Talk:Structured Discussions

Structured discussions (Flow) is used on this page (documentation).

• Please test at Talk:Sandbox; this page is for discussions and suggestions.
• If you find a bug not yet tracked, report it in Phabricator, or here if you can't.

You can leave your message in any language, but answers will be made in English (or your language if we speak it).

Can someone enlighten me to why there are two mechanisms of deletion: hide and delete?
As an admin, I find it very confusing when someone hides a post; it seems like it is deleted but can be retrieved by any user and unhidden. I've often seen users hiding posts (mistakely or otherwise) - surely that's not intended?

The FAQ page mentions that hide is supposed to emulate the undo function, but doing that is more prompted and quickly revertible. Also, for us admins, hide and undo are the same thing.

Hide is accessible to any logged-in user. It allows people to hide comments that are not welcomed or offensive.

Delete allows admin to delete the post, like for an article. There is also a Suppress link, only for oversights.

Why is the option to hide comments given to all users? Shouldn't that be restricted to admins (or at least rollbackers)? P.S: All users (even anons) can hide flow posts.

I can't remember the reason why, but I can ask. It is something that may be reconsidered with good reasons.

It's normal in Wikipedia that in discussion pages every user can hide comments by other users. To the extend that's the intent of Structured Discussion to replace the status quo it makes sense to allow the existing behavior. (But you might put an option into Structured Discussion for the person who installs the plugin to set the rights and deactivate the feature when they don't like it)

When I reply to the last comment in a section, a new thread is started instead of adding a sub-comment. Maybe there is a way to do it, but I don't know how.

Sorry for the late reply.

Do you have this when logged-out? On which wiki do you experiment that?

What steps do you make?

I experience this in any wiki, for instance now, instead of created a nested comment when replying to your comment, it creates a comment on the same level.

Your reply is not a new thread. It is a reply. Like it is a reply on a lot of other websites.

Replies are not nested like they are on wiki when using wikitext. It helps readability by having all replies at the same level. Some people like that system, some others don't.

A consultation around talk pages will happen in a few weeks. It would be the best place to share what you like or dislike concerning the different discussion systems that exist or would exist.

The way I see it is different. Inside each thread there can be many sub-threads, when I reply to a the last sub-thread, the reply should be nested, as it happens when I reply to a sub-thread that is not the last one. If I want to start a different sub-thread, that should be optional, not the default. Otherwise the meaning is lost when other people reply to comments that happened before the last one, and then there is no way of knowing to who the last person was replying to.

Looking forward to the consultation!

I can't seem to find this information available on any of the help pages, just that you can follow individual topics.

If a user creates a page, do they automatically follow all structured disccusion topics created afterwards or do they have to regularly check the talk page to see if someone has created a topic?

Anyone with an account can monitor:

• the whole page - you get a notification for every topic created (not replies)
• a topic - you get a notification for every reply in that particular topic

The documentation you were looking after is here. :)

gone stale

The WMF should focus on cleaning up the mess left behind from the failed LQT and Flow experiments before it starts yet another experiment that is doomed to fail under the new name "Structured Discussions".

No reply whatsoever?

They never admit this project is a failure, why would they reply?

Aren't Flow and Structured Discussions two names for the same thing?

Changement de présentation des posts

Bonjour, je suis incapable de trouver le contenu de ma page de discussion personnelle et donc les différentes sections...

Une aide en français possible SVP ??? ou en anglais pour un "non informaticien"... !!!

D'avance merci, Guy,~~~~

Bonjour

Quel est précisément le souci ? Avez-vous converti votre page de discussion pour utiliser les Données Structurées ? Si oui, comme indiqué lors de l'activation, les discussions existantes en wikitexte sont déplacées dans une archive. Désactiver cette fonctionnalité déplacera le flux de discussion Discussions Structurées dans une sous-page et désarchivera la page de discussion précédente. En savoir plus sur l’activation.

La majorité des pages d'aide concernant les discussions structurées sont disponibles en français.

@Guy6631: Fixé. Voir: fr:Discussion_utilisateur:Guy6631 "Consulter la version archivée de cette page": fr:Discussion_utilisateur:Guy6631/Archive_1

@Trizek (WMF):

This is another case of Flow's complicated unholy-hack producing bizarre random problems. There was absolutely nothing wrong here, except that Flow didn't render the page properly.

Here is what the user saw in their Flow page header.

Here is their Flow page header after I made an edit to it, and reverted the edit.

Not only is Flow broken, not only did Flow break the revert button, but the broken revert button fixed the broken page. And you wonder why people hate Flow?

@Guy6631, le problème venait d'un modèle qui n'a pas été renommé par la communauté.

Flow/Architecture/API#Posting a new topic from on-wiki JavaScript

Extension:StructuredDiscussions/API

If we are trying to created new section on user talk page where user has enabled structured discussion It is not possible to create new section.

Code:

$page = $wiki->getPage($userName);

$page->setText("Text", 'new');

I am using https://github.com/hamstar/Wikimate and it works for normal talk page.

Then it needs an update to work for structured discussion, because an API for flow already exists.

Ok Thanks

The first thing you linked to uses something called MessagePoster, which is a nice feature that lets you post to a talk page without knowing if it's a normal talk page or a Flow page; it figures out and does the right thing. Unfortunately, MessagePoster only exists in JS; a version for PHP has been worked on, but it's not ready yet.

If you're trying to post to a Flow page from PHP, I think the best way to do that would be to use an internal API call to call the new-topic API in Flow.

Is it possible to show structured discussions like a comments, in article's footer?

I'm not aware of how to do that with Structured Discussions, but you might find this extension helpful: Extension:Commentbox

It might not be exactly what you're looking for, but it does allow for comments at the bottom of an article.

At the moment, that's not possible.

Why not to allow 3rd, 4th, etc. level for messages, as in LiquidThreads?

If user A creates a post, B replies to A, A replies to B and C replies to A's first post, C's reply could be misinterpreted as a reply to A's second post. This is undesirable.

Ricordisamoa: We want whatever we build to work across all the different kinds of devices that people use to access Wikipedia now and 5-10 years from now: desktop, laptop, tablet, phone (mobile phones currently represent ~20-30% of Wikipedia pageview traffic, and this number is steadily growing). Infinite levels of threading display very badly on smaller screens. We're testing 3 levels currently (reply to topic, reply to user, reply to user's reply) to see if this suffices for more complex back-and-forth discussions.

Maryana (WMF): anyway, Common Sense should forbid users creating more-than-5-level threads.

Maryana (WMF): Can't you increase the width of the comment threads a bit? It's somewhat weird: Articles are much more dense in terms of the information contained yet they extend over the entire width of your screen, but discussion threads (here) only get roughly 60% of the normal width of a Wikipedia page.

Pajz: Full width looks very strange with short comments and is difficult to read. Following 1 line of text across an entire screen is tough on the eye. There's some more info on this at the Flow design FAQ if you're interested.

Maryana (WMF): While I agree with using an optimal reading width; with further nesting levels you run into the issue of the comment being less than the optimal width. I assume the reason for the first nesting level having a smaller font size was to solve this, however you won't be able to just keep lowering the font-size for additional nesting levels.

The easiest solution would be to allow nested comments to extend out further, however this would look pretty messy. So perhaps the solution is to meet it half way and extend the width to a bit greater than optimal, so nested comments are a bit closer to optimal?

137.147.205.98: I mostly agree with your comment right there. Additionally, longer replies get more compressed in such a narrow width.

Since Maryana said it's at approximately 60% width right now, I'd just take a guess that 70%-80% would still look good, and meet half-way with the two opinions on the width.

Why not just do like Reddit does and have the ability to enter into deeper thread layers?

We were already discussing this as part of Thread structure of Flow needs improvement.

At least a third level of threading will be available soon. If this will suffice we'll see...

Shouldn't it be configurable?

nesting broken test

nesting only work in source edit

Patrick87: A third level is, indeed, now available :)

Maryana (WMF): yeah, it is!

Can I make a fourth available?

now its working

nesting seems broken

Given that the acceptance of Flow/Structured Discussions by the Wikimedia community is already hard, why make it harder by not allowing the administrators of wherever it gets installed to decide on the level of nesting?

Yes, agreed, this seems like something that admins should be able to decide. It makes sense to have an opinionated default but to make this difficult to change is just silly.

Plus there ARE solutions to making deeply threaded conversations mobile friendly. Reddit does it after all.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T167509

Are there any plans to allow users to add their own avatars near name?

The current Development status is no developments scheduled. It's largely in maintenance mode. The foundation is still interested in Structured Discussions, but there have been major deployment rollbacks due to strong community rejection of the product.

The foundation has announced a Talk pages consultation for early 2019, to reconsider how to proceed. It may result in resumed development of Structured Discussions, enhancements for the wikitext Talk page system, building an entirely new system, more than one solution for different uses, or "Something completely different that I can't imagine yet".

It is clear. Than we have to just wait.

Also, is it active on commons and english Wikipedia? If not, can I still have it on my own?

There are some wikis where you can try Structured discussions, some others are actively using them. On most active wikis using Structured discussions, people can use them on their user talk pages or on every discussion page.

Commons and English Wikipedia have decided to have those options not available to their communities.