I just updated the page introduction to reflect the current development - it was confusing to me and I had to do a lot of research in the tech mailing list to understand what is going on. I hope it is all right but please check it. Not sure if it is better to start with "Flow is a project" or "Flow was a project" - the project is probably finished, right?
An update on what will happen to discussion pages in future would be desirable, too. Anyone?:)
AFAIK, (I'm not a WMF employee), Flow isn't directly finished, it's kind of suspended with no promise of continuation except for resolving some minor issues. So it still is a project. But no rush, the page should be updated by a member of the Collaboration team (who, again, AFAIK), are quite busy due to Workflows. And that's Workflows project which should be documented in the first instance, IMHO.
Yes, Tar Lócesilion explained it well. (Thanks!) Feedback from the communities using Flow, will greatly help in future decisions about how much resources to put towards it.
I've tweaked the page a bit, and will do more as I get time.
There are some notes about the Workflows research at Collaboration/Workflows, but more needs to be added. (I didn't place it at "workflows" because that could be more confusing with workflow (disambiguation page), but I'm happy to change that.)
Does this suspended character of the project have bearings on the mass creation of templates on October 2?
I came to this page in order to ask about a handful of templates put on sv-wikibooks by the Flow talk page manager on that day. They do not have any associated wikidata item. They are not categorised. They have scanty documentation. In at least one case, they seem to call templates not existing in our project (or at least not existing with the expected name), causing an error when trying to view the template.
Does the project suspension mean that we had better handle these obstructions to a rational template handling by just deleting the templates; or could we expect that the October 2 templates on diverse projects at least will be collected in wikidata objects?
Regards, JoergenB (talk) 19:33, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
PS: I find a "Cancel" and a "Reply" button under the edit box; but no way to preview my reply. Is this the way iflow is/was supposed to work?
Hi JoergenB. It is just the development of major new features for Flow, that is suspended for the moment, whilst the team focuses on some Echo work plus other tasks and research. Maintenance work for Flow will continue as normal.
Thank you for the pointer to the template issues. I've filed phab:T115519 to resolve this by properly attaching the templates to Wikidata objects, and phab:T115518 to delete the unnecessary templates.
Re: the red error message, that is always shown on the template page itself (e.g. Template:Wikitext talk page converted to Flow), but it works properly when actually used. It is occuring because of the {{#time:...}} ParserFunction (Help:Extension:ParserFunctions#.23time) which expects a variable. I'm not sure if there's an ideal/recommended way to fix this on the template's own page, to avoid confusion? I'll ask...
Re: Previewing - if you have JavaScript enabled, you should be able to switch between wikitext and visualeditor modes (used as the preview, and/or the main composer), by clicking the "[[]]" icon in the bottom corner of the edit area. (I believe there are a few problems with older versions of Internet Explorer; if you are experiencing problems, please tell me which browser/OS you are using.)
Hope that helps.
I'm from the Swedish wiki and would like to express my deep concern about the eventual implementation of Flow on all our discuss pages. During my time here, I've never come across any, in my opinion, worse function suggestion than Flow. Those of you that want to use this, please go ahead, but only as long as you don't force it upon us others. The wiki coding is a huge part of the charm of editing Wikipedia, and I strongly want to have the wiki coding on both normal articles and on discuss pages. Wikipedia is well known for a place where its users can choose between different funcions. Why not this time? Well, this time it's unacceptable.
@Utopiantos Click the "[[]]" icon in the bottom corner of the edit area, to switch between wikitext and visual editor modes. The system will remember which you used to make a content change last, and load that by default next time.
