Flow/MVP

This document outlines the high-level requirements for the first release of Flow as an opt-in beta to Wikipedia; specifically, to a subset of WikiProject discussion spaces where users have agreed to trial the software. These requirements have solidified over time but are not set in stone; the details are still subject to change based on user needs. If you have feedback or concerns, feel free to leave them on the discussion page.

Rationale
Users of Wikimedia projects need a lean, responsive, modern interface for collaboratively improving content. WikiProject discussion pages are one of the places where peer-to-peer content collaboration occurs. The first release of Flow to a live Wikimedia project will be geared toward tackling the core needs of Flow as a peer-to-peer content discussion feature in the WikiProject talk space.

This release aims to support existing discussion workflows (talking about content, including markup from that content), as well as improve the user experience of talk pages by facilitating:


 * 1) Productive, efficient discussions that resolve the issue at hand quickly. E.g., It should be fast and easy to ask and answer a question. It should be equally fast and easy to remove off-topic, inappropriate, or harmful posts from the discussion.
 * 2) Transparency and clarity of communication to ensure good-faith dialog among peers. E.g., It should be easy to get a sense of the main points of a discussion and understand who is addressing whom.
 * 3) Ease of use, inviting users to participate if they have something constructive to add to the conversation, regardless of their level of experience with the WikiProject, the Wikimedia project, or with editing wikis in general. E.g., a volunteer translator with little Wikipedia editing experience who is assisting a WikiProject should feel comfortable discussing her translations in the WikiProject discussion space.

Proposed user experience
See an early interactive prototype to try out some of the proposed functionality. Please note that this is not the final product!

A Flow-enabled WikiProject discussion space will become a structured discussion spaces with the following features:


 * A configurable header area (for information about the discussion space, links to archives and FAQ, or any other information that the WikiProject facilitators deem useful)
 * A '''new topic'" affordance, containing:
 * a dialog for naming and starting a new topic
 * A list of topics, in order of most recently updated to least recently updated, top to bottom. Each topic contains:
 * an editable title
 * moderation features (see below under Posts)
 * permalink
 * Posts (replies to the topic). Each individual post contains:
 * author information
 * a human-readable timestamp indicating when a comment was posted, when it was last modified, and by whom, if not the original poster
 * Parsoid compatibility, allowing users to copy-paste markup for most templates and advanced wiki syntax (math, IPA symbols, etc.) into their comments
 * an affordance for editing a post (available to those with appropriate user rights)
 * an affordance for hiding or unhiding a post – hidden comments will leave a placeholder visible to all users
 * an affordance for deleting or undeleting a post (viewable only for administrators) – a deleted post will leave a placeholder visible to all users
 * an affordance for suppressing a post (viewable only for oversighters) – a suppressed post will only be viewable to oversighters
 * a history of the post, including modification and state changes (edited, hidden, unhidden, etc.)
 * a permalink
 * Topics and posts will not be archived; instead, they will be lazy-loaded, with less recent conversations accessible by scrolling down.