Instead of dropping indents use something like {{od}}
On Tuesday, March 17, 2015, Danny Horn <[email protected]> wrote:
> (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]
> <javascript:;>> 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] <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> > On 17 mrt. 2015, at 19:45, Isarra Yos <[email protected]
> <javascript:;>> 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] <javascript:;>>
> >> >> 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] <javascript:;>
> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >>
> >
> >
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