Topic on Talk:Structured Discussions/Flow

(Initially posted by @Peteforsyth here.)

p.s. This is my first time using Flow, and I seem to have generated several errors. I will try to fix them in wikicode after posting; help or suggestions welcome.

I am having trouble with this. Any assistance welcome. I have learned to use the "Edit" button, which is tricky (have to click on the text, not just the shaded area) and learned that my signature doesn't render the way I'm used to. What I still need to learn (and would be glad if somebody could fix for me) is:

1. How do I ping a user? I tried both the "ping" and "user" templates, which brought up promising-looking wizards (which slowed me down considerably due to the need to use the mouse), but the results both came up as errors. I can't figure out how to make either one work. I was trying to ping Qgil-WMF and then LilaTretikof (WMF), it should be rather obvious in my text where.
2. The link to the letter is not intended to include the full title of the page, but just the word "letter" in the prose.
3. I don't know if I used the right "header level" -- if my comment belongs somewhere better, feel free to move it.
4. My name above should appear as entered in my preferences, "Pete F" instead of "Peteforsyth".

Any help appreciated.

Hi Pete. Long time no see. :-)

Overall: There are 2 different edit-modes. (This does need to be made clearer, because many people are missing it - the most recent discussion was in phab:T101316. (Also, work on related user-assistance tools, such as phab:T116900.)) When editing a post, the icon to switch between wikitext and visual editor modes, is in the bottom-right corner (in LTR languages). Users who have opted-in to the visual editor beta feature, are given that mode by default in Flow.

Specifically:

1. In wikitext mode, pings work as usual. In visual editor mode, you can just type "@" to open the ping-wizard - it will autocomplete with participants in the current discussion. (sidenote: Various wikis, like here, already used template:@ for the use of the obfuscated email symbol, so we had to invent our own template for global consistency, but it works just the same as the usual "ping" or "reply to" or "user" templates.) -- If you typed "{{" to get there, then what you opened was the generic template-wizard, which is a standard visual editor feature, but not the best way to create @mentions!
2. Visual editor recently changed the way the cursor appears within links after you insert them, so you have to tap the arrow keys to go in and out of editing the link-text. You just need to edit it from the page itself, not within the "link inspector" (wizard). Even gmail and google docs regularly misunderstand whether I wanted to edit a link's text, or to make unlinked text after the link!
3. Yup, that seems to be well-placed.
4. Discussion of the complexities of "display name", are in phab:T90055 (E.g. it's important for people with incompatible language-scripts, but it vastly increases the confusion when a signature doesn't match what is shown in the page-history... etc.). However for your particular case, it might be preferable to just rename your account to User:Pete F which doesn't appear to be taken.

Hope that helps.

Hi Quiddity (WMF), thanks. First, above all: IMO the WMF has been sending confusing messages about Flow for some time, and I believe everything would be better if there were clarity about its status. Just yesterday, it was stated stated that Flow has been "canceled" -- and yet here is this discussion. (Has something changed in the last 16 days?) If I'm commenting on a system that will only ever be used on mediawiki.org (where I don't do much work), please let me know, and I'll quit wasting my time. If this community is happy with this system, and there's no longer any intent to bring it to other wikis, then far be it from me to judge.

On your specific points:

1. Thanks for clarifying about wikitext mode. I had no idea it was an option, and am very glad to have the ability to toggle now that I know where to look. I don't have a suggestion for how to improve the interface, but the option was pretty invisible to me until you pointed it out -- I'd imagine many people might have trouble finding it. But again, glad to know it's there now.
2. Not sure I understand, but given that I can still use wikitext (see #1), I'm not worried about it.
3. OK thanks.
4. This one is an important point, and one I'd encourage you to bring up with others and discuss internally. I believe this reflects an oft-repeated problem in WMF software process. (pinging Qgil-WMF here.) What you're talking about here is a change that could be easily made within the existing wiki software, without much technical effort. But it's a substantial change to the social expectations around wikis. If WMF defers that (and other, severable decisions), in favor of rolling a bunch of decisions into a single big software release, that will not go well. The better approach is to address the more micro decisions one at a time. Here, I am learning that WMF believes that doing away with custom signatures is an improvement, and that the benefits outweigh the costs. That is a substantial change, and one I don't necessarily agree with. However, I will grant you that it's a defensible position, and I could certainly be persuaded, or persuaded to concede the point even if I don't like it. One of the things that could persuade me is if a substantial consensus among my peers agreed to it. But if the effort to make this one significant change is never made -- if the social investment is deferred until the "one big decision" about Flow -- then I predict that Flow and other projects that roll together a number of changes will suffer a thousand cuts. I do not predict that they will die by a thousand cuts (who knows), but I do predict that the cycle of cutting will be damaging to the community spirit on which Wikimedia projects rely. -Pete F (talk) 22:27, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

• By the way, there is a strong analogue to #4 in American politics: the standard diagnosis of why Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care plan failed, is because she developed it behind closed doors, and then sought buy-in at the end. But the many stakeholders felt no sense of ownership, and perceived it as a big and complex change that (in affect, as much as technical analysis) probably didn't look out properly for their interests. It's a case study worth looking into. -Pete F (talk) 22:30, 3 December 2015 (UTC)