Will it be enabled by default on all wikis, or only on wikis which made individual requests?
On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 5:03 AM, Andrew Garrett <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi all, > > With the Foundation's support, I've spent the last few months churning > away at LiquidThreads [1], a new discussion system that is proposed for > use on Wikimedia projects. > > Essentially, it's an attempt to marry the radical openness of the wiki > paradigm with the usability and practicality of a forum-like system. As > the name implies, LiquidThreads is designed to allow any user to easily > refactor discussions while maintaining edit history, to edit other > users' comments, and to collaborate on a summary of an ongoing > discussion. LiquidThreads also brings many standard communication > features lacking from wiki discussion pages, such as watching and > protecting individual discussion threads, RSS feeds of comments in a > discussion or on a discussion page. In the world of online > communication, its approach is entirely unique. > > LiquidThreads has been in alpha testing on Wikimedia Labs [2] for > several months, and, more recently, it's been used in a production > context on the strategy wiki, where it has been quite well-received. > It's been easy to run these smaller trials, as the extension allows the > activation and deactivation of LiquidThreads discussions on individual > pages with a simple parser function. > > While there are still some issues remaining before wider trials, I > believe I can resolve most of them quite quickly (within a few weeks > when my vacation finishes at the end of next month), and I'd like to get > the ball rolling in proposing small-scale trials on some of the larger > wikis, so that a full discussion can be had, and so that adjustments can > be made on the basis of ongoing feedback. I'd especially like to see > LiquidThreads used on some of the higher-traffic discussion pages on > English Wikipedia (such as the technical village pump), and progressive > rollout on some of our mid to large sized wikis. > > So, I'd like to encourage you to have a play with LiquidThreads, either > on the strategy wiki or on the test site (which generally runs a newer > version). Tell me what you like about it, and (far more importantly) > what improvements you think it needs before we can expand our trials to > wider parts of the Wikimedia Universe, and perhaps move towards a full > rollout of this very exciting technology. > > I should give the following caveats about LiquidThreads as it stands. > These are all issues that I intend to address before any trial expansion > occurs. > * Presently the system is somewhat vulnerable to abuse. I intend to make > changes to the way signatures work, and improve tracking and listing of > thread actions by specific users. > * While LiquidThreads allows for thread summaries and discussion > headers, the system does not currently have support for > collaboratively-edited posts which are unsigned or signed by a group of > people. These are a key piece of any decision-making framework, and I > intend to make adjustments to make this possible. > * There is no support for embedding LiquidThreads discussion pages on > other pages. > * There are plenty of minor interface issues which I intend to clean up. > > Feedback is best directed to the dedicated Feedback page [3], or, > alternatively, to bugzilla [4] (although before filing a bug, you should > check the list of existing LiquidThreads bugs [5]). > > [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:LiquidThreads > [2] http://liquidthreads.labs.wikimedia.org > [3] http://liquidthreads.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Feedback > [4] > > https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensions&component=LiquidThreads > [5] > > https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensions&component=LiquidThreads&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED > > > -- > Andrew Garrett > [email protected] > http://werdn.us > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
