Topic on User talk:Jorm (WMF)/Flow

My apologies for losing my cool on the Flow talk page a few days ago. It was just such a shock that something that I hadn't heard of was well underway. That said; I still think the system is extremely flawed and not anything I want to partake in. Now, I want to ask a few questions that I think need clarifying. It's your choice if you want to answer them, but I think it would help a bit with the mass confusion involved with this.

1: How does this affect the MonoBook skin?

2: Will Twinkle be adapted into new systems?

3: Why is the history page disjointed on Flow pages? Keep it all together.

4: Don't you think this new system gives administrators too much power? I'm very weary of someone being able to deny my opinions like that. In the current system, opinions are at least fairly considered and easy to revert back in, if need be.

5: Will older pages be archived with the current Talkpage system? This question is an obvious deal breaker.

6: Why does Wikipedia seem to be copying Wikia now-a-days*? First Visual Editor (which was tolerable except for not being able to code correctly), and now this.

7: Will SineBot be deactivated?

8: Why can't I make an edit summary?

Thank you for looking over this and considering my opinion. However, I think that we'll be like a ghost town by 2018 if this goes into effect. Not to sound threatening; but I'll try to code out the Flow system on my talk page if I'd need to. If I can't find a loophole, I sincerely doubt that I could use Wikimedia or any other Foundation websites; except to view articles.

• Yes, I know Jimbo owns both websites. We're supposed to be at a more professional level though.

By the way, I don't want the asterisk to bullet. That looks way too much like something you'd do in a PowerPoint.

Thebirdlover: Hi. I'm the community liaison assigned to this project, so I'll jump in and offer some answers.

1. It should work fine in MonoBook, but do let us know if you find any bugs.
2. Building Flow up into a cohesive system that works with, and improves, our existing workflows, is definitely part of the plan. Bots etc, too. An API overhaul is underway, by an experienced bot-wrangler dev.
3. The Board-history and Topic-history pages are currently being overhauled. (They'll look drastically more like what we're used too, at some point soon). Having a separated Topic-history will be incredibly useful, but they do indeed need&intend to also include the full Topic-history within the Board-history.
4. There's a good table of "experimental vs confirmed" settings, at Flow/FAQ#Components of the discussion system, which should help explain this (see the "Comment editing" row, in particular). See also the item further down that page, Flow/FAQ#Will we be able to edit other people's posts?
5. See Flow/FAQ#What will happen to current talkpage discussions?
6. There are various projects to make Wiki[p/m]edia less complicated for people aren't at ease with dense markup text, and also to improve the processes for those of us that are comfortable with it all. (Eg. I for one, will be very happy to not be using <dl> and <dd> markup to create comment-indents (as we currently do with :: etc). Properly separated and attributed posts, with individual histories, will make various powerful tools a lot easier to integrate with our discussions.)
7. Sinebot won't be needed.
8. There's a good discussion about Edit-summaries at w:Wikipedia talk:Flow/Archive 7#Edit summaries. I recently posted a followup update at w:Wikipedia talk:Flow#Watchlist items (but check out that initial discussion first).
9. Flow is currently just being developed around wikimarkup editing (aka' edit source'), hence your asterisk should be a bulletpoint! The VisualEditor will be added as an alternative input method, in the near future. (An easy addition, as it's all built on Parsoid).

There are tons of features yet to come - this is a very complicated and long-term project (1-2 years at least), that needs our (community) input throughout the process. Slow and steady improvement will turn it into the upgraded system that everyone wants.

HTH. I'd suggest asking further/followup questions on the Flow talkpage (mww or enwiki), so that other interested editors can help answer, or add to your questions. :)

Just so you know, I don't mean to sound snarky. I hope I didn't give you that impression.