion system that never the twain shall meet.

Incidentally, what brought me here today was an email message informing me that User:Flow_talk_page_manager had moved a page called Talk:Flow Portal/Archive2 (a page that as far as I knew wasn't on my watchlist), and when I followed the link....there was nothing there. I can't tell what got moved where, and there is nothing on that page to tell me what the heck this "user" is. (A bot of some kind? who is running that obvious role account?). Risker
 * Which thread(s) are you having problems following? Diego
 * E.g. the thread named "New side rail". It looks like DannyH (WMF) replys himself. (looks like copy paste has some side effects - at least in the editor - I am not going to figure which icon I should press).
 * You can not expect people to read the threads from a to z. I read the first message in a thread, if interesting I read the first reply, and if its not interesting I skip to the next reply to the original message and so on...
 * (This replys is a good example - I replied to Diego Moya, but it looks like its to Risker). Christian75
 * Why do you think your comment looks like a reply to Risker? It's right below my comment, so it feels natural to associate it to the text that is closest to it (immediately above), and to read the thread as a sequence of posts at the same indentation level.
 * This is the standard layout of new posts at internet boards and comment sections in blogs (i.e. most of the Internet). Reading text in order is fairly natural, we've been accustomed to doing that in books and magazines for ages. Diego
 * User:Diego Moya, I cannot tell strictly by observation if Christian75 is replying to you, replying to me or simply making an additional comment to further the discussion; only his parenthetical comment tells me that he was replying to you. This formatting is aberrant; it is unlike any other discussion system I have seen in a very long time.  The wiki system, for all its ease of screwing up indentation, gives visual hints as to who is responding to whom, or if they are just making an added comment to the topic area.  Forum software allows (and generally encourages) quoting.  Comment systems for most media indent the first response to a comment and (depending on the system) keep all the rest of the related responses (including responses to responses) at the same indent level, indicating that a "side conversation" is taking place, or allow indentation of responses to responses to a specified level (sometimes 2 or 3 indents).  This system gives absolutely no visual clue as to who is responding to whom.
 * As an aside, I have this thread on my watchlist, yet I have received no notifications that there have been further responses. What's with that? Risker
 * The new threading model does provide visual cues for side conversations, it just excludes the first reply from them and considers it part of the main conversation. If Christian75 had replied to you instead of me, his comment would have been indented one level, right below yours; because his comment is not indented in such way, I can tell that it was posted as a reply to the main thread just after my first comment, and thus he was not replying directly to you.
 * The visual hints you talk about are not part of the wiki software, it's a convention adopted by its users using formating tools, not any specific feature of the software to support conversations; it's a by-product of its flexibility, not something designed for collaboration.
 * Flow merely uses a different convention; the current threading model decides to apply subthreading to all replies to a post except the first one as a way to separate the main sequence of ideas from isolated remarks about a particular post (see the new reply by He7d3r to your fist post).
 * At this previous topic there was a proposal (initiated by Hhhippo, tweaked by me) to adapt the model to something more similar to mediawiki talk pages, see if you like it better (it works as you describe, creating a single indent level for each new group of parallel posts including the first).
 * Aside - have you clicked the star at the topic title to add it to your watchlist? If you did, you should report the lack of notifications as a bug (I've received the notification for your replies). Diego
 * User:Diego Moya, I do understand the convention being used. I disagree that it is a sensible one, because right now there are two replies to my initial post, but only one of them is indented; thus, it looks like one person answered me and another person (your first post) was simply a comment to add to the discussion. I cannot tell visually or by any other indicator than the postscript of his post that Christian 75 was replying to you: his comment could be a standalone, a response to me or a response to you. He7d3r has commented directly above where I am writing now. I cannot tell if he is responding to your previous post, or to my earlier post but not clicking "reply" or if he is adding an entirely new comment. He also responded to my first post and his response is indented, but it comes above your response to me and is thus no longer in a logical time sequence. There is no sense of conversation, of discussion as opposed to a bunch of people adding comments on a topic. There is no logical progression. Indenting responses makes sense to differentiate them from comments that are not responses.
 * I do understand that the use of indentation and bullets on wiki pages is a convention as opposed to a forced software option; that's appropriate, since the pages are used for so many different things. However, we've also known for years that adding an "INDENT" button that automatically added the correct indentation for a section was entirely possible, and that it could even be designed to automatically outdent (and add the "outdent" markings) after a specific number of indentations. But no volunteer decided to write the software, and the person in charge of engineering and product for many years was always extremely clear about how he really hated talk pages, so there was no reasonable chance that anyone from the WMF side would be tasked to improve the talk page software. I certainly won't complain that nobody was interested in committing career suicide over talk pages.  What applies to content - i.e., that we're seriously falling behind in maintaining and improving existing content because there's so much more reward in making new content - applies to software too. Everyone know's it's much more interesting and fun to create something new than to rebuild something that already exists, and it's usually also easier.
 * As to the watchlist issue, this thread (and actually the whole page) is on my watchlist, I have been getting email notices for a bunch of page moves and other activities that have been happening recently to other pages on my watchlist, I am just not getting anything for this page or this thread. I'll take your advice and submit a bug report later tonight. Risker
 * But most blogs (like Facebook) have a philosophy that the users should not discuss, but just leave a comment. And I think most people do not read the internet like a book. Stay on one page, read it all, before going to the next page. Christian75
 * Yes, I agree with that, and that Wikipedia talk pages should be forum-like rather than blog-like. But this model is not that of Facebook, it's closer to forums and bulletin boards.
 * BTW, boards a la BBCode have a philosophy that users should discuss, and they've managed to support it quite well through the years - mostly by the use of quoting previous comments. The current threading model is an attempt to improve on that by reducing the amount of quoting required. Diego
 * BTW, boards a la BBCode have a philosophy that users should discuss, and they've managed to support it quite well through the years - mostly by the use of quoting previous comments. The current threading model is an attempt to improve on that by reducing the amount of quoting required. Diego


 * See also the WONTFIXed T93883. He7d3r
 * Oh wow, He76d3r. That is one of the saddest phabs I've ever seen.  Seems to me that what they've failed to recognize is that they're not getting as much criticism because fewer and fewer people are actually trying things out. I see that Short Brigade Harvester Boris was making the same point as me here, about the visual cues being very important in reviewing Wikipedia talk pages; as he says, they're usually scanned as opposed to being read.
 * EDIT: Oi!  And why, when I have VE not enabled on this wiki (deliberately - I use it elsewhere), is this page not properly handling wikitext?  Geez....
 * EDITED AGAIN: It's only because I was certain there *had* to be a way to switch to wikitext that I tried the  symbol, and that certainty only came with years of having been around. All the mucking about I've done with VE, I still haven't found the process for making piped links. Risker

Even Poor man's Liquid Threads indents comments correctly: wikt:User:Yair_rand/addcomment.js. He7d3r
 * That would depend on your definition of "correctly", wouldn't it? ;-) Diego