Hi Brent, I've seen you're posts but am guilty of being too busy and put this on my "come back later list", which until now has not happened ...;-(
I do think that its important for us to chat about LQT in the wider context of WE. I've been analysing the data from the WE Newbie surveys and was pleasantly surprised to find out that the average age of a Newbie is 49 years. On average, half of WE Newbies are over 50 years old. I expected the majority of our social software junkies to be younger than me ... not true <smile>. What is also interesting, is the fact that 90% of the Newbies created their accounts in under 5 visits to WE. I think this is a great achievement for WE. The anecdotal and personal feedback I've received thus far has been overwhelmingly positive - and I suspect that the experience levels of our user base has something to do with this. Under the standard talk page feature new users were not sure where to post their replies, how to indent, how to sign posts etc and LQT has removed these barriers. That said, I agree that there are still usability issues - 1) I too do not like the fact that all user talk pages now appear as blue links -- this is a major downside of LQT 2) The usability/management of the watchlist can be improved and I like the suggestion you posted in WE to think about a checkbox solution with the option to "delete" all reminders on the watchlist. 3) I don't like placement of the archive section on the top of the page - this can be confusing to Newbies who click on the edit button and then add a post to the archive section. Perhaps this should be moved to the bottom of the page? Apart from the generic benefits of structured discussion - LQT does have a number of cool advantages - 1) Because each post is essentially a wiki page - users can still interject with an indented post within an existing reply by clicking "edit" and using the old approach of indent "::" and signature - so you can still reply in context. Although I haven't seen folk doing this and perhaps its just a learning curve thing and we should encourage this culture of responding the wiki way. 2) In a long complex disucssion, each post has a unique ID - which makes it easier to cross reference posts - which is not possible under the standard MW talk page. Personally, I have an additional wish list idea - namely the ability to respond to a LQT via email if specified as an option in my user preferences. For example alert via email any replies to a thread I've posted (especially re pages that are not on my wishlist.) I think we have gained more than what we have lost, but LQT can still be improved. My suggestion would be to document and specify the requirements for improving LQT and then figuring out how to get further development completed. Basically, I've run out of budget for this project - but could perhaps gather a few dollars here and there to support the implementation of the enhancements. What do you think? Wayne On Nov 20, 12:46 pm, brent <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think that it may be time to start a wider discussion about Liquid > Threads. I've posted a couple of times about it in various place on WE > but have not had any response, yet. > > My feelings are that LQT are not desirable as the default for > discussion pages, and that what would be preferable would be a way to > turn them on in Talk pages if you wish; otherwise, the default for > Talk pages is the old way -- a blank page. I've found myself posting > to discussion pages a lot less than I used to, I often find that I > want to post, but something about the page then kind of turns me off > and I don't. Also the fact that all discussion/talk tabs are now blue > links is annoying, i don't know whether to check a Talk page or not as > it looks like theres always something going on there, when often there > isn't. I've also yet to see a thread that has been summarized. > > My thought are that LQT are probably more desirable on Wikis where > "teaching"(?) might be happening, where a threaded discussion might be > useful for following an argument or discussion between learners and > moderators, but on a site like WE where we are mostly engaged in > content development, they're just getting in the way. The problem is > that they seem to limit the Talk page to being structured like a > discussion, where as often this is not what is wanted. I quite like > the way some languages on Wikiverisity have styled their talk pages > with a little bit of formatting using the wikis Cascading Style Sheets > (CSS) to display indentations in different colours. > > What do others think? > > brent. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
