This page is obsolete. It is being retained for archival purposes. It may document extensions or features that are obsolete and/or no longer supported. Do not rely on the information here being up-to-date.
Structured Discussions Portal
Extension deprecated and replaced: This extension has been deprecated and is no longer maintained. It has been replaced by Discussion Tools since MediaWiki 1.40. Users are encouraged to stop using it. Communities are encouraged to move their talk pages using Structured discussions to subpages and stop using them.
This document outlines the high-level requirements for the first release of Flow as an opt-in beta to Wikipedia; specifically, to a subset of WikiProject discussion spaces where users have agreed to trial the software. These requirements have solidified over time but are not set in stone; the details are still subject to change based on user needs. If you have feedback or concerns, feel free to leave them on the discussion page.
Users of Wikimedia projects need a lean, responsive, modern interface for collaboratively improving content. WikiProject discussion pages are one of the places where peer-to-peer content collaboration occurs. The first release of Flow to a live Wikimedia project will be geared toward tackling the core needs of Flow as a peer-to-peer content discussion feature in the WikiProject talk space.
This release aims to support existing discussion workflows (talking about content, including markup from that content), as well as improve the user experience of talk pages by facilitating:
Productive, efficient discussions that resolve the issue at hand quickly. E.g., It should be fast and easy to ask and answer a question. It should be equally fast and easy to remove off-topic, inappropriate, or harmful posts from the discussion.
Transparency and clarity of communication to ensure good-faith dialog among peers. E.g., It should be easy to get a sense of the main points of a discussion and understand who is addressing whom.
Ease of use, inviting users to participate if they have something constructive to add to the conversation, regardless of their level of experience with the WikiProject, the Wikimedia project, or with editing wikis in general. E.g., a volunteer translator with little Wikipedia editing experience who is assisting a WikiProject should feel comfortable discussing her translations in the WikiProject discussion space.
Visit an early prototype to try out some of the proposed functionality.
A Flow-enabled WikiProject discussion space will become a structured discussion spaces with the following features:
A configurable header area (for information about the discussion space, links to archives and FAQ, or any other information that the WikiProject facilitators deem useful)
A new topic' affordance, containing:
a dialog for naming and starting a new topic
A list of topics, in order of most recently updated to least recently updated, top to bottom. Each topic contains:
an editable title
moderation features (see below under Posts)
permalink
Posts (replies to the topic). Each individual post contains:
author information
a human-readable timestamp indicating when a comment was posted, when it was last modified, and by whom, if not the original poster
Parsoid compatibility, allowing users to copy-paste markup for most templates and advanced wiki syntax (math, IPA symbols, etc.) into their comments
an affordance for editing a post (available to those with appropriate user rights)
an affordance for hiding or unhiding a post – hidden comments will leave a placeholder visible to all users
an affordance for deleting or undeleting a post (viewable only for administrators) – a deleted post will leave a placeholder visible to all users
an affordance for suppressing a post (viewable only for oversighters) – a suppressed post will only be viewable to oversighters
a history of the post, including modification and state changes (edited, hidden, unhidden, etc.)
a permalink
Topics and posts will not be archived; instead, they will be lazy-loaded, with less recent conversations accessible by scrolling down.
Anyone can edit (unless the page is protected; standard user-rights apply).
New topic
Anyone can start a new topic (unless the page is protected; standard user-rights apply).
Posts
Anyone can add a new post on a topic (unless the page is protected; standard user-rights apply).
Notifications
Everyone receives notifications when a user adds a new post to a topic they started or directly replies to them in a thread. These notifications take them directly to the relevant topic/post.
Editing posts
Anyone can edit their own posts (unless the page is protected; standard user-rights apply).
Hiding/unhiding
Anyone can hide or unhide posts left by others (unless the page is protected; standard user-rights apply).
Deletion
Trusted users can permanently delete posts (user-rights set by local projects) and can see the content of deleted posts.
Suppression
Oversighters can delete and suppress posts. Only oversighters can see the content of deleted and suppressed posts.
Watchlist and recent changes
Anyone who is watching the discussion or monitoring recent changes can see changes to the discussion (new topics/posts, edited posts, deleted posts, suppressed posts) in those views.
Extension deprecated and replaced: This extension has been deprecated and is no longer maintained. It has been replaced by Discussion Tools since MediaWiki 1.40. Users are encouraged to stop using it. Communities are encouraged to move their talk pages using Structured discussions to subpages and stop using them.
