Thanks for the update. Discussion is taking place on Wikimedia-l. Pine On Sep 1, 2015 2:27 PM, "Danny Horn" <dh...@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> For a while now, the Collaboration team has been working on Flow, the > structured discussion system. I want to let you know about some changes in > that long-term plan. > > While initial announcements about Flow said that it would be a universal > replacement for talk pages, the features that were ultimately built into > Flow were specifically forum-style group discussion tools. But article and > project talk pages are used for a number of important and complex processes > that those tools aren't able to handle, making Flow unsuitable for > deployment on those kinds of pages. > > To better address the needs of our core contributors, we're now focusing > our strategy on the curation, collaboration, and admin processes that take > place on a variety of pages. Many of these processes use complex > workarounds -- templates, categories, transclusions, and lots of > instructions -- that turn blank wikitext talk pages into structured > workflows. There are gadgets and user scripts on the larger wikis to help > with some of these workflows, but these tools aren't standardized or > universally available. > > As these workflows grow in complexity, they become more difficult for the > next generation of editors to learn and use. This has increased the > workload on the people who maintain those systems today. Complex workflows > are also difficult to adapt to other languages, because a wiki with > thousands of articles may not need the kind of complexity that comes with > managing a wiki with millions of articles. We've talked about this kind of > structured workflow support at Wikimania, in user research sessions, and on > wikis. It's an important area that needs a lot of discussion, exploration, > and work. > > Starting in October, Flow will not be in active development, as we shift > the team's focus to these other priorities. We'll be helping core > contributors reduce the stress of an ever-growing workload, and helping the > next generation of contributors participate in those processes. Further > development on these projects will be driven by the needs expressed by wiki > communities. > > Flow will be maintained and supported, and communities that are excited > about Flow discussions will be able to use it. There are places where the > discussion features are working well, with communities that are > enthusiastic about them: on user talk pages, help pages, and forum/village > pump-style discussion spaces. By the end of September, we'll have an opt-in > Beta feature available to communities that want it, allowing users to > enable Flow on their own user talk pages. > > I'm sure people will want to know more about these projects, and we're > looking forward to those conversations. We'll be reaching out for lots of > input and feedback over the coming months. > > Danny Horn > Collaboration team, PM > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
