Structured Discussions

What is Flow?
Flow is a 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—appear 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, even disturbing. That is not to say those conventions are wrong, merely not what those users are prepared for.

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. Mediawiki is the most widely used groupware in the world and increasingly used "behind firewalls" for corporate and nonprofit use. Many of the cultural norms evolved for Wikimedia Foundation projects are not perfectly suited for these uses, and the ability to support a diverse range of cultural norms in user-to-user discussion, with more technical controls when required, should increase the total number of mediawiki users and possibly displace proprietary pe-wiki "groupware".

Roadmap
Flow will be released incrementally, as a limited opt-in beta. We want this product to change and grow over time, based on the feedback of the people who use it.

Building a new discussion system for Wikipedia is not something anyone can do overnight, and there isn't a one-size-fits all solution – different Wikimedia projects and different types of users (e.g., vandalfighters, featured content creators, help desk volunteers) have very different needs.

For the first release, we're focusing on the WikiProject discussion space at the English Wikipedia. WikiProjects are a self-contained micro-community with the goal of improving content in a specific topic area; we believe that a good Wikipedia discussion system should make content improvement and peer-to-peer collaboration faster, easier, and more enjoyable.

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 (brief details)
 * ❌ 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

How can I help?
The Flow team is dedicated to the guiding principles of serving every human being with the ability to contribute to the Wikimedia movement, and sharing power with the volunteer community when creating new software. If you're a community member who wants to help, you're a part of our team.

We believe that:


 * 1) user-to-user discussion is absolutely vital to maintaining and growing content in all Wikimedia projects.
 * 2) freeform wiki talk pages are a barrier to participation for new users and provide a bad user experience for many existing users.
 * 3) the contributors to Wikimedia projects deserve better discussion software, and the Wikimedia Foundation staff and community need to work together to create it.

If you agree, you have the power to shape the development of Flow and ensure that we make it the best possible discussion system for you and every other Wikipedia user, present and future. See our community engagement strategy to learn more.

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