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.
Suggestion: to let the previous (running) discussions be copied once "Flow" is activated.
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.
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.
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?"
It was in Arabic Wikipedia. I realized the link later, or maybe after I ticked off the editor. :o)
Trizek, is there something we could do to make documentation clearer about that? Maybe an extra sentence in the Beta Feature description?
That's already the case, Sherry:
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.
Based on the comments here, I wonder if we should consider making that sentence bigger/bolder/more obvious.
