(sorry for reposting, the first version had attachments and wasn't appearing in the archive)
As a PS to that long post, here's another long post. I mentioned above that I'd get into more detail about indents and tangents. Wikitext talk pages use indentation for two different reasons -- to create visual separation between people's posts, and to create spin-off tangents that follow a different path than the main flow of conversation in a thread. They're both important functions, but they don't need the same mechanism, and I'd argue that trying to do both with indentations makes wikitext talk pages harder to participate in and understand. Big, complicated Village pump conversations need lots of room for tangents and subthreads. A simple back-and-forth conversation between two people doesn't need that. But we've spent years counting colons and fixing other people's indentations, to the point where it feels like a conversation can only be worthwhile if it's diagonal. The indentation model that we've been using on Flow is kind of an unhappy compromise between the two different functions, and I don't think anybody likes it much. It retains the idea that a reply should be indented just because, but then it only goes to two levels of indentation. Once a thread reaches the second indentation level, you can't create an out-of-synch tangent even if you want to. So we've figured out a new reply/indentation model that separates those two functions. We've been testing it out on the flow-tests server [1], and we're going to release it to Mediawiki soon. Here's how it works: If you're replying to the most recent post, then your reply just lines up under the previous message. A two-person back and forth conversation just looks flat, and the visual separation is noted with the user name and timestamp. If you're specifically replying to a previous post, then your reply creates an indented tangent. If everybody responding on that tangent replies to the last message in that subthread, then it'll stay at the same indentation level. But if someone replies to an older message within the subthread, then that creates a third indentation level. I think we've got it set to a maximum of 8 possible indentation levels, and we just stop it there because there's a point where you can't fit a lot of text in each line. The big idea of the new system is that the indentation should actually mean something. You should be able to tell the difference between a simple conversation and a complicated conversation at a glance, and using indented tangents helps you to spot the places in a conversation where there's a disagreement or a deeper level of detail. We've been running tests comparing the old and new indentation models with several groups, and I think it's promising. You can check out the two models here: -- New model: http://flow-tests.wmflabs.org/wiki/Talk:Something -- Old model (with 8 levels of indentation): http://ee-flow.wmflabs.org/wiki/Talk:SomethingElse So that is the Grand Unified Theory of Flow Indentation, in theory and practice. I would be happy to hear what you think about it. There is a very good chance that this model will continue the Flow tradition of pleasing exactly nobody, and if that's the case, then we can keep talking about it and making more changes. But there's also a chance that this is brilliant and solves everything, so I want to give it a shot and see what happens. On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 3:29 PM, Danny Horn <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks for all of the questions and suggestions. Flow is still in active > development, and there's a lot of feature work being done right now. Some > of the features that have been mentioned in this thread are actually just > about to be released, and some are coming up over the next month or so. > > Here's how it breaks down: > > Coming out very soon: > > -- The ability to edit other people's posts will be out on Mediawiki by > the end of next week. We’ve made a few interface changes to support that. > Posts that have been edited by someone that isn’t the original poster now > say “Edited by Username 3 minutes ago”, so that it’s easy for everyone to > see what’s happened. When someone edits an existing post, we fixed the diff > pages so that you can browse between previous and next changes. [1] > > -- Sane threading model, with more levels for replies and tangents -- also > coming out next week. Talking about this feature gets super lengthy and > complicated, so I’ll write another post right after this one that will give > all the details for people who are interested. [2] > > -- Admins viewing deleted boards without undeleting it -- coming out in > three weeks. [3] > > > Working on these next: > > -- Moving topics between boards -- We’ve got designs and estimates for > this, and I’m expecting that to come out in April. [4] > > -- More powerful watchlist/notification functionality -- This is a very > important feature that will be getting a lot of team attention over the > next month. We need to re-read the mountain of requests that have > accumulated, and reach out again to you for fresh feedback. Improvements > will aim to be continuous and incremental. > > > Future plans, not scheduled yet: > > -- Full wikitext toolbar -- We’re going to release v1 of a VisualEditor > toolbar in the next couple of weeks. This version will just have three > functions: Bold/Italics, Links and Mentions. (Mentions will have > autocomplete with user names that have already participated in the thread.) > We’ll definitely be doing more work on toolbars coming up, but we want to > see how this first one works before we make any solid plans. > > -- Make the links to threads look nicer -- Yeah, this is annoying. It’s > not in our top five list of annoyances at the moment, but we’ll keep > checking off annoying items. Nicer links will get its turn. [5] > > -- No-JS and accessibility -- We’ve done some work on this, and there will > be more coming up. [6] > > > So there's a lot of work still to be done, but we're adding a lot of > features. I hope this helps explain where we are in the process. > > We’re going to have an Office Hours Google Hangout on Monday at 19:00 UTC, > so we can answer questions and talk about the project. If people are > interested, we can schedule more of these. > > Thanks again for all the specific feature requests and concerns. We’ll be > requesting larger and wider quantities of feedback in the near future, as > some of the upcoming features are planned and built. > > Danny > > > Phabricator tickets mentioned above: > [1] Flow post editing for autoconfirmed users: > https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T90670 > [2] Prototype for new indentation model: > https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T88501 > [3] Admins viewing deleted boards: > https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T90972 > [4] Moving topics between boards: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T88140 > [5] Less ugly topic page links: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T59154 > [6] No-JS tracking: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T60019 > > > > > > On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 12:51 PM, Derk-Jan Hartman < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> >> > On 17 mrt. 2015, at 19:45, Isarra Yos <[email protected]> wrote: >> > >> > On 17/03/15 15:32, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) wrote: >> >> On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 11:17 AM, Marc A. Pelletier <[email protected]> >> >> wrote: >> >> >> >>> Indentation is a crappy workaround for when your communication system >> >>> does not support a sane threading model - it isn't a threading model >> or >> >>> a substitute for one. >> >>> >> >> Err, what's the threading model in Flow's UI? Or Facebook, phpbb, and >> so >> >> on, or whatever other site you were referring to that knitting >> grandmothers >> >> use? Can you really call not having any (user-visible) threading model >> a >> >> threading model? >> >> >> >> From what I've seen of those types of discussions, people have to >> either >> >> explicitly refer back to whatever they're replying to (e.g. Twitter >> tries >> >> to, and doesn't very well from what I've seen), quote whatever they're >> >> replying to (e.g. phpbb, email (especially how Gmail renders it)), >> and/or >> >> just deal with having to dig through an undifferentiated pile of >> replies to >> >> find the ones that might be replying to the post they're interested in >> >> (phpbb, Facebook). >> > >> > On a lot of sites they can also get away with a lack of threading >> because the discussions themselves are relatively inactive, where you don't >> have multiple people jumping in and replying to different points. Such >> inactivity isn't the case on many wikis, where discussion is more key to >> their functionality, and certainly shouldn't be an assumption here. >> > >> >> I still think that a threading and collapsing model as in >> http://tweakers.net/nieuws/101962/google-maakt-leeftijdsrating-verplicht-voor-android-apps.html#reacties >> < >> http://tweakers.net/nieuws/101962/google-maakt-leeftijdsrating-verplicht-voor-android-apps.html#reacties> >> makes a lot more sense. >> >> It’s limited in width, readable, collapsible, has threading with >> indenting, has a maximum amount of indenting, and is a tech website that is >> also very intensive, and all over the place. >> >> DJ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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
