LiquidThreads 3.0

Group:	Features
Start:	July 2010
End:	2012-06-30
Team members:	Andrew Garrett, Brandon Harris,
Management:	James Forrester

Rationale

Currently, MediaWiki discussion pages are unstructured free-form wikitext pages. There are many disadvantages to this system, including but not limited to:

Lack of obvious threading
Lack of consistent user identification
Lack of intelligent archiving
Lack of sorting
High difficulty for new/inexperienced users to engage in discussions
Inability to "watch" specific discussions; user must watch entire page (which may be sub-optimal).

With LiquidThreads, we attempt to solve these problems while bringing new features to the table:

A more "standard" approach to threaded discussions, greatly enhancing the ability for new users to engage. This feature includes:
- Replies are nested within discussions.
- Automatic signing of posts.
- A single "reply to" button and other mechanisms to aid inexperienced users instead of simply throwing them into wikitext.
- User avatars.
Ability to sort discussions by differing criteria.
Individual discussions (and posts within the discussion) are treated as single pages (which potentially allows for categorization, individual watching/unwatching, etc.).
Automatic archiving: older discussions naturally "fall off" the visible page, retaining permanent links.

The ultimate goal of LiquidThreads is to encourage community health, editor participation, and editor retention.

Timeline

"Further deployments of LiquidThreads are indefinitely on hold because we don't have the resources to support it." – Andrew Garrett (2012-03-19)

Additional documents

User requirements:
Specifications: (request at LiquidThreads 3.0/Design issues
Software design document:
Test plan:
Documentation plan:
User interface design document: LiquidThreads 3.0/Design
Task management: Open issues on "LiquidThreads" component
Release management plan:
Communications plan:
Status updates

Obsolete documents