This page used the Structured Discussions extension to give structured discussions. It has since been converted to wikitext, so the content and history here are only an approximation of what was actually displayed at the time these comments were made.
Look at this thread, they actively deny VE on talk pages, probably to push this failed bullshit Flow. This is just a weask forum impersonation, without any of the flexibilities the current system has. Dumbed down beyond recognition to increase the facebookisation. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden)08:54, 22 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
you summed it up nicely here: "preferred to create shiny new bling instead of boring maintenance".
They did a so-called Flow satisfaction survey, but under completely bogus assumptions: They artificially created a rift between wysiwyg and proper talk pages, although that's just a decision by the WMF not to implement it on talk pages, without real merit. They based a lot of the questions ion this bogus assumption, so the answers are just rubbish. Of course asked this way: old fashioned editor or wysiwyg-editor, and the second only possible with flow, you'll get the answers, that were intended by this: I want wysiwyg, so I have to want Flow.
It's this complete dishonesty about projects like Flow that's so frustrating. They seem to do anything, including blatant lies, to push their pet projects against the community. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden)17:28, 22 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
The WMF should not be allowed to use surveys because they are using them to get the result they want instead of trying to determine what the consensus is.
They use surveys on external servers, and they only invite a small group of people, because they know the majority disagrees with them. We should have an RfC on en.wiki instead. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 14:30, 23 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
There was an RfC on enWP already, and Flow was planted in the bin: T148611.
They will probably get the same results on deWP, if they dare to introduce this piece of junk there anywhere.
Thanks, He7d3r, for fixing my wrong syntax. I tried to do this the usual way, via the thanks link in the version history, but thanks to Flow that's impossible. So I had to use this quite elaborate way ;) Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden)08:38, 25 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
No, and I don't expect any. They still maintain this fairytale about a dichotomy between wysiwyg and talk pages, the one that was the base of this completely useless "survey" I mentioned above. They even implemented VE in discussions themselves in the 2017 Community Wishlist Survey, but in this still insist that very discussions with VE that it's not possible and moved this simple wish, that could be done in no time with probably just a simple check in a checkbox, to "not possible", because those who desperately want Flow don't want better real talk pages. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden)09:28, 9 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
Well, I have explained why Flow is a bad idea, I have mentioned some of Flow's downsides, and I explained how it can be improved. I have not been disruptive.
This has been previously suggested; however, there are no near-term plans to implement it.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
RESOLVED
This was a result of the Wikipedia Foundation's server switch 2017, and should be fixed now.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Latest comment: 8 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
So far this is quite confusing, but I was referred here in relation to a suggestion I offered about a reputation-display feature. One of the features I would like would be background search support. In this case, as soon as I wrote the Subject it would show me candidate threads or comments that I might want to read or even help me add my comment in the proper place.
The feature I was suggesting would be to accumulate a person's reputation based on reactions to the things that the person wrote. I think there should be multiple orthogonal dimensions, with a bias in favor of positive participation. The accumulated reputation could be displayed in a small radar diagram. One way to do it would be to have two icons, the person's own avatar (linked to their self-generated profile) and a small radar icon (linked to a larger and detailed radar diagram and history of reactions). The dimensions should also allow for negative values, such as dimensions for interesting versus boring, polite versus rude, and happy versus sad. The positive-bias can be done by making it easier to give favorable mods. For example, if there is a dimension for consistent versus inconsistent, then you could just click "consistent" (because you think you remember this person saying similar things in the past), but if you want to click "inconsistent" then you'd need to reference a conflicting comment from that person.
As a user of this feature, I'd be able to filter out people who I don't want to see, so mostly this is a way to save time. However, it would also give me a relatively stable and objective snapshot of what sort of person I'm thinking about responding to. I'd prefer to tweak my setting so that it is easier for me to communicate with thoughtful and interesting people (and I would prefer to never see the trolls (based on negative politeness and negative sincerity) or waste any time on them). Shanen (talk) 22:18, 27 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
That being said, an arbitrary ranking of individuals is not likely to ever be implemented because it would be too prone to abuse, gaming, and some wikis won't likely want such social network features (karma like features). 197.218.83.176 (talk) 05:54, 28 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
Hi Shanen
Your suggestion is not related to Flow. Plus having a way to rank people is not really compatible with the idea of inclusiveness the Wikimedia Foundation tries to promote. Such a tool can be used for wrong purposes. Imagine if someone considers every newcomer's contribution as negative? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 11:20, 28 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
Tracking the behavior of the person who gives too many negative evaluations would justify discounting that person's evaluations. If you don't like to think of it that way, think of it as a way to normalize behaviors on an individual basis. Perhaps a criticism is justified, but I'm going to take it more seriously depending on who it comes from. Shanen (talk) 10:16, 29 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
Previous discussions are archived on a sub-page, as indicated in the message when you activate the Beta feature and in the documentation. This message should be rewritten.
By activating "Flow", I lost all my previous discussions and was unable to track open discussions, so I had to deactivate it, and *luckily* my old page returned.
Previous discussions are archived and a link is created on the Flow board description (right side on LTR wikis). Was it the case? On which wiki have you enabled Flow?
Copying existing discussions is very, very complicated to do: it require to parse an entire unstructured wiki page and find every element. It is quite trivial for titles, bot not when you have to attribute authors to every sentence, when big differences about indenting or signing exist across the wikis. When I've requested the conversion of my volunteer user talk page to Flow, I've did it when I had a few ongoing discussions. Other users where also redirected to the archive when they had notifications of new messages on old conversations on their watchlist. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:56, 3 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Well, I acknowledge the difficulty of parsing the page, however, at least let the new page start with a link to the previous 'discussion' page so the user could at least have a starting point and may decide whether to copy it manually to the new page or no. Thanks. "Yahia" (talk) 16:21, 3 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
There is a link, as I've said. :)
"Previous discussions are archived and a link is created on the Flow board description (right side on LTR wikis). Was it the case? On which wiki have you enabled Flow?" Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 16:26, 3 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Enables a new structured discussion system on your user talk page. Flow simplifies talk page discussions with clear places to write and reply, and allows conversation-level notifications. Existing wikitext discussions are moved to an archive. This feature is not auto-enabled; users will have to enable it separately. Disabling this feature will move the Flow board to a subpage and un-archive the previous talkpage.
Is there a URL trick I can use to load all contents at a given board at once (or maybe even specify, "all threads edited in the last month", or "all threads created in 2017")? Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:48, 3 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
I know almost squat about setting up an installation, but I'll offer a quick pointer that might(?) be enough for you to fix it. If not, I'm sure someone else will jump in with a better answer.
Flow doesn't use the normal (article page) rendering engine. It uses the Visual Editor system, and the engine behind it, Parsoid. Somewhere in the available install-components there is probably some math package explicitly connected to either Visual Editor or Parsoid. I'd expect that finding and installing it should fix the problem. Alsee (talk) 20:28, 8 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
I'm virtually certain that the initial default is VE.
After that, Flow remembers and defaults back to whatever editing mode you used(*) last time.
(*) In order to "use" a mode you need to make some sort of change in that mode, and click save. Typing in wikitext mode, switching to visual, and saving with no new changes, would count as wikitext mode. Alsee (talk) 20:53, 8 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
@TitusiMW, you mean in a Wikimedia wiki, or in a third-party wiki?
In a Wikimedia wiki, you have to switch to visual editing mode and the wiki remembers this choice. In another configuration, it may be different. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:09, 9 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
My question was for a private hosted wiki. I understand how to switch between modes. I woould like to make VE default for all users of my wiki. Is there a way to do that? TitusiMW (talk) 01:16, 5 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
I wish you luck with that. We have been asking the WMF for a way to make wikitext the default, and the WMF doesn't want to fix the dysfunctional "start in an effectively random mode" design. Alsee (talk) 04:50, 5 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Hello,
When a message has just been posted, and shows "few seconds ago" (I'm guessing the translation), when the cursor is over it, it shows the real date/time. But because this message has not the same size, it keeps blinking/flashing between both if the cursor is too much on the left. Roumpf (talk) 10:27, 14 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
For more explanations, in French, the post shows the chain : "il y a quelques secondes" wich is longer than : "a few seconds ago".
- When the cursor is over the first words, on the left of the chain, (like "il y a..."), it shows the real time.
- But, because the date shown is shorter than the text, the cursor is now out of the "over area", and because the cursor is not over the date, it shows back the text "il y a quelques secondes".
- Now the cursor is again over the text, so it shows the date, and repeat ...
If I changed my settings to english, it doesn't happen anymore, have you tried with different settings ?
If needed I can try to figure out how to make a video capture of my screen.
I should have precised that I've tried to reproduce this bug using French. :) I tried on a group of random dates, not specifically on the "il y a quelques secondes" case, though. Désolé.
I cas see this bug, reported. This bug is not a blocker so it will very probably triaged as "Lowest" priority, and it may possibly be declined if the interface is reviewed. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 10:06, 16 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Allright, thank you for reporting it. I totally understand it is not a priority, but I could not have left a bug without notifying it !
Latest comment: 8 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
After I change my username, I find it's back to classic mode, but the parameter in preference is still selected. After I cancel it, save it, and select it again, it works. Maybe it's a bug, please fix it. Wi24rd (talk) 16:02, 28 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
In theory, this bug has been fixed in March. Your Flow board was supposed to be moved when your account has been renamed.
I see you have re-activated Flow on your user talk page on zh.wp, but it is apparently a new page. Didn't you have another one, attached to your previous account? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 09:10, 29 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
For some magic words the Flow doesn't seem to work. Take a look at d:User talk:Queryzo, where he was welcomed with an admin-template that uses {{BASEPAGENAME}} or something like that. Is there already a task filed in phabricator for this issue? QZanden (talk) 19:26, 30 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion
According to this page since August 2014, signatures don't apply in flow, but there are plans for a "Preferred name". Is this feature planned for the near future? Ssola (talk) 21:09, 17 July 2017 (UTC)Reply
I like the proposal of DannyH in this phabricator ticket. It's adding a plain text in parenthesis after your name that can be changed anytime, and the change applies everywhere.
I see there are some details to be resolved. But starting with a global preference of "Display name" seems like a good start (mentions by display name can be implemented later). Wether to use the old "real name" field is the only thing that we've to see, but I don't know the technicalities. Ssola (talk) 11:16, 18 July 2017 (UTC)Reply
Have multiple names displayed may lead to some confusion for the users, especially when you want to mention them. Which name is supposed to be used? You may have seen cases where the username is different from the signature. It is confusing as well. So this topic have to be considered carefully.
Latest comment: 8 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Issue
Cannot find thread titles using the flow search.
Background
As noted in the subject page, the built in search engine can find all flow "boards" (Flow#Is there a way to all find pages that use Flow .3F), but it can't find any threads / topics names within them, nor is it possible to search the board description, or flow summaries. Full flow search may take a while (or never happen) but making it possible to search for topic titles would be a minor (and hopefully easy) short term improvement.
Proposed solution
Separate the different parts of flow into separate content:
flow-board - The main discussion page consisting of flow topics
flow-topic / flow-thread - The specific discussion within a board, storing just the titles for now
The ones suggested for now, would be 1 (which already exists), and 2 which would make it possible to see all discussions titles, without fully obtaining all the text within it. Number 3 (and the rest) are probably best left for a future date as they are probably more complicated.
Long term (as in not part of the immediate suggestion)
flow-post - The individual posts within each thread, possibly for a future date. Since flow may either internally store them as wikitext or html.
Might be indexed as part of the wikitext content model:
Thank you for you message! We are discussing about implementing search, both on a board or a whole set of topics. The ideas you have are options we are discussing about. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 17:20, 25 July 2017 (UTC)Reply
Hopefully it is simpler than attempting to get the whole flow search to work, as far as I understand it. The fact that it finds flow-board at all, was actually an "accident" or side-effect of new functionality in the search engine rather than any changes to flow itself.
Latest comment: 8 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Hello, a question. When I see Flow on this talkpage, I can scroll endless, there is no bottom of the page, I think. Is there no archive? If there is an archive and Flow is installed on your "talk" page, can every user choose how en when pages are archived or is this the same for all of us? Thomas98 (talk) 15:09, 28 July 2017 (UTC)Reply
Interwiki links display like external links in Flow. This is not a conscious design feature but is not considered a major blocker either, because interwiki links are an intermediate category between internal links and external links. phab:T97552 tracks this design issue.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
As the nice IP has summarized the topic, it is tracked as T97552. It is not intentional, and while it is not a major blocker (basically because it is an external link to another wiki), it hasn't been fixed. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:14, 23 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
Really? This junk is back in terms of wasting more money? Who's responsible for this absurd decision? Why do you want to ignore the communities over and over and over again? Flow is dead as dead can be (outside the fanboy ingroup bubble in SF). Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden)15:03, 23 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
I am still owed an apology back from when that Code of Conduct was introduced.
Please read my userpage on en.wiki. If you don't want to read it in its entirety (which I do recommend!) then you can search for "If I had a large amount of money" and read those 3 Stephen Fry quotes. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 14:25, 23 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Latest comment: 8 years ago18 comments5 people in discussion
In the now closed thread currently just beneath this one Deryck Chan wrote, that on the Wikimania the legend was passed, that the DOA project Flow is still in active development. It's been discussed a bit on his Flow page (not a real talk page, just Flow). Methinks, such discussions should not be done on some hidden back-rooms on user talk pages, but just here, where Flow is the topic.
So:
Who declared this dead horse non-dead? Why is more money wasted on Flow instead of improving Talk pages? Why is, for example, the VE forbidden on talk pages, as it's no problem to use it there, it's only fine for the Flow-fans to pretend VE is somehow connected to Flow, which is a blatant lie.
The only way to kill Flow is for the community to continue pushing the Flow-Rollback.
The Flow extension was uninstalled from Enwiki.
The Flow extension was uninstalled from Metawiki.
@Sänger, are you willing to organize a Dewiki RFC to request Flow be uninstalled? I would be more than happy to supply information and examples that will help get consensus. It will be no problem to start an RFC on Commons and other English wikis. Then we can reach out for people to translate it into other major wiki languages. Alsee (talk) 04:03, 24 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
Yes, but not without even last minute warring tries to shut down the gerrit patch in spite of a large community consensus against Flow due to some technical problems to remove it. That said, we got that uninstalled and we're happy with the decision we made. Some projects I work on are also considering having the feature removed. That said, it is easier to remove Flow on wikis where not even a single page uses this as it does not require converting back pages to wikitext content model, so Sänger, should you wish to pursue an RfC at Deutsch projects, go ahead. Regards. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 10:55, 28 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
The WMF installed the Flow extension on all wikis, even if there are zero active Flow pages. EnWiki and Metawiki removed all Flow pages AND uninstalled the Flow software itself.
Benefits of uninstalling Flow:
Uninstalling this complex unused extension improves the security of the Wiki. Flow has had critical security threat bugs in the past. Flow may currently have unknown critical security threat bugs. Future development on Flow would almost create new critical security threat bugs. All software development carries an inherent risk of bugs, but if Dewiki isn't using Flow then there's no reason Dewiki should get hit by those bugs. There is no reason to have this unused software installed.
Uninstalling this large, complex, unused extension improves the stability of the Wiki. The Flow extension is unusally complex, and it is unusually invasive into other parts of the wiki software. The future development plans for Flow would make it far more complex, and far more invasive into other wiki software. A Flow bug could disrupt the wiki, a severe Flow bug could even crash the wiki completely. Again, if Dewiki isn't using Flow, then there's no reason the software should be installed.
Uninstalling Flow prevents any deliberate or unintended side effects that Flow has on the wiki.
Uninstalling Flow removes the "create Flow page" buttons from the wiki, ensuring that no one can create Flow pages without a major discussion to re-install Flow.
Uninstalling Flow communicates an important message to the WMF. Some people at the WMF expect Flow to eventually replace Talk pages. They plan to keep spending money trying to upgrade Flow. They have Faith that we will eventually want Flow, once they "upgrade" it enough. Uninstalling Flow says we are NOT eagerly waiting for Flow to be improved. It says we want Flow GONE. If a few more major wikis firmly say we want Flow GONE, maybe the WMF will finally get the message that Flow isn't a viable project. Maybe they'll finally stop wasting money on it. Alsee (talk) 21:36, 25 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
I understand your skepticism, because I know how hard it feels when WMF rolls out new features with insufficient forethought and messes things up. But not all wikis are alike, and the Wikimedia movement is more than the English and German Wikipedias. Editors of many smaller wikis have found Flow useful and I believe (or at least I hope) the continued development of Flow will not force wikis to adopt it against their editors' wishes. Deryck C.Meta17:00, 24 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
This was not a case of "insufficient forethought and messes things up".
Before Flow was built, countless editors tried to discuss the project with the WMF. The WMF individual(s) responsible for Flow were hostile and malicious. (Assuming Good Faith terminates when actions or statements demonstrate otherwise.)
The lead designer effectively terminated discussion, telling the community to seek "zen acceptance" of the fact that he was going to ignore us, that he was going to build what he wanted to build, and that the WMF would force it out whether we wanted it or not. He stated he wanted to "kill off wikitext", and proceeded to knowingly and deliberately build a grossly defective Flow with by-design content-corruption problems. That is beyond inexcusable. Deploying Flow anywhere sabotages the global community and sabotages the global mission. If the WMF scraps Flow and starts from scratch, maybe we can come up with something that benefits everyone. I don't know what that would look like, but conventional forum software with a corrupt wikitext-simulator bolted on is not a viable answer. Alsee (talk) 01:45, 27 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
I'm very sceptical, as the extreme buggy and licenses disregarding MediaViewer was forced with brutal might and complete ruthlessness against the explicit wishes from the communities upon the deWP and enWP by the WMF, who gave a flying fuck about the communities, if it doesn't align with their vain. The WMF still has not apologised for this completely unacceptable behaviour at that time.
Without Flow all Wikipages are more or less the same, editable in the same manner, behave the same way, look the same way, are flexible in the same way and easy to use in the same way.
Flow completely breaks with that (and LiquidThreads, the other, even weaker, forum impersonation did as well. Instead of developing the VE for use on talk pages, they want some new shiny bling. VE on Talk pages is possible, but it is deliberately not implemented, to give Flow some advantage. They simply want Flow, and don't care even a bit about the communities. New shiny bling is sexier then dull maintenance, that's the main reason for Flow. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden)17:09, 24 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
I'm with Sänger on the issue of VE for talk pages. Talk pages are used for discussing and drafting bits of articles so it makes sense to allow some form of VE integration, whether inside our outside Flow.
And w:WP:BEANS applies - the more developers resist allowing VE on talk pages, the more editors who dislike Flow will complain about unfair advantage imposed by WMF. If VE is enabled for talk pages, editors who don't yet feel strongly about Flow might be swayed that talk pages aren't always the best structure for discussions, even if visual editing is enabled. Then they might warm up to structured discussion systems. Deryck C.Meta13:37, 26 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
I agree with both of you. As an engineer by trade I can believe why VE will struggle to emulate the indentation that we currently use on talk pages. Did you notice that VE is a bit clumsy when it tries to handle bulletted and enumerated lists?
But at the same time I agree with you that WMF Editing / Collaboration teams are doing themselves a disservice by forbidding the use of VE on talk pages. They should allow individual projects to turn it on by popular demand. Given the disposition of German Wikipedians I can see one of two outcomes: either the middle-ground majority of editors will realise that VE + talk pages is the wrong solution for threaded discussion and begin to support a propert threaded discussion system, or the German volunteer community will find a way of making VE work for talk pages. Either way that will stop people from whining in an infinite loop. Deryck C.Meta10:10, 28 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
The structured discussions feature provided by Flow is not and has never been "dead".
Some communities are using it on a regular basis as they appreciate it, and the developers have kept on with maintenance tasks and bug fixes. This year, we will make some changes to structured discussions based on feedback, as we documented in the annual plan. The editor-facing changes will be announced to the affected communities soon.
The structured discussions feature is not and will not be deployed to editing communities that don't want it. As it's an editor-focused feature, unlike MediaViewer, it has to work well for a majority of editing community members to be successful. That shouldn't prevent some communities from using it just because other communities don't want to.
It is wrong to say that all wiki pages are alike, and that structured discussions are the only departure from this. Each "structured data storage" system differs from other wiki pages. Most simply, file pages are radically different (you have to 'upload' to change them). In Wikibase (used for Wikidata with other future uses being worked on by several teams), "pages" have a completely different storage/editing mechanism. Wikisource also uses a very different editing system for side-by-side correction of OCR'ed texts, which is more appropriate for that set of needs. In the same way, a structured discussion system has unique needs. Getting it implemented will have a known list of benefits, that communities have been asking for over many years, and that are impossible to implement in a non-structured plain wiki page. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:21, 24 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
Why are you not putting the VE on talk pages? Why don't you maintain normal, structured talk pages? This pages here have a completely inflexible, cast in concrete, mono-structure, a dumbed down forum impersonation. Real talk pages are usually good structured, you can even reorganize them, indent far better, put some new headlines in there, whatever, they are flexible.
If some few elements like auto-indenture, auto-signing and of course the VE, that is deliberately held back from talk pages, to make Flow look better, are developed, that would erase probaly about 95% of the so-called problems.
You might want to consult our volunteer colleagues at Wikidata and Commons about your description of a "flexible and honogeneous wikiverse"... Deryck C.Meta13:12, 26 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
I'm talking about the article based, encyclopedic, core projects, not the database background projects.
Basically all pages in normal article based projects behave exactly in the same manner, are editable in exactly the same manner, have exactly the same look-and-feel. Flow creates an artificial barrier between talk pages and all other pages.
And the VE is withheld from talk pages without any real reason probably to give Flow, a pet project by some people in SF, an advantage. That's imho a very destructive approach. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden)13:19, 26 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
What is necessary for a project, to get completely rid of Flow?
Latest comment: 8 years ago24 comments6 people in discussion
I just got aware, that the software for Flow is installed even on projects, that don't want it at all. What is necessary for a project, to completely uninstall anything of the extension from the project software?
Structured discussions ("Flow") will not be activated on wikis that didn't previously use it. No structured discussion board will be created on German Wikipedia unless if the community requests it.
Uninstalling the Flow software from a wiki is a moderately complicated option that would require precious developer time. We are not going to spend this time groundlessly to remove Flow from wikis. We will continue to work on the extension to improve it for those that use it. We will focus on communities that expect to see changes on the structured discussion systems they use. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 6 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
We are not going to spend this time groundlessly to remove Flow from wikis.
Flow was uninstalled from EnWiki based on what was essentially an amicable agreement between myself, Quiddity, and whomever Quiddity reported to. We agreed that an RFC would clearly result in consensus to uninstall. We agreed that it was in the best interest of good-relations between the community and WMF to reach an amicable resolution, forgoing the planned RFC on the subject.
Flow was uninstalled from MetaWiki based on an overwhelming RFC consensus.
A DeWiki Umfrage (a low formalities RFC) is sufficient grounds to remove Flow; or
a DeWiki Meinungsbild (an extremely formalized RFC) is sufficient grounds to remove Flow; or
are you reversing the WMF's position and asserting that community consensus no longer constitutes grounds for uninstalling Flow? Alsee (talk) 08:39, 7 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
There are tons of structured discussions on deWP, just not with this extreme inflexible Flow junk, but normal structured ones. Stop with this straw-man about structured discussions, this Flow is just some weak forum impersonation, not even remotely something like a "structured discussion".
Start implementing VE on talk pages, don't go on deliberately omit it there to give Flow some rigged advantage. And let the devs do something useful instead of wasting time for Flow, let them develop indentation and auto-signing for VE, to improve the existing structured discussion pages in all wikis. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden)21:37, 6 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
@Sänger, I've asked you before to improve your tone. I suggest you revise your post to "Please stop with this straw-man about...".
I believe you will find it much more effective and rewarding to maintain a professional tone, and when necessary, organize a community consensus.
We are powerless when we come here as ranting individuals. We are powerful when we come here as servants of community consensus. Alsee (talk) 09:04, 7 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
But the insistence on the creation of a rift between a structured discussion and normal talk pages, that usually are structured discussions, is nothing but a en:Straw man.
Flow creates a deep rift between completely inflexible pages called Flow pages, designed for just the one proclaimed goal to make chit-chat easier, with disregard for every other use-case and the look-and-feel of the rest of the wikiverse with its everywhere nearly the same page behaviour.
Implementing VE on talk pages on the other hand would make the structuring of discussions on talk pages probably easier, would keep the coherent look-and-feel across the wikiverse, and keep the talk pages as flexible as they are needed. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden)13:33, 7 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Your "But..." doesn't matter. "Shut up" is considered an abusive tone. You should remove those words. You should also maintain a more professional tone in the future.
I believe you know that you&I are generally in agreement about the technical issues. I believe you know you that I found Superprotect to be offensive, abusive, and unacceptable. If that is not sufficiently clear, I will make it clear: The WMF can do almost anything because they hold the power switch. However the one thing they can never do is shut off all editing. It would be a severe error if the WMF were to repeat a Superprotect type Nuclear war. The community holds the bigger nuclear weapons, and the community may decide not to withhold nuclear retaliation next time. A nuclear conflict could escalate to the point that the community posts banners on all articles: "Please stop donating, the Foundation is wasting and misusing your money." That banner would include a graph showing the shocking and exponential growth in Foundation donations. That would be headline news across the globe. That would be bad. Everyone loses a nuclear war. However the WMF would lose the nuclear war AND lose the issue they were fighting over.
Personal attacks are also considered unacceptable. Any staff member would be fired if they talked to us with the language and tone that you use against WMF staff. If you continue to use that kind of language and tone, you may be blocked from editing mediawiki. Your efforts clearly are not working. Your tone only undermines the efforts of myself and other community members, when WMF staff members view the community as unreasonable and abusive.
It is reasonable to disagree with the WMF. It is appropriate to criticize actions. But maintain a professional tone and avoid personal attacks. They do not work. They are counter productive. They are unacceptable. They will get you blocked. Alsee (talk) 13:30, 8 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
This wiki is covered by the Code of Conduct, as you have been warned before. Your comment is not in keeping with its requirements for respectful, civil discourse. Please edit your reply to comply with the community standards of this wiki. If you continue to speak in this fashion, I will report this issue to committee Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 22:59, 6 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Is there anything in the code of conduct about employees of the communities, who impersonate decision makers, for what they< are only entitled with full vetting by the highest entities, that is the community?
What could be done with people, who act against the communities by withholding technical solutions for personal and/or institutional vain from the communities, like it's done with the VE on talk pages? And who refuse to give meaningful answers in discussions, that don't aghrere with their POV? Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden)04:25, 7 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
I believe any discussion showing a reasonable consensus will be acceptable. The WMF has been activating Flow on some wikis based on informal discussions with just two or three 'support' comments. Alsee (talk) 07:05, 6 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
(Really, you should remove Flow from MediaWiki as it complicates the consumer-developer communication… Did noone ever think about this?)
I don't really understand why you say uninstalling Flow on dewiki isn't an option if enwiki and meta did it before. Can you please explain that to me?
@Sänger: I don't know if you're aware of this, but the wikimedia tech community has a consentual opinion that insulting each other instead of an reasonable conversation isn't helpful at all and will be banned quite fast. Sadly, dewiki built a tolerance towards such behavior, but that doesn't mean you can behave like this elsewhere and don't get negative feedback. MGChecker (talk) 18:00, 7 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
I deleted the insulting part, at least I think so. What's still insulting?
I think it is insulting to proclaim VE is not for talk pages, while this is just not the case.
It is insulting to talk about this software as "structured discussions", while nearly all talk pages contain structured discussions, some even more and better structured than Flow is able to deliver.
It is insulting to make a survey based on completely bogus assumptions like the on that was carried out about Flow.
It was insulting to force the MV on deWP with pure might and never even apologize for this rude, insulting and destructive behaviour.
It's insulting not to talk to the point, but circumvent the problems.
I meant this as a general advice, because it wouldn't be the first time I see a German Wikipedian banned because of his tone on Phabricator or here, it wasn't that specific.
I have too admit that Sänger is right. That VisualEditor can't handle talk pages isn't that inherent in its concept, but by design: I think it would be entirely possible to check, if I'm on a talk page (ns overridable by magic word) and change ve a bit to make talk page feature more prominent there. (Your signature and indent-related things) MGChecker (talk) 18:32, 7 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
I haven't been getting involved in the VE-on-talkpages issue because I don't use VE much, because I've been trying to deal with bigger issues, and because it's so hard to get the WMF to adjust course. However I fundamentally agree with Sanger and MGChecker.
Deliberately crippling VE is a symptom of a general ideological and strategy error. I sometimes find VE valuable, and it is absurd-bordering-on-malicious that the WMF prohibits me from using VE to edit content. The WMF's error is imagining that content is supposed to be on one page, and discussions on another. A page is a page. Editing content on talk pages is a core workflow, which shows up within almost any other workflow at any time. We also often have discussions on non-talk pages. Any given page should be presumed to contain simultaneous content&discussion. The WMF's efforts to rip the wiki in two are a major source of conflict between the WMF&community. Alsee (talk) 17:25, 8 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Questions from a neutral view:
Why do we want to uninstall Flow? Unless the first board get's created (Trizek said, it won't unless consensus is reached) there is no effect here. But:
Why was it installed then? I mean the only effect was that the flow user was created, and it created two templates, but for which reason did you setup an extension then which is not that easy to remove again?
Additionally: I read through phab:T63729. The only work there was, because there were already flow boards. At dewiki there was no board created yet, so uninstalling it would not cause any additional workload, than just change two dblists and SWAT it. Non flow-developers can do that as well. Luke08151523:10, 9 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
My main problem is lack of trust towards the devs and deciders at WMF. They simply don't seem to get it,that the communities, not them, have the last word in the Wikiverse.
The last times they developed some bigger software stuff, they nearly always failed massively:
VE first installation against the advice of the community: an epic disaster. Only after they started to listen, it became useful.
MV, a pet project without real use, massive problems with legal necessities, but pushed massively by some individuals for personal vain, was forced on the communities with brutal abuse of power, and up to now they have not even apologized for this extreme bad and hostile behaviour.
SuperProtect, something that should have been ditched within the hour and the hostile, anti-community-scheming bad devs should have been kicked out asap, lasted for over a year before it got finally half-heartedly deleted.
Now the next pet project without real use cases is pushed massively, again with complete disregard for the input from the communities, even deliberately biased "surveys" to make it look better and the deliberate and unreasoned block of the VE from talk pages, just to make Flow look better.
Lighten up on the devs. Paid devs had to do what their boss said. That boss was Eloquence. Eloquence lost his job here. Eloquence was acting with the support of Executive Director Lila. Lila was fired. Lila was acting with the endorsement of the Board of Trustees. The community fired three of those board members, and I think all board members other than Jimbo have been replaced. Almost everyone responsible for Superprotect is gone. Alsee (talk) 12:26, 10 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Why was Flow installed: I'm not WMF, but I'll offer my view. Flow was installed on every wiki because the long term plan was to kill wikitext talk pages and switch all wikis to Flow.
Wikipedia started with several years of exponential growth. Exponential growth always hits a wall. After the peak the editor base declined for a while, then appears to have roughly stabilized. However a bit of panic set in at the WMF during the decline. There was fear that the decline would continue into a crash. Based on some really lousy research they concluded that wikitext was the problem. A theory emerged that vast numbers of "regular" people would think skydiving was a fun hobbywriting-an-encyclopedia was a fun hobby, if only they didn't have to deal with wikitext. The WMF initiated a strategy. I quote: "deprecate wiki syntax as the primary input method".[1] The vision was that VisualEditing would be the core platform for editing,[2] and that wikitext talk pages would be replaced with more conventional forum-style software. The lead designer for Flow said he "would dearly love to kill off Wikitext".[3] He told us to seek "Zen acceptance" that Flow would not have proper wikitext support, and that it was the WMF's decision to deploy Flow whether we wanted it or not.
To save the WMF the trouble of repeating themselves: After the anti-Flow shitstorm as well as the Superprotect conflict, the WMF has been giving repeated assurances that they currently have no plans to activate Flow pages without local community consensus. However Flow's proponents still clearly expect Flow will eventually be fully deployed. They have Faith that we will want Flow, if they just keep spending enough money working on it.
Why do we want to uninstall Flow: An immediately practical reason is that uninstalling the unused extension improves the security and stability of the wiki. Flow is an exceptionally large, complex, and intrusive extension hooking into many parts of the wiki software. Furthermore the WMF has laid out massive development ideas for Flow, development that would have major entanglements with all parts of the wiki. There have been severe security bugs in the past, and the new work would will inevitably create new security and stability bugs. There is no reason that wikis which aren't using Flow should be subject to those bugs.
However probably the main driving reason for uninstallation is that the overwhelming majority of editors hate Flow and want it gone. Really truly gone. (87% in the Meta RFC.[4]) Most people don't want an "upgraded" version activated in the future, and many have said they don't want the WMF wasting money continuing to develop it. There is a common view that Flow is a dead end, like LiquidTreads. There is a common view that the WMF is going to keep pushing the Flow agenda, even if the WMF isn't currently forcing Flow pages. If the major wikis progressively have Flow uninstalled, the WMF will soon be forced to face reality. Alsee (talk) 02:36, 10 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
If you are aware of security issues, please report them.
Flow's developments are not for everyone but only for wikis that have it and use it. Force the communities which don't use Flow now to use it is a waste of time, like uninstalling it. We will not do either. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 08:01, 11 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
I do not recall anyone requesting that Flow be uninstalled from communities that want it. Although I do question the WMF spending resources on continued development, given the apparent low interest and long term viability of the project. Alsee (talk) 17:41, 11 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago21 comments6 people in discussion
Wikitext discussions use semi-structured layout, a flexible mechanism that provides a self-describing structure. The Structured Discussions project focuses on features that enable full-structured discussions by design, replacing the loose structure of talk pages with the rigid structure of a pre-defined database schema.
Why did you use this misleading new name for Flow, where structured discussions are taking place on most regular talk pages now? They are usually even better structured, and definitely better to restructure, if necessary, than this weak forum impersonator.
A discussion with a structure is a structured discussion. Most discussions on talk pages are such discussions. As the WMF is denying the use of VE on talk pages without any valid reason, it's only possible to structure those discussions in the normal editor. But as they are as flexible as any wiki-page in the wikiversum, unlike this completely inflexible and rigid-like-concrete unstructured forum impersonation formerly known as Flow, they are even able to get restructured to a better arrangement, if this would make the discussion better readable, and the connections between the different edits are open for anybody like everywhere in the wikiverse in the page history. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden)17:56, 13 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
I have updated the summary trying to focus on answering the question at hand. I have hidden comments that were deviating from the topic. @Sänger, your opinion about the name and about the idea that wikitext discussions are structured too is clear.
The project name is not shown to users wherever this extension is enabled, and in this sense the name doesn't have an impact on actual users of this feature. The name is exposed to developers, admins, and people like us here discussing about a project. Discussions about project names are relatively frequent in the free software movement and other places. Statistically speaking, people just move on.
Semi-structured content doesn't facilitates data-processing as well as a database schema does, but for human-facing content, the looseness and flexibility of a semi-structure is typically an incredible asset, as it allows to use the tool in ways and situations that weren't envisioned by the tool designer.
If the Flow developers want the tool to ever replace talk pages, they should be aware of and honest regarding what features they are removing, not just what they are adding. Diego Moya (talk) 08:39, 14 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Structured Discussions are a work in progress: features are not removed, but progressively added. Some communities are happy to Structured Discussions and are expecting new additions - we are working on it. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 09:47, 14 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
I'm afraid you didn't understand what I meant by "removing features"; I was referring to features that would be lost in the change from wikitext pages to Structured Discussions pages.
There's an important feature in the current wikitext-based talk pages, which is that their structure is defined by the community, user-editable, easily reshaped with a text editor, and ultimately optional. This flexibility is seen as an asset by experienced Wikipedia editors, and thus a "feature".
The Structured Discussions team has made clear that they don't want to support a semi-structured tool with lightweight structure requirements defined in wikitext syntax. Thus, there is every indication that the aforementioned feature (let us call it "lightweight structure") is one that will not be made available in Structured Discussions, ever, by design. Diego Moya (talk) 12:38, 14 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
"Lightweight structure" created by wikisyntax is complicated to reproduce with all details. This is the blank page effect: you can do anything you want using a blank page, and the visual structuration is then made by humans, progressively, for humans - other humans have to learn how to use the codes and the habits to enter the interaction.
Most machines requests are excluded from that, so as newcomers, alas: as you said, it is for experienced editors. For them, we are not removing talk pages. The new developments are only for Structured Discussions users, aka communities that use Structured Discussions; most of them use them to interact with newcomers.
> The Structured Discussions team has made clear that they don't want to support a semi-structured tool with lightweight structure requirements defined in wikitext syntax.
For this year. As I was saying, features are progressively added: Structured Discussions are a work in progress.
Post a message, reply to it, reply to a previous messages is possible. Reply inside of a message is not possible (and even on unstructured wikitext talk pages, they are not the best practice for readability) but you can manually quote someone.
New developments will allow topic move and messages move. That will allow users to create sub-discussions or new discussions, which is the missing case for user-to-user discussions now. Which other cases from the lightweight structure do you have in mind? That would help for future prioritization. :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:39, 14 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
> "Lightweight structure" created by wikisyntax is complicated to reproduce with all details. This is the blank page effect: you can do anything you want using a blank page, and the visual structuration is then made by humans, progressively, for humans - other humans have to learn how to use the codes and the habits to enter the interaction.
I know it's not easy, but it's doable. Many people have requested that the WMF develop tools that would support most newbie-frendly workflows on top of wikitext, like those already available at the en:Wikipedia:Teahouse. Supporting basic lightweight structure at talk pages should be relatively easy, as shown by the fact that we already have some tools that actually do it, and seems fairly feasible for the reduced set of use cases that newcomers would need.
As many have explained, changing the underlying technology forces newcomers to learn to different tools, while a semi-structured discussion system on top of wiki pages would create a platform for new editors to progressively learn about wikitext.
Can you provide an explanation for why the WMF has never devoted resources to approach that kind of tools, many times have been requested by the community, and is using them to develop an entirely separate tool based on entirely different principles?
> For this year. As I was saying, features are progressively added: Structured Discussions are a work in progress.
Are you going to include features in Structured Discussions for lightweight structure? (a.k.a. editing the page structure in markup mode). This is huge news! ;-)
Seriously, "topic move" and "messages move" is less than what is possible in wikitext semi-structured pages; those features only solve a few use cases, but they fall way short from what lightweight structure is being used for in Wikipedia.
> Which other cases from the lightweight structure do you have in mind?
> Can you provide an explanation for why the WMF has never devoted resources to approach that kind of tools, many times have been requested by the community, and is using them to develop an entirely separate tool based on entirely different principles?
Wikitext structured pages can't provide enough structure to have for example machine readable contents that would allow better interactions (through notifications) or create a sort of inbox for all messages you receive. We are in a loop, I think.
The Teahouse was a test about newcomers retention, not specifically about discussions. One of the aspects was indeed to ease discussions to increase retention, so a specific hack has been created for it. It appears that editors had more success when using the hack that opens windows to reply than regular wikitext. IIRC, it has motivated Flow's kickstart, to create a structured system that would give a more clear interface and more interactions.
> Are you going to include features in Structured Discussions for lightweight structure? (a.k.a. editing the page structure in markup mode). This is huge news! ;-)
Maybe later. We don't know yet. It is a possible option and all options have to be considered. But for this fiscal year, the plans plans are already defined.
> Seriously, "topic move" and "messages move" is less than what is possible in wikitext semi-structured pages; those features only solve a few use cases, but they fall way short from what lightweight structure is being used for in Wikipedia.
Allow me to disagree: if they solve a few use cases, I think they solve most done actions. The majority of interactions done daily in conversations are, I think, 4 types: create a new conversation, reply to someone (just below - regular reply), create a sub-discussion or move the topic to another place. There is of course extended cases, thousands, but they are proportionally a few.
> Can you please create a central repository of community-requested use cases, so that we don't need to repeat them again and again?
What's all this talk about machine readability? Do you want to endorse such projects like the Botpedia in Cebuano, i.e. get rid of those lousy editors, who dare to speak up against your fancy bling dreams?
No, machine readability has to be far far down on the list, and machine interactability should go straight to the bin. The Wikiverse is about people, the knowledge of people, who like to aggregate it. Machines may be useful in certain, restricted cases, but that#s it. If machines can't properly discuss, they should just shut up on talk pages.
And as Everything has been transfered as product definition on Phab or in category Flow: No, I don't care about dead projects, I wouldn't do anything to help Flow, as it's DOA. There is only stuff filtered through the eyes of proselytes, not even remotely everything.
And some things are deliberately delayed to promote Flow, like VE on talk pages, and everything related to VE on talk pages. It must not be done according to the Flow prophets, as it's blasphemy. Surveys are done based on deliberate false pretences, like no VE on talk pages without Flow, which is just an arbitrary decision by the WMF, not an axiom from the technique.
It allows building features like having a list of all conversations that happen in a different category.
Machine readability makes it easier to display talk pages on mobile clients as talk pages are currently created with the desktop in mind. Given that mobile internet usage rises, it's good to have a structure that makes it easier for mobile users to interact with Wikipedia.
Currently, the act of achieving a discussion breaks links to the discussion. With flow every discussion has a stable ID that survives achieving a discussion. Having a stable ID for discussions is about machine readability. Stable links allow humans to find discussions. ChristianKl (talk) 13:33, 13 November 2017 (UTC)Reply
You don't need per-post machine readability for any of those features. Section-level thread detection, like the one available in the current editor, could be used to build them. Moving and renaming threads would require additional support from templates in wikitext, but it's still doable. Diego Moya (talk) 14:08, 13 November 2017 (UTC)Reply
Flow/"Structured Discussions" remove nearly all features from normal talk pages and replace them with the very restricted feature we see here.
Indentation is limited, reorganisation impossible, seeing who answered what in huge discussions limited. It's a tool for short exchange and chitchat. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden)11:18, 14 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
> It is not what "semi-structured" means in computer science.
In science, at some point what's true or false depends on how you define the terms. I still don't know how you define "structured" in a way that wiki talk pages don't have it, but it's good that you're switching to precise terms rather than the loose language used in the description page.
Wikitext discussions are text that "contain markers to separate semantic elements and enforce hierarchies of records and fields within the data", as defined by our article. The closest scientific classification I know for the kind of structure in wikitext discussions is Lightweight Structured Text,[5] i.e. a way of processing the text incrementally to extract its structure from pre-defined parsing rules and expose it to generic tools. Diego Moya (talk) 16:17, 21 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
I've created a lightweight text processing rule to parse the comments in a wikitext discussion, and it is doing a very good job extracting the comments, written according to the norms that editors in the community follow. If some part of the page does not follow the norms, the pattern still infers some structure, which may not correctly align with the boundaries of the unformatted comments; and which is just how a human would try to process the norms.
The parsing rule is quite simple; it took me about ten minutes to write the part that extract the nested comments, mostly for remembering the syntax; and a few more minutes to add support for section headers. The rule is not complete, but it should be possible for a development team writing a dedicated parser to include proper recognition of signatures, add support for edge cases, and to degrade gracefully for the parts that don't follow any structure.
line starts ("==") and ends ("==" or ("==" then Whitespace))
A structured discussion is a discussion with a structure, no more, no less. Your insistence on the very narrow and restricted meaning of this broad defined two words are just misleading.
"Structure" has nothing at all to do with machine readability, and machine readability is nothing that is desired as a prime asset on a discussion page. Discussions take place between human beings, and discussion pages have to be designed to best serve human beings while interacting in a discussion, machines don't have to fit in.
Self-describing machine-readable documents is fine for nerds and as a self-serving nonsense, but has nothing in common with what's needed for wiki talk pages. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden)20:49, 19 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Also, I've edited the previous discussion summary. According to en:wiki, semi-structured data is "a form of structured data...", so it is not true that wikitext discussions (as used in Talk:space) are not structured: they're merely not database-schema-structured. Diego Moya (talk) 08:53, 14 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
> current wikitext discussions are not structured from a technical perspective
That's only true if you limit your technical perspective to relational databases, which is a pretty myopic perspective IMHO. The way wikitext conversations are structured is no different from how Python code is structured, for example; and you wouldn't say that Python code is not structured, would you?
It just happens that, since Talk pages are not compiled, users don't feel the need to produce syntactically correct discussions every time (nor they should to). That wouldn't prevent a software that was written for both humans and computers to parse the parts that are syntactically correct, and flag as "syntactically incorrect" and work around the parts that the machine can't understand; yet still make them available to the humans who know what to do with them. Many systems work that way, for example compilers and IDEs, and web browsers to some degree.
This approach would be incredibly more valuable to the community, and it's sad that you have decided to take the easy route without consulting your user base first, merely because the techniques involved are simpler for the developers. Diego Moya (talk) 10:56, 15 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
I couldn't care less but about machine readability, this is a project of interacting humans, and talk pages are for human interaction primarily. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden)11:20, 14 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
@Jdforrester (WMF): I think your edit is wrong in nearly all it's aspects.
Of course a talk page has textual content, nothing else. It's a wiki page like every other wiki page as well. They are just not only encyclopedic content pages, but pages for discussions and article improvements.
Talk pages have a structure, everybody can see that they are structured: They have headlines and sub-headlines, they have indentation and signatures, they have a clear structure for everyone to see; everyone but machines that is. If you reduce the universal word structure to the very small aspect of fully machine readability, say so clearly in making this restriction of the word known.
VE on talk pages is of course possible, in the thread you tried a hostile close on on the VE-Flowpage it was shown (by Diego Moya in his enWP sandbox nearly exactly a year ago) that editing with VE on talk pages is indeed possible. Why do you continue with the lie that it is fundamentally impossible?
I agree with the above, and let me also add that I see a number of things wrong with this sentence that was added: "Though they may appear in parts to be "semi-structured" to expert users through the cunning abuse of bullet lists and/or definition lists, this is unintelligible to software."
I don't know what "expert users" means here - if there's a page with progressive indentation of different people's comments, I would think a 6-year-old could see the structure there and understand its meaning.
I don't understand "cunning abuse" either. Was ":" originally meant just for glossary definitions? Even if it was, it clearly was quickly adopted as general-purpose indentation syntax. I see nothing hacky about its use for that in talk pages.
I would love to know what the purpose would be of some theoretical software that could analyze talk page discussions. Let's say we can tell for sure that some user's comment was a direct response to another user's comment. So what? What could possibly be done with that information? Yaron Koren (talk) 15:23, 19 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Cleaning up the mess left behind from the failed LQT and Flow experiments
Latest comment: 7 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion
RESOLVED
gone stale
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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". The Quixotic Potato (talk) 16:33, 19 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This page mixes the concept of "FLOW" the tool, and FLOW's implementation in WMF foundation wikis, and that's why its attracting inaccurate edits.
It is an anti-pattern of many pages in mediawiki.org, and leads to considerable confusion about what the software can do, and what WMF developers allow it to do in their sites. 197.218.88.55 (talk) 07:28, 22 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
RESOLVED
Changement de présentation des posts
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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"... !!!
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.
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.
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? Alsee (talk) 17:37, 13 November 2017 (UTC)Reply
One of the goals of Flow was to replace discussions that happen inside Mediawiki. In the Wikimedia universe not all discussions happen inside Mediawiki. Both Mailing Lists and IRC provide additional channels to communicate.
Given that the new Structured Discussions is now capable of threading, it should be able to display messages in the same threading that the Mailing List archive currently has. I think it's possible to replace the current mainling list system with a Structured Discussions based system. Nothing would have to change for the user experience for the people who subscribe to the mailing list. The could still get similar emails as they get now, but the mailing list archive could look like Structured Discussions. ChristianKl (talk) 00:01, 3 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
I like that idea. Add an interface to discuss on Structured discussions using emails is an interesting idea to increase participation, by giving a new way to triage messages and reply to them. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:04, 4 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion
RESOLVED
OTRS already seems to be a tool that can be used well for the use-case of user complaints that should have limited visibility.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I'm currently in the process of writing the equivalent of BLP for Wikidata. As part of the process, I want to have a way where people can contact admins to request information about them to be removed when they think it violates their privacy.
Would it be possible to configure Structured Discussions in a way that only the person who started a thread and users with the admin flag can see a thread? ChristianKl (talk) 21:50, 4 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
That sounds like a really bad idea. All active wiki content is supposed to be completely transparent. If something needs to be private, it should be off-wiki exclusively. Yair rand (talk) 00:05, 5 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
My basic intuition is that it's beneficial to bring as much as possible on the Wiki. In this case, this likely means that the way of least effort involves telling people to go to the administrator noticeboard. Given that you are also a Wikidata admin do you have an idea about how you would like a structure to work that would be off-wiki for this use-case? ChristianKl (talk) 02:06, 5 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
Many wikis use m:OTRS for things like this. The system seems to be very much built for handling sensitive information. Perhaps Wikidata could use the same system.
(Regarding it being beneficial to bring as much as possible to the wiki, I generally very strongly share that intuition. IMO, things like IRC, Phabricator, mailing lists, etherpads, etc all should be integrated into the wikis. Frankly, even code editing, Gerrit/Diffential, and the occasional WMF video broadcast should all be doable via wikis. But that's getting off-topic, I suppose.) Yair rand (talk) 05:56, 6 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
That's an interesting idea, but it would be a pretty profound departure from the philosophical fundamentals of MediaWiki wikis, as @Yair rand points out. I'm not going to refuse outright, but we'd have to have a very serious conversation about such a feature before starting to build it (and building it would itself be very challenging given how much MediaWiki is built around that assumption; I'd vaguely guesstimate that building it would cost about US$250k and take half a year, but that might be a little optimistic depending on details).
If you really want this feature, I'd recommend that you should work with others who might be interested to work up a detailed plan for how such a feature might be developed whilst maintaining product compatibility as much as possible with the rest of MediaWiki, either on a page here or on Phabricator. Sorry this doesn't have an easy answer.. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 01:17, 5 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, I haven't noticed any straightforward 'how to' (like, with practical screenshot examples and such) to aid users encountering Flow/Structured Discussions for the first time. Does any such exist somewhere?
[I've encountered multiple pages across multiple projects talking about 'Flow' – goals and technicalities and such (for me interest started with mention somewhere on en:Wikipedia and branched out from there) – but this very page here on which we're posting is the first actual example of such I've encountered. Well, multi-user threaded example at least, I did have a brief slightly disorienting solo run-in when I updated a link on my user talkpage before coming here.]
That's 'in the ballpark' and 'heading in the right direction', tnx. I.e. it's the sort of thing I was seeking, but I think the page as presently implemented could use some specific visual examples of how threaded discussions can be expected to appear.
Have some visual examples is a good idea. Do you have some suggestions of cases that would be interesting? The challenge is to find ones that match for every language or cultural cases. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 10:57, 6 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
I'm currently facing a case of an IP vandalism my Structured discussions based talk page by hiding comments. Unfortunately, it seems like I can't rollback all the edits in bulk (I'm an admin on Wikidata and therefore have rollbacker rights). See https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/75.91.51.104
Furthermore it seems like unhiding a post makes it go to the top of the talk page. This suggests that it isn't even possible to completely undo the vandalism. ChristianKl (talk) 17:22, 6 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
I'm sorry, but there is no way at the moment to deal with that kind of vandalism, except click on "restore" for all edits.
Latest comment: 8 years ago25 comments4 people in discussion
RESOLVED
Structured Discussions (Flow) are optional. Any community can decide to have them adopted by default for everyone, by default for all new accounts, as a Beta feature for volunteers...
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I prefer the current system because it is the system that I used to. I hav a somthing something others of the preferences. Do you understand the Arabic language? Answer me in Arabic if you understand Arabic, please. البراء صالح (talk) 19:44, 16 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
I can't reply in Arabic, sorry. I hope that Haytham abulela, PediAki or علاء will be able to translate your message and my reply.
أنا أفضل أن يكون نظام التدفق خاصية في التفضيلات ومفعلة افتراضيا للحسابات التي تسجل بعد إضافتها إلى ويكيبيديا ويكون بإمكان جميع المستخدمين الجدد والقدامى قادرين على تفعيل الميزة أو تعطيلها، وذلك لأنني اعتدت على استخدام نظام الويكي العادي في النقاش ولا أريد أن أكون ملزما باستخدامها. البراء صالح (talk) 15:08, 20 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
هي أصلًا موجودة في التفضيلات ضمن قسم مزايا تجريبية، ويُمكن لأي مُستخدم تفعيلها أو تعطيلها.
أما بالنسبة لتفعيلها لجميع المستخدمين الجُدد فالأمر لا علاقة له بالمُطورين، بل هو أمر راجع للمجتمع نفسه، فالمجتمع يُحدد ماذا يظهر للجُدد عند الدخول إلى موسوعتهم، وهذا يظهر من خلال الفرق بين التعديل كمستخدم جديد في ويكيبيديا العربية والإنجليزية مثًلا.
وكما ذكرتُ لك، أنت غير ملزم باستعمال النقاشات الهيكلية بل يمكنك تفعيلها وتعطيلها من خلال هذه الصفحة
أنا أعلم ولكن هناك نظام آخر في المزايا التجريبية كان معطلا برغبة مني ولكن مع ذلك أجد نفسي ملزم به الآن وهو النوافذ المنبثقة عند وضع مؤشر الفأرة على الوصلات. البراء صالح (talk) 15:14, 20 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
المفروض بمجرد دخولك لويكيبيديا العربية أن تقوم بتسجيل الدخول، فالموسوعة تعتمد نظام الدخول المُوحد في جميع مشاريعها، إلا إذا كانت هُناك رسالة منع تظهر لك.
إن كان الأمر كذلك راسلني عبر البريد مع تضمين رسالة المنع التي تظهر لك
User البراء صالح asked if the flow is optional or compulsory for the new users, and asked also if there's any directions to make it compulsory on the future. He also asked about another things in ar.wiki not related to the flow topic.
User PediAki asked for another thing, that he came within a blocked IP range in ar.wiki, so he asked me if I can help him. And I did.
Thank you علاء, both for taking care of that case and the update.
Structured Discussions (Flow) are optional as you know. Any community can decide to have them adopted by default for everyone, by default for all new accounts, as a Beta feature for volunteers... That's your decision. :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 11:01, 21 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
The only way seems to be to manually rename the post.
I like the idea of flow and structured discussions. On the other hand, the inability to undo vandalism properly gives me lately the impression of it being very unfit at the moment. With occasional vandalism it's not enough for me to switch my talk page back from Structured Discussion but if the vandalism would increase I would.
The ability to undo vandalism by undo/rollback should be a top development priority if the Wikimedia team wants those people who use Structured Discussions to continue using it. ChristianKl (talk) 09:03, 30 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
Sorry for the late reply, I'm catching-up.
It is possible to undo a change when the page description or a message has ben changed, but not a title.
@ChristianKl, I read a lot of people having the same opinion as yours. That kind of feedback is important to define priorities to address communities using Structured Discussions' concerns. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 11:04, 16 January 2018 (UTC)Reply
Suggestion: Add an ability to restore flow board to previous state (e.g. revision, metadata)
Latest comment: 7 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Issue
It is not possible to reset the flow board to a previous state (revision, flow titles, flow summary, flow description), unlike wikitext based discussions.
Proposed solution
Add a way to restore the content and flags of the board or topics to a previous state.
In a similar manner to the true database rollback, reset the content / metadata of the database to a prior state.
Note: This is explicitly NOT about rollback. The misnamed mediawiki "rollback" feature only works if all actions are by the same user, and multiple users / vandals can make a flow topic unreadable. An equivalent action with talk pages is editing a previous revision and clicking save. 197.218.81.18 (talk) 16:44, 30 December 2017 (UTC)Reply
Every elements on Structured discussion is independant. It is like resetting multiple pages at once. That would require further investigation. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 00:03, 24 January 2018 (UTC)Reply
According to Flow/Architecture, as you state, this might indeed be complicated due to how stuff is stored. While in a perfect world a true "reset" would be best, perhaps there is a temporary alternative. There are plenty of actions that it can revert easily. For example, if 50 different people edit the title of this thread 50 times. It would be trivial to simply revert the title to what it was on a specific revision. Currently, undo doesn't even currently work for title changes, so one has to copy the old title and save it as new.
Maybe in the short term, it would be useful to add "undo" to title changes, and maybe a generic "unhide all posts" would be be reasonable, along with a separate limit to how many things a regular user can hide, maybe 3 "hide actions" every 2 minutes or so.
