Thread:Talk:Flow Portal/Workflows/reply (2)

Okay. I have seen the word "workflow" thrown around a lot in discussions regarding this. I assumed it has a technical meaning.

Still, the descriptions I find around there, and in the above reply sound rather complicated. To reiterate, the core, universally-needed features here are: (I am omitting things like notifications of replies, subscribing to discussion boards/threads separately, etc.)
 * Threads and posts clearly separated from each other. [in progress]
 * Threads attached to (possibly multiple) pages. [in progress]
 * Enumerated options ("votes"). [early plans]
 * Discussion closure and closure summary. [early plans]

If I were to support "workflows", I would base everything on these core features, and create a configurable policy (similar to protection levels) for choosing how they are supposed to be used, i.e. who is able to attach or detach a particular page to a discussion thread, and who can close threads attached to particular pages (i.e. anyone can attach a new thread to a "current deletion discussions" page, but only administrators can close and detach threads from it; blocked users cannot attach threads anywhere except the "current unblock requests" page and their own talk page, etc.). Very little of the discussion processes would need to be coded into Flow this way.

And I think there should be a feature for seeing threads attached to "all of the specified pages" (e.g. for when someone is looking for past deletion discussions for a given page: intersection of that page and "past deletion debates") and "either of the specified pages" (someone wants to have a unified view of MfD, TfD and RfD, or a unified Village Pump).

Also, did anyone think about the "page tags" feature? This could replace maintenance tags like "unreferenced", deletion or protection notices, or talk page banners. It could eliminate some problems, and would be great to integrate with Flow, e.g. we could have a tag saying "this article needs to be cleaned up, see [this discussion thread] for details". And the discussion thread would be created by the software while adding the tag, instead of requiring the tag adder to do it manually. The current system of "templates and categories" kinda works, but sometimes it just feels strained. Merges seem especially painful.

The final item on my wishlist: please keep the visuals simple. I like the ascetically compact look of talk pages, certainly more than I like LiquidThreads. I only want posts to be clearly separated from each other, and to be able to collapse threads to take even less space.

And a pink unicorn, please. Need not be invisible.