Talk:Structured Discussions/2014/04

The Core Features team has enabled Flow on this talk page.

• Please conduct testing at Talk:Sandbox, retaining this page for discussions and suggestions.
• If you find bugs, report in Bugzilla if you can, and here if you can't.

Previous feedback is on Talk:Flow Portal/Archive2 (using old Liquid Threads), and on our labs server.

I'm freaking lost

OK, after using this on and off for a while now, I have a to say this.... The whole point of Flow was to make discussions easier. I hate to say it, but at the moment they are simply not.

I have the following problems:

• Where am I in reading the current page ? Have I read all discussions that could possibly interest me? (scrollbar + fixed position of discussions gave me this information previously).
• Where are the changes since I last read the page (drill down and scroll adventure, broken history)
• Where is that one thing i was reading last time I read the page (no fixed position, might be solvable with instant search)
• Scroll scroll ..... damn so much scroll. Can WMF refund me a new mouse at some point ? (the cause: bigger fonts, less horizontal space, way way more vertical space, super large topic bars and being lost).
• Inverted chronology between topics and the posts inside the topics...

The authoring and replying is working brilliant for me, but it is the reading that is severely lacking.

I'm very impressed by the functionality from a technical point of view so far, but with regard to the spatial model and the timeline of the discussions, I fear it might be time to go back to the drawing board. How about we do away with the 'most recent at the top' mode for a while and start working from the more traditional discussion modes, where things need to be explicitly archived and are in chronological order, because I just can't seem to keep track of discussion right now. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 21:44, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

TheDJ: You're not the only one! As long as only very low-volume talk pages were Flow enabled, I didn't really notice this problem, but I'm definitely feeling it now, as are others participating on the Hovercards talk page. Hooray for dogfooding :)

Some things coming in the near future that should help alleviate these problems:

• Different sorting options. Right now, you're only getting topics sorted by creation date, which I agree isn't super helpful when you've got dozens of topics on a page. We're going to start by adding an option to view Flow boards by most recent activity, so you can see all the topics that have recently had new comments up at the top of your screen. We can also add a reverse chronological sort order (e.g., oldest at top, like on talk pages today), among other options. The great thing about having flexible, structured data is that we don't have to impose any one sort order – people can choose what works for them :)
• Floating ToC with indication of read/unread state. We've got some early-stages mockups to indicate how this might look/behave.
• In-board search. The ability to pull up a list of all topics/posts by keyword: obviously much-needed! We're teaming up with the Search team to integrate with the work they've been doing to overhaul site search.

We're currently in the process of rewriting the Flow frontend code to be cleaner, more responsive across different browsers/devices, etc., so these features are still ~1-2 months out. In the shorter term, we'll be pushing out a board history that looks a lot more like a mediawiki page history, which should help a bit. MPinchuk (WMF) (usurped) (talk) 19:44, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Diff. comments, self corrections and interwiki links

Hi, at first I didn't mind using this Flow, but it starts to be irritating on many points : - You can't use comments to moderate or explain your edits. - You can't have a complet view of the code to be able to copy/past from one place to another. - Self corrections are translating interwiki links into http code, so that you can't clic on them directely anymore. - it is sometimes difficult to realise who is speeking to who, especially when you don't need to talk to somebody in particular. Please improve this mess before imposing this to all wikipédians ! Salix (talk) 22:34, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Salix: There is definitely a lot of work to do, and it definitely will not be imposed on anyone at any time soon. They're specifically asking for volunteer locations, in these early months, so that the software can develop slowly-and-steadily, without annoying anyone (or as few people as possible) who does not have interest in helping with input and feedback.

Re: "comments to moderate or explain your edits" - I think you are referring to Edit Summaries? There was a good discussion about that at en:Wikipedia talk:Flow/Archive 7#Edit summaries (which I won't attempt to summarize! except the points that: Summaries are often mis-used (to carry on the discussion), and are often missed completely by other editors (so if someone does add useful info there, few people will see it)) - the outcome is: they're currently using automatic excerpts when we make a new post. There's also bugzilla:57894 which requests an edit-summary feature when editing the Board Header, and there's an existing prompt for an edit-summary if we moderate (hide/delete/suppress) a post or topic. If there are continuing requests for all post-edits to have an edit-summary, then that could get added in, too. The more feedback they get, the more info the devs have to act on. :)

Re: "complete view of the code" - there's a plan (bugzilla:60465) to add a "view wikitext" link for other people's posts, so that we can learn/copy from each other as we do in current talkpages. It won't be the wikitext of the entire page though - would we need that for any specific circumstance ("use-case"), given that archiving will be handled automatically? (both via the existing infinite-scroll, but also by future features such as "copy/move this topic to Board X" and possibly some form of "archive this topic immediately")

Re: "Self corrections are translating interwiki links into http code" - The bug you saw here, is because you used an interlanguage instead of interwiki link... aha, I was wrong! This is the old bugzilla:61725 getting weirder. It seems that fr: links are working differently from en: and de: links. I've given new details at that bug. Thanks!

Re: "it is sometimes difficult to realise who is speeking to who" - do you mean with the 3-level indent system, or the linked-username-Notifications, or something else? What do you suggest as a potential improvement? Thanks :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

"View board" in notices should link to specific conversation, not the entire page

I just got a notice that someone had replied to my thread via the notice popup. Yay! When I clicked "view board", it took me to the top of the page rather than to my specific conversation. Boo. :(

My expectation from other systems is that I'll go right to where I'm actually having the discussion, and then later I can scroll up/down if I want to see other new discussions in the same topic/board. —Luis (WMF) (talk) 18:14, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

LuisV (WMF): Well, you clicked on "View board" and that's precisely what the notification took you to – the entire board :) If you click on any other part of that notification, it will take you to the specific topic where you were replied to, and if you click on the "post" link, it'll take you to the specific post.

But it sounds like what you're saying is that the "View board" call to action is too prominently highlighted and maybe not even really useful in this context. Totally valid point. I'll add this to the backlog of notifications-related things to run by Design. MPinchuk (WMF) (usurped) (talk) 19:25, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Maryana (WMF): I think the issue is that it took him to the board, but not to the specific topic he wanted whilst still on the board. It'd be like a wikilink to "Barack Obama#Presidency", which is expected to lead you to the "Presidency" section whilst still loading the rest of the content, leads to the top of the Barack Obama page as a whole. Nicereddy (talk) 21:47, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Nicereddy: little bit of both? "View board" was the first thing that looked like an action or clickable, so that is what I clicked on, which goes to User:Maryana (WMF)'s point. (I might have phrased it as "not obvious you can click on the rest of the notice" but they are sort of two sides of the same coin). But your point is also correct, in terms of my current expectation about notifications - I think of them as a way to interact with specific conversations/people, not entire groupings of information like a board? That might not be the right expectation; or it may be an outlier; but that's my thought process at the moment. :) —Luis (WMF) (talk) 21:45, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Too many notifications kills THE notification

Automatic notifications are pre-written in the reply text. The result is too many unnecessary notifications expected when your watchlist gets important, and you would have anyway visited on a daily basis your favourit pages. Salix (talk) 20:02, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Salix: When people receive a reply to a topic they've created or commented on, they expect to receive a notification for that. That's the way it is on all other major websites, and I think it's useful for the vast majority of users as it's automatic rather than manual, unlike the current Watchlist method. On top of that, this helps to quicken the pace of the conversation (people get notifications and can easily, quickly reply rather than hoping they'll find your reply manually) and also improves the understand-ability of the conversation by showing that the comment is made in reply to X or Y user. Nicereddy (talk) 21:44, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Nicereddy: Well, it's not because "major websites" are using something that Wp must copy stupidely. We are not a social website, and some of us are busy writing encyclopédia articles here. This could be at least disabled on chosen pages, to give priority to eagerly awaited replies. Salix (talk) 22:01, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Salix: There's definitely going to need to be some experimentation and changes, over the months, when Flow starts to be used on more and more very-busy discussion pages. There are a lot of different editor types, with different needs and expectations and work habits, all of whom need to be kept in mind. Everyone from powerusers with thousands of pages watchlisted, to newcomers who don't know anything about watchlists. Eg. I know one very active admin who hasn't checked their watchlist in years, but instead uses memory/interest to revisit old/ongoing threads (but who generally likes the new "mention" echo feature).

There are quite a few possibilities as to how it could be developed*, more brainstorm-level suggestions would be warmly appreciated. :)

These* ideas have been suggested so far (plus my own):

• more fine-grained Echo preferences,
• an entirely new "Feed" for discussions,
• a variety of watchlist-overhaul concepts (eg. my very rough napskin sketch)
• different priority levels for "watchlisting"
• to some idea adapted from other sites/software
• to something unique that you suggest! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:44, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): Ok. Here are my two cents : notifications are of different kind (mention, reply, thanks...) Could it be possible to have accordingly a blue, green or other color notification square ? Like that, if you happen to get only thanks notification (green square) it will be less emergency to look at it than if you get a blue (conversation) or red (a mixture of all that). By the way, I like your concept of article/feed separeted watchlist too. Salix (talk) 21:18, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Salix: There were some requests for something along those lines (either different colors, or different/multiple icons), at en:Wikipedia talk:Notifications/Archive 5#Granularity and also at en:Wikipedia talk:Notifications/Archive 5#Color-coding the dot a few months ago.

I'll ask the design team to see if they have any new input - I know they're working to reduce the size of the personal tools at the moment (eg. mw:Compact Personal Bar), and it might fit in well with that idea... in fact... hmmm! */me schemes* Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:06, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Handling WikiProject tagging, etc.

As we can see on the WikiProject Breakfast and WikiProject Hampshire pages, the WikiProject boxes conflict with Flow a bit, which is something that needs to be considered for a large rollout - lest we anger the masses. I imagine this has been thought about, but has there been any ideas as of yet?

I was thinking of making a mockup for my idea, which is that there would be a "box" at the top of the page, either filling the right side (above the eventual table of contents) or above Flow, assuming the user doesn't have enough room for the former. Each WikiProject would have a name, logo, and Class/Importance in said box. It would also be the container for notices (Refideas, for example), and the timeline of events (peer review, reaching good article status, etc.). All of this being editable via a VisualEditor-esque interface. I think this'd look much better and facilitate organization of WikiProjects and edit suggestions for articles, without causing as much friction in the conversion of Talk pages to Flow upon its release.

Perhaps there are other, better ideas already on the roadmap, but I haven't seen any and figured I'd see if anyone liked mine. Nicereddy (talk) 03:22, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Nicereddy: Thanks as always! The team had discussed it many months ago, and I prepared a whole bunch of notes for the design team, but I haven't delivered them yet as I didn't want too many redesigns going on at once.

I've seen many requests over the years, to make the banners smaller and more efficient. These banners (and the categories they embed) are the core of many of our current workflows, so could be crucial in the long-run for Flow.

But it might (?) need to be a multi-step process, whereby we initially just shrink the existing ones (using "small=yes" at Enwiki, e.g., and e.g.2), and then overhaul them properly many months later, when programmed workflows exist.

We also need to research and understand how each of the non-English projects use the systems, if at all differently. Eg. zh:, fr:, it:, pt:, es:, da:, etc

So, this is an ideal time for early brainstorming! Have at it! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:51, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Editing all comments

It looks like I can only edit my own messages. I think this is really unfortunate, because on a wiki, there are plenty of valid reasons to edit other people messages. For instance:

• a message contains something that breaks the layout of the page (a template with a syntax error, a gigantic picture).
• a message contains a broken link to an article or a discussion.
• new users often post messages without realizing that what they write will stay public for ever, and give e-mail adresses, personal phone numbers, etc. I usually remove those, although I don't want to hide the whole message in such cases.
• less common case: replace every occurrence of the real name of a user on the wiki, after a user rename request. Orlodrim (talk) 22:01, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Orlodrim: Thanks for the feedback, on this experimental point. There are notes about it in the docs at Flow/FAQ#Will we be able to edit other people's posts? and in the table at Flow/FAQ#Components of the discussion system (under "Comment editing"), with a lot of detail in the linked subpage Flow/Editing comments.

I won't try to re-summarize that info (See the final "#Conclusion" section in that last link, for the TL;DR version), but I will note that: User Rename requests will be automagically handled much better than they are now - see this example topic. HTH. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:09, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Displaying moderation comments

When you hide a post, Flow prompts you for a comment. These are displayed in the history. It seems that they should also be displayed in the page, after the hidden comment is expanded. (I assume this also applies to other levels of moderation.) Jay8g (talk) 02:09, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Not a bad idea... my only concern is that this might add clutter for not that much benefit – because, as soon as you expand the comment, in most cases you're able to see right away why it was hidden (e.g., spam, vandalism, personal attack, etc.). Is that information really worth repeating? MPinchuk (WMF) (usurped) (talk) 22:56, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Maryana (WMF): I still think its useful for borderline cases and so the user posting the comment can see what happened, and I don't think it would add too much clutter, especially since you would have to expand the hidden comment to see it. Jay8g (talk) 00:08, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Notifications

.

Notifications should go away if you have visited the page that the post it is notifying you about is on without you needing to click on the notification, like with user talk notifications. This would simplify things for users and reduce confusion. Jay8g (talk) 00:14, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Jay8g: That one is tracked at bugzilla:57684 –Quiddity (talk) 01:12, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

"Exception Caught: Failed contacting Parsoid" error

I just received an error posting my last post. The error was:

An error occurred.

The error message received was: Exception Caught: Failed contacting Parsoid.

I do not know if this is the same error that caused a duplicate post issue earlier, but this didn't involve a duplicate post. I also keep getting the same error when looking for older posts. Jay8g (talk) 00:19, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Wierd (minor) watchist bug with $1 in the header

If $1 is in the header of a flow post, such as "Parametr $1 translation message not found", a weird bug shows up in watchlists where $1 is replaced with the username block of the user (I assume the $1 in the code). (I am assuming this is a Flow bug, not a watchist bug, as Flow overrides pretty much everything related to watchlists for its posts there.) Jay8g (talk) 03:53, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Jay8g: Submitted as bugzilla:63974. Thanks again. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:24, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Threading

The FAQ explains why the threading is limited. I'm not sure I agree. I've just tested threading in the sandbox and the threading level is very limited: after two replies threading starts getting messed up.

I've participated in many fruitful (and less full) discuttions in various Wiki projects. Often a discussion starts as a flame at level 1 or even 2 and ends up properly clarified after some discussion. Nesting allows discussion of finer points.

So, can one use the Flow platform to discuss this issue and make a good case? Tzafrir (talk) 06:58, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

For the record, the discussion about this feature in the village pump of the hewiki turned out to become a rather non-linear one. It discussed mostly this point (though does not raise any major new points). Only one of the non-linear threadings was done artificially by me (to prove a point when linking here). I think that reading the same discussion here would have turned out to be more confusing.

(Edited to fix the link now the discussion is archived) Tzafrir (talk) 14:06, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

While I'm at it: is the parenting relation preserved? See my "parenting test" in the sandbox. (how do I give an internal link to it?). Is there a way to tell if a message is a reply to another message? Tzafrir (talk) 17:38, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Tzafrir: Thanks for the feedback, and the pointer to the hewiki discussion. (Sorry for the late response. I do try to take weekends off. ;-)

Re: Internal links: Because Flow is intended to be cross-wiki-compatible, and for links to be permanent even if the Title of a topic gets changed, the UUID string is needed. However,

1. they're discussing changes to the permalink button, whereby we could get both the URL and the Title copied to our clipboard, for easier pasting of a clear-link.
2. they're also working on using a different URL structure, eg [[Special:Flow/topic/UUID]], so that we can link to "a Topic within a Board" (Ie. it would show the topics above and below the target. In temporal context. Like current talkpages do.). That will be in addition to the current "topic by itself" view.

Re: Threading levels: More discussion about this experimental aspect is definitely encouraged. There have been a few prior discussions, but all before the limit was changed from 2 to 3 levels (the current state). See this thread in particular for research on the various options in use at other sites, including things like the 26 level indent LQT thread. (I have my own personal views, which I'm trying not to push too hard. :)

Re: Parenting relation: As your threading test demonstrates, it's not currently very easy to tell which post was being replied to, unless the author refers to the originating post. There has been some brainstorming done on this, but I can't find it right now; your ideas/suggestions are encouraged.

HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF):

Thanks for your reply. After reading the particular thread, I see that the issue is not clearly handled. Someone pointed that threading is not clear in the current model and I agree. I do see people not using threading enough due to that. But there are simple technical ways to show parenting once you have that relation set. Thus this is not a good argument against multiple threading levels. Tzafrir (talk) 05:57, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Tzafrir: To your point that "[o]ften a discussion starts as a flame at level 1 or even 2 and ends up properly clarified after some discussion" – I've seen many more counter-examples, where discussions start off calm and civil and quickly spiral into a deeply-nested, off-topic, back-and-forth argument that's completely counter-productive to resolving the original issue. That's a pretty common bad interaction pattern across the whole Internet, not just Wikipedia. To quote Joel Spolsky:

Branching is very logical to a programmer's mind but it doesn't correspond to the way conversations take place in the real world. Branched discussions are disjointed to follow and distracting. (...) Branching makes discussions get off track, and reading a thread that is branched is discombobulating and unnatural.

It's not an uncontroversial statement, but you'll find quite a few Wikipedians do agree with it :) And since we have the opportunity to explore different threading levels in this early beta trial phase of Flow, I think we should do so and really test the hypothesis that threading is (or isn't) conducive to good discussions.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.html

MPinchuk (WMF) (usurped) (talk) 23:16, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Maryana (WMF):

(Edited)

I saw that quote. Quoting Spolsky is nice. But so far no one has shown me a better alternative. The current Flow is inferios in that sense: it's great to comment on one point and its immediate children. But I suggest that you can't have a useful discussion without more depth.

Furthermore, even if there are off-topic/flamish sub-discussions, with a threaded structure you can ignore those sub-threads and with a flat structure they become the spam chorus for the whole thread.

Theory: removing context will not make it more difficult for flames to erupt. Tzafrir (talk) 05:46, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

While I'm at it: two nits I have while writing the recent comments:

1. The comments counter on the top of the thread does not update as I add a new comment (a minor issue)
2. A more serious issue that I cannot reproduce: while writing the previous reply, the textarea was just at the bottom of the screen. As with now: whenever I press a letter, the textarea will jump to have that letter appear on the screen. But there was an odd interaction with the input selector tool (the keyboard icon) - it appeared on the bottom and caused every key pressed to scroll back up(?) or so.

Browser: Iceweasel (Firefox) 24, Debian Stable (7.4) Tzafrir (talk) 06:17, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Tzafrir: Live (aka "real time") updates are on the wishlist, at various levels of depth. Everything from simple comment-counter updates for the person making a post, to information about other people saving a reply whilst we're still composing our own. However, that all requires various levels of deep platform change, and I don't believe it'll be available "soon".

The jumping text-area, when it's at the bottom of the screen, and our comment is really long, is a known bug. I've re-opened bugzilla:58657 with extra details, though as I note there, the upcoming front-end overhaul will probably fix it. Thanks for the reminder. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

I've seen a few people say that they want deep threading for Flow, but I haven't yet seen anyone who was genuinely confused due to the lack of it. Part of this is because most discussions (both in Flow and in wikitext) only involve two or three people, even in large communities. Even if you and I reply a dozen times, it's pretty obvious what each of us is replying to because there isn't anyone else around. Threading is pretty much unnecessary in that situation.

That said, four levels might occasionally be useful: I propose, you object, I counter-offer, you agree. Outside of major drama discussions, it's rare to actually have more than four levels in real use. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:23, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I don't think four levels would have been enough for the reference discussion (now archived).

Note: replying now with Javascript disabled (using noscript). It seems to generally work. But the page is littered with reply forms. Those reply forms show my name, which is confusing. Tzafrir (talk) 10:22, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Watchlist bugs with moderation

Resolved.

Various bugs are present in watchlist entries with moderated topics.

• The title was not "This topic was hidden by Jay8g (talk | contribs)" or "This topic was deleted by Jasper Deng (talk | contribs)" and definitely not "This topic was deleted by <a href="/wiki/User:Jasper_Deng" title="User:Jasper Deng" class="mw-userlink">Jasper Deng</a> <span class="mw-usertoollinks">(<a href="/wiki/User_talk:Jasper_Deng" title="User talk:Jasper Deng">talk</a> | <a href="/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jasper_Deng" title="Special:Contributions/Jasper Deng">contribs</a>)</span>". Consider simply using "a topic".
• The links to the topics don't work, as the topic was deleted. Jay8g (talk) 00:38, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Jay8g: Fixed now :) MPinchuk (WMF) (usurped) (talk) 21:27, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Maryana (WMF): It's still broken. Watchlist Talk:Beta Features/Hovercards to see the issue. Jay8g (talk) 00:48, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Maryana (WMF): Actually, its inconsistent-sometimes it displays correctly, sometimes it doesn't. Jay8g (talk) 20:23, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Closed topics should still show heading

I feel that closed topics still should show the heading. Unlike moderated topics, these are intended to still be visible. Still showing the heading would provide context for the post, which is currently lacking (see the post below), reducing the need to expand the post anyway.

(By the way, I feel that the ability to close topics is quite useful.) Jay8g (talk) 00:44, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Jay8g: Yup, there's still some final tweaks needed, to finish the first round on this feature. Thanks for the nudge, and also/especially the note of appreciation! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:53, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Voting

There should be a way to upvote/downvote various comments. Often I have a have a suggestion, and I see someone else already made the suggestion, so I'd like to simply upvote what's already been said. Malcolmj1 (talk) 21:06, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

+1 Ricordisamoa 02:08, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Malcolmj1, Ricordisamoa: This is one of those really divisive issues. There are some definite supporters of the idea (in any of the various ways it could be implemented), and some objectors to the very notion. There was a very recent discussion at Enwiki's VPP#Like about something like this, which touched on a few of the aspects (pro and con) involved.

Personally, I'm cautiously curious about the idea, and would need to see visual mockups of various implementations, and read more feedback, before I could come to my own conclusions. I'd be interested in seeing a "+1" system that specifically listed the people (versus reddit's anonymous system), perhaps in a collapsed sidebar or footnote to the post. I wouldn't want it to be too easy though - we need more collaboration and deliberation, not just light-interaction - though possibly the latter would eventually encourage more of the former...?

I don't think "downvoting" would ever be considered. That would create too much ill-will, without a balancing benefit.

It's a potential-feature that will probably need future discussion, but it's not likely to be implemented anytime soon. There are too many other higher-priority widgets and workflows to work on. HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:34, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

+1 Gryllida 10:51, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Cross-wiki threads

Often a discussion would profit from being held in a central place (e.g. Meta-Wiki). Flow should support merging threads, moving and redirecting them to another wiki, or at least provide a built-in way to mark a thread as "transferred to the X wiki at page Y". Thus, a discussion started on the English Wikipedia about a MediaWiki bug could be moved here, and so on. Ricordisamoa 02:58, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Ricordisamoa: See Unbound boards above, plus the Flow/Release_planning feature wishlist (which includes merge/split/move). :-) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:19, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Unbound boards

Flow has the great opportunity to bring real meta-discussion on wiki sites. Boards should be abstracted from the old concept of 'talk page' and instead bound to a subject: that could be an article, a template, a file description page or... another board. Ricordisamoa 03:29, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Ricordisamoa: That's exactly the plan! Flow content is already hosted in a separate database from any single wiki, which should allow [somethingsomethingtechnical] cross-wiki discussions in the future. There are additional complications with this, such as editors having different userrights on each wiki, (etc), so it'll take some time and experimentation to get it "right", but it's a fundamental long-term goal. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

User:Ricordisamoa/Flow is a revamped and extended version of my original proposal. Please comment about it. Ricordisamoa 12:21, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Topic/post history pages

The topic and post history pages need to be updated, as they still have the old (custom) formatting, while the board history has been changed to look like a normal history page.

Also, the post history page has no intuitive access, as it is not accessible from the post drop-down menu, like the topic history page is. As far as I can tell, the only link to the post history page is from diffs. (I am not sure we need a post history page at all. I suppose it has use if a post is edited more than once or if a post is moderated and then un-moderated, but a better way of showing this might be possible.) Jay8g (talk) 03:58, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Jay8g: Indeed, I believe Topic-history and EnhancedRC are two of the last steps in the (way larger than originally estimated) overhaul of these Feeds.

I'll check with the team what the plan is for Post-history - I think it's partially just implemented automagically, as part of something bigger, and that it's kept around for other future workflows which may need it. We can probably just redirect those remaining links, to the Topic-history page. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:13, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Whatever

Whatever. (cannot find my earlier thread)

Anyway, text #d1d1d1 (grey, text) upon bg #ffffff (white, bg) is not acceptabele by w3c accessibility standard. I am surprised that mw encoders even did not check this. -~ DePiep (talk) 22:19, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

DePiep: I've sent some links, examples, and grumbles, to the Design Team.

There is a Firefox-specific bug that is making the text even lighter than it should be (something to do with applying opacity to Placeholder text, hence the specified #AAAAAA is turning into #D1D1D1 but only in Firefox), however the text does need to be darker than regular "placeholder" text because it's part of a new and unfamiliar interface. (See bugzilla:59933 for more details).

TL;DR they're aware of, and working on fixing these problems. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:57, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): Read this. DePiep (talk) 23:53, 30 April 2014 (UTC)