Flow - the next Visual Editor debacle

[Vigilant]

Forgive me for bumping an old thread, but I found this Phabricator discussion about being able to convert Flow pages back to wikitext very interesting: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T90075

And particularly this comment by Erik Bernharson, a WMF employee and Flow team member:

We are indecisive if we are going to provide this feature to users, if we really want it we can talk about and figure best ways forward.

So it seems they are sticking with Flow with tooth and nail, and when it fails (and it will) the Flow pages will be left to gather dust and we'll go back to wikitext, with weeks or months of discussion left out of the archive and abandoned on some dusty WMF server.

But they don't want to seem to call it Flow out in public.
Erik Bernhardson is part of the, totally not making this up, "Discovery Team" on the WMF staff and contractors page.

So, who are the poor saps who get stuck on Flow?
Is it just those who piss off their boss on an given week?

[MMAR]

Do I even need to ask if the name 'Flow' was coined/approved by a man or a woman?

[Konveyor Belt]

Do I even need to ask if the name 'Flow' was coined/approved by a man or a woman?

Does it really matter?

[Vigilant]

Timely
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... d=13244745

Flow update -- action requested
Lila, a month ago you stated [7] that you has asked the Director of Editing to respond to a question on the current status of Flow. A fortnight later I reminded him of that request here at Meta and at Mediawiki. Nothing has been forthcoming since your original statement here. I know that he has had the opportunity to see that reminder [8], so his failure to comply with, or even acknowledge, your request is presumably deliberate: it is lacking in respect to the community and to you. Please would you take appropriate the appropriate steps to ensure that the community is given the response you wanted. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 09:15, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Presumably that leaves Trevor Pascal as "Director of Editing" with the Flow turd in his punchbowl.

[MMAR]

Do I even need to ask if the name 'Flow' was coined/approved by a man or a woman?

Does it really matter?

That depends on whether or not you think having a major software feature on Wikipedia having a name which women are just as likely to associate with their monthly visits from Mother Nature as with the notion of smooth communication. Although perhaps that's intentional? I can see how a bout of period cramps might seem comparable to communicating with an asshole like Cassianto (T-C-L) for any length of time.

[Konveyor Belt]

Timely
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... d=13244745

Flow update -- action requested
Lila, a month ago you stated [7] that you has asked the Director of Editing to respond to a question on the current status of Flow. A fortnight later I reminded him of that request here at Meta and at Mediawiki. Nothing has been forthcoming since your original statement here. I know that he has had the opportunity to see that reminder [8], so his failure to comply with, or even acknowledge, your request is presumably deliberate: it is lacking in respect to the community and to you. Please would you take appropriate the appropriate steps to ensure that the community is given the response you wanted. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 09:15, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

The talk page and its history shows many more idealistic fools who believe or have believed that they will get a response or a straight answer from the WMF. Sad, really.

[Vigilant]

Timely
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... d=13244745

Flow update -- action requested
Lila, a month ago you stated [7] that you has asked the Director of Editing to respond to a question on the current status of Flow. A fortnight later I reminded him of that request here at Meta and at Mediawiki. Nothing has been forthcoming since your original statement here. I know that he has had the opportunity to see that reminder [8], so his failure to comply with, or even acknowledge, your request is presumably deliberate: it is lacking in respect to the community and to you. Please would you take appropriate the appropriate steps to ensure that the community is given the response you wanted. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 09:15, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

The talk page and its history shows many more idealistic fools who believe or have believed that they will get a response or a straight answer from the WMF. Sad, really.

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.

[SB_Johnny]

Do I even need to ask if the name 'Flow' was coined/approved by a man or a woman?

Does it really matter?

That depends on whether or not you think having a major software feature on Wikipedia having a name which women are just as likely to associate with their monthly visits from Mother Nature as with the notion of smooth communication. Although perhaps that's intentional? I can see how a bout of period cramps might seem comparable to communicating with an asshole like Cassianto (T-C-L) for any length of time.

This is why we should never rename Vigilant's threads.

[Vigilant]

Do I even need to ask if the name 'Flow' was coined/approved by a man or a woman?

Does it really matter?

That depends on whether or not you think having a major software feature on Wikipedia having a name which women are just as likely to associate with their monthly visits from Mother Nature as with the notion of smooth communication. Although perhaps that's intentional? I can see how a bout of period cramps might seem comparable to communicating with an asshole like Cassianto (T-C-L) for any length of time.

This is why we should never rename Vigilant's threads.

See?!

[The Joy]

I'm looking at WikiProject Hampshire's talkpage where Flow is being tested. Why does it require loading for each section to appear? It only takes a second for me, but if you scroll really fast to get to a section, it takes a little to load unlike a regular talkpage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _Hampshire

Why can't I organize sections from old to new? Forums don't usually work that way and Flow seems to be wanting to be like a forum. They are taking inspiration from YouTube's comment system according to WP:Flow (T-H-L), and everyone knows that Google screwed up the YT comments with their stupid Google Plus fandango. They also need something like a line between individual postings to help with readability.

Apologies if the above has already been discussed, but I'm just now researching Flow more and it needs a lot of work. I may not understand the technical details, but as a reader, I know what I like and don't like.

[Vigilant]

I'm looking at WikiProject Hampshire's talkpage where Flow is being tested. Why does it require loading for each section to appear? It only takes a second for me, but if you scroll really fast to get to a section, it takes a little to load unlike a regular talkpage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _Hampshire

Why can't I organize sections from old to new? Forums don't usually work that way and Flow seems to be wanting to be like a forum. They are taking inspiration from YouTube's comment system according to WP:Flow (T-H-L), and everyone knows that Google screwed up the YT comments with their stupid Google Plus fandango. They also need something like a line between individual postings to help with readability.

Apologies if the above has already been discussed, but I'm just now researching Flow more and it needs a lot of work. I may not understand the technical details, but as a reader, I know what I like and don't like.

Here's an even better part: If you run scriptBlock or noScript or any other javascript control extension, you're not going to be able to use it.
Sure, you can whitelist the WMF sites, but I wouldn't.

What's the fallback for those people?

[MMAR]

I'm open minded and fully recognise Wikipedia's clunkiness, but Christ, I couldn't get to grips with it even after several minutes prodding and poking. If this is meant to be easier than 'click Edit-type-save' (and then after being shouted at by some Asshole, 'click Edit-type-sign-save') they're really having a laugh.

[Black Kite]

Being able to add a talk page section to my watchlist sounds a really good idea. I am, however, unconvinced that seeing that "Topic:Sjf8qvj9uov83mcl!" has been updated on my watchlist is going to help in any way whatsoever.

Or maybe I've got all that wrong as well. One thing's for sure, it's almost impossible to tell if I have.

[Hex]

So it seems they are sticking with Flow with tooth and nail, and when it fails (and it will) the Flow pages will be left to gather dust and we'll go back to wikitext, with weeks or months of discussion left out of the archive and abandoned on some dusty WMF server.

Now why does that sound familiar?

[Konveyor Belt]

So it seems they are sticking with Flow with tooth and nail, and when it fails (and it will) the Flow pages will be left to gather dust and we'll go back to wikitext, with weeks or months of discussion left out of the archive and abandoned on some dusty WMF server.

Now why does that sound familiar?

I disagree. Instead, ​I would suggest having just the smidgen of patience and actually waiting when the Flow team have responded on the thread and told you it'd take some time, rather than​ posting the same request in a second thread because you didn't get the answer you wanted.

Conduct unbecoming of a WMF employee and developer whose job is partly to collect community reception and use it to influence their project. Then again, when was the last time they did that?

It has become clear that the WMF exists in a bubble, or acts as if they do. Management is handled in a top-down system, and a poor one at that. However, this is thinly veiled under the guise of a bottom-up "creative" system. The reason for that is that they can fire or remove developers who screw up or have their projects screw up under the pretense that their creative endeavor failed and it was their fault but in reality they were taking orders the whole time.

[Black Kite]

And it's goodnight from Flow ... probably ... sort of.

Wikipedia_talk:Flow#Priorities_for_the_Collaboration_(Flow)_team (T-H-L)

[SB_Johnny]

And it's goodnight from Flow ... probably ... sort of.

Wikipedia_talk:Flow#Priorities_for_the_Collaboration_(Flow)_team (T-H-L)

The section right above that one is interesting too (permalink).

[Kelly Martin]

It's interesting to me that the Flow developers still see Flow as a tool to implement workflows, something which I've argued Wikipedia has needed since somewhere in 2005 or so. However, if that's what Flow is supposed to do, I have never seen any evidence whatsoever that it can be used for that or that it has any hope of being used for that. Nor do I understand why a workflow system requires a complete redo of talk pages; all they have to do is add another tab to pages titled "To do" and put workflow items there. There is simply no need to completely rewrite talk pages to implement workflows, and honestly (as someone who has used four or five different workflow systems of various complexity over a dozen years of professional experience) I can't see why there would be any connection.

I suspect the reason for this idiocy is that the original designer of Flow noticed that talkpages were being used for workflow management in an ad hoc way, and sought to formalize the ad hoc method by formalizing the way talk pages were being used in software. That developer had no actual experience with workflow processes (likely having never worked in an actual business that actually had workflows) or with how other workflow solutions in the marketplace work (for the same reason), and thus did not realize that the crazy way Wikipedians use talk pages to do workflow is a giant kludge to deal with the limitations of the Mediawiki environment, and thus did not realize that he was trying to formalize a terribly stupid idea.

This is the grand delusion that Wikimedia Engineering has been laboring under for the past decade. They could have taken any of the half dozen open source workflow management systems already on the "market" and bolted it beside Mediawiki in a matter of months, but Wikimedia's NIH problem, which stems largely from the fact that most of its engineers are rank tyros with no experience or competence, means that the idea of doing that never even crossed their minds.

[Vigilant]

The Mo:leMan must be crying in his beer about now.

Good riddance to a stupid project that lasted for 10 years and finally died the death it deserved to die on the first day.

Anyone want to estimate the total sunk cost for flow?
Try to factor in the opportunity costs and loss of customer goodwill?

Here's a funny fig leaf.

Flow will be maintained and supported, and communities that are excited about Flow discussions will be able to use it. There are places where the discussion features are working well, with communities that are enthusiastic about them: on user talk pages, help pages, and forum/village pump-style discussion spaces. By the end of September, we'll have an opt-in Beta feature available to communities that want it, allowing users to enable Flow on their own user talk pages.

How well supported is another conversation.
How badly does a WMF engineer have to screw up to get stuck on Flow maintenance duty?

[Randy from Boise]

There are communities that are excited about Flow?

Good riddance to bad rubbish...

I'm gonna chalk this up as a win for Lila. She figured out that no matter how many hours and dollars had been sunk into the project that Flow remained a piece of shit with no realistic outcome other than a replay of the VisualEditor debacle to the second power, followed by disruption when Flow was inevitably shut off and every word created under the system either lost or archived.

That was an asteroid on collision course with planet Wikipedia...

RfB

[Black Kite]

"...we're now focusing our strategy on the curation, collaboration, and admin processes that take place on a variety of pages. Many of these processes use complex workarounds -- templates, categories, transclusions, and lots of instructions -- that turn blank wikitext talk pages into structured workflows. There are gadgets and user scripts on the larger wikis to help with some of these workflows, but these tools aren't standardized or universally available."

Yeah, but they work.

[Jim]

I suspect the reason for this idiocy is that the original designer of Flow noticed that talkpages were being used for workflow management in an ad hoc way, and sought to formalize the ad hoc method by formalizing the way talk pages were being used in software. That developer had no actual experience with workflow processes (likely having never worked in an actual business that actually had workflows) or with how other workflow solutions in the marketplace work (for the same reason), and thus did not realize that the crazy way Wikipedians use talk pages to do workflow is a giant kludge to deal with the limitations of the Mediawiki environment, and thus did not realize that he was trying to formalize a terribly stupid idea.

This is the grand delusion that Wikimedia Engineering has been laboring under for the past decade. They could have taken any of the half dozen open source workflow management systems already on the "market" and bolted it beside Mediawiki in a matter of months, but Wikimedia's NIH problem, which stems largely from the fact that most of its engineers are rank tyros with no experience or competence, means that the idea of doing that never even crossed their minds.

Er. Yeah.

Been there. We do this in house, they said, even if stuff is out there, they said, because we always did this in house and out there is scary and not us, they said,.

Never worked for me, so I gave it up.

[Vigilant]

I suspect the reason for this idiocy is that the original designer of Flow noticed that talkpages were being used for workflow management in an ad hoc way, and sought to formalize the ad hoc method by formalizing the way talk pages were being used in software. That developer had no actual experience with workflow processes (likely having never worked in an actual business that actually had workflows) or with how other workflow solutions in the marketplace work (for the same reason), and thus did not realize that the crazy way Wikipedians use talk pages to do workflow is a giant kludge to deal with the limitations of the Mediawiki environment, and thus did not realize that he was trying to formalize a terribly stupid idea.

This is the grand delusion that Wikimedia Engineering has been laboring under for the past decade. They could have taken any of the half dozen open source workflow management systems already on the "market" and bolted it beside Mediawiki in a matter of months, but Wikimedia's NIH problem, which stems largely from the fact that most of its engineers are rank tyros with no experience or competence, means that the idea of doing that never even crossed their minds.

Er. Yeah.

Been there. We do this in house, they said, even if stuff is out there, they said, because we always did this in house and out there is scary and not us, they said,.

Never worked for me, so I gave it up.

If they didn't build it inhouse, then they couldn't hire their shitty friends.

[Hex]

I'm gonna chalk this up as a win for Lila.

As I quoted her in my blog post about the sad story of Flow:

Flow in the current form is not a replacement for the current Talk pages. If I were to draw a venn diagram of Flow vs. Talk vs. Talk Prime (something super-user would seem to want Talk to become), the overlap would be very modest.

It was dead in the water the moment she said that.

I suspect the reason for this idiocy is that the original designer of Flow noticed that talkpages were being used for workflow management in an ad hoc way, and sought to formalize the ad hoc method by formalizing the way talk pages were being used in software.

My blog post goes into detail about how a simple forum system became a "workflow" system.

[Zoloft]

I'm gonna chalk this up as a win for Lila.

As I quoted her in my blog post about the sad story of Flow:

Flow in the current form is not a replacement for the current Talk pages. If I were to draw a venn diagram of Flow vs. Talk vs. Talk Prime (something super-user would seem to want Talk to become), the overlap would be very modest.

It was dead in the water the moment she said that.

I suspect the reason for this idiocy is that the original designer of Flow noticed that talkpages were being used for workflow management in an ad hoc way, and sought to formalize the ad hoc method by formalizing the way talk pages were being used in software.

My blog post goes into detail about how a simple forum system became a "workflow" system.

Time for an updated version on Monday?

[Moral Hazard]

Expelliarmus, Mole-man!

My patronus has become a purple unicorn.

[Vigilant]

Poor Jorm aka Brandon Harris is in deep, deep denial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... A9tente.3F

It doesn't say that Flow won't be "actively supported"; quite the opposite. I think many people are reading this announcement incorrectly (which I admit that I did as well, but sought clarification). This is about the team moving to focus on the "Workflow" aspect of the project.--Jorm (talk) 18:19, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Uhhhhhhh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ow.29_team

Starting in October, Flow will not be in active development, as we shift the team's focus to these other priorities.

We're doing other things and the people who were working on Flow will be doing other things.

The WMF doesn't close the door on 'workflow' type development, but there is no schedule, budget or team setup for that 'push'.

It's just pining for the fjords...

[Randy from Boise]

Poor Jorm aka Brandon Harris is in deep, deep denial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... A9tente.3F

It doesn't say that Flow won't be "actively supported"; quite the opposite. I think many people are reading this announcement incorrectly (which I admit that I did as well, but sought clarification). This is about the team moving to focus on the "Workflow" aspect of the project.--Jorm (talk) 18:19, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Uhhhhhhh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ow.29_team

Starting in October, Flow will not be in active development, as we shift the team's focus to these other priorities.

We're doing other things and the people who were working on Flow will be doing other things.

The WMF doesn't close the door on 'workflow' type development, but there is no schedule, budget or team setup for that 'push'.

It's just pining for the fjords...

This project is no more. It has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to meet its maker...

Here's the key line from the above:

"Further development on these projects will be driven by the needs expressed by wiki communities."

RfB

[Vigilant]

I wonder how infrequently the word 'flow' appears on the technology roadmap these days.
Oh, here it is!
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow#Q2_ ... ec_2015.29

Q2 (Nov-Dec 2015)
Collaboration team will be working on:

Global Echo notifications, cross-wiki
Workflows Builder

Poor Brandon and his wasted years.

[Hex]

Time for an updated version on Monday?

At the very least, a brief postscript. I'll see if I can put something together on Saturday.

[The Adversary]

I also count this as another win for Lila; hats off for her.

[Hex]

I can't quit you, baby: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T88954

Jorm · Feb 9 2015, 4:49 AM

Unsubscribing myself, just FYI.

Somebody accidentally resubscribes him, and then:

Jorm · Feb 9 2015, 10:35 PM
Okay, honestly, I don't work for the Foundation anymore so I don't feel like I'm the person to talk to about this.

I wouldn't dare deploy Moodbar and the Feedback dashboard in their current incarnation. The Dashboard requires significant work to make it viable, including but not limited to vital services such as "providing ways to oversight comments provided through Moodbar". It's missing some really, really basic security features. It was an experiment and was never intended to be anything but.

Anyways, that's all the input I've got. I'm going to unsubscribe from this again.

Technical13 · Apr 16 2015, 11:20 AM

Now that it looks like Flow may have just been another experiment that may or may not take a great deal more time to complete if it gets completed at all, I'm re-opening this ticket in a stalled state pending a new RfC on enwp as to whether or not this is wanted.

Jorm · Apr 16 2015, 4:36 PM

What are you talking about, "Flow is just another experiment"? And what does Flow have to do with Moodbar at all? (nothing, I tell you.)

Perhaps we should start a pool on how long it'll be before the next time he weighs in with an opinion on a product he's not paid to work on any more.

Also, that discussion has some candidates for Reverse Prognostication of the Year:

Whatamidoing-WMF · Apr 16 2015, 5:21 PM

I don't know what Technical 13 might have been thinking of, but there is a rumor that Flow is being cancelled. The basis of the rumor is that Lila once said that Flow's then-current state was incomplete and the exact direction has not been finalized. The fact that an unfinished software product is not yet finished is a tautology, but this brief, informal comment has been twisted into a claim that Lila hates Flow and will be announcing its cancellation any day now.

Jorm · Apr 16 2015, 5:23 PM

That makes no sense whatsoever.

DannyH · Apr 16 2015, 6:53 PM

Lila did make a comment like that on one of her talk pages a few months ago, but jumping from that to "Flow is cancelled" is not accurate. That comment was an offhand way of summing up a discussion that we'd had a couple weeks earlier about the use cases that Flow currently does and does not support.

Flow is in active development, with four developers working full-time on it. It will be a while until it's complete, but we're rolling out on more pages on more wikis all the time. I'd be happy to talk to anyone who has questions or suggestions about the feature or the development process.

Also, Flow doesn't really have anything to do with MoodBar.

[Thracia]

After Flow rendered Wikipedia:WikiProject Breakfast (T-H-L) moribund within months of deployment, an RFC now seeks permission to pull the plug permanently: RFC - Remove Flow from WikiProject Breakfast?

Caution: RFC link contains slow-loading, confusing, threaded mess.

[SB_Johnny]

After Flow rendered Wikipedia:WikiProject Breakfast (T-H-L) moribund within months of deployment, an RFC now seeks permission to pull the plug permanently: RFC - Remove Flow from WikiProject Breakfast?

Caution: RFC link contains slow-loading, confusing, threaded mess.

I get the feeling they're not going to be successful in getting rid of the thing:

WhatamIdoing (talkcontribsblock)

Threading is still possible, as shown in this thread.

I don't see any point in discontinuing it. I've stopped posting here because I haven't been working on breakfast-related articles this year, not because of the page format.

(Also, note the block button: it's right next to every username at the top of the posts, revealed by mouse-over. Not sure what that says about anything, but it's an interesting feature.)

[Jnorton7558]

Block button must be an admin thing all I see is talk and contribs

[Hex]

Here's my opinion: Productive experienced editors working to build an actual encyclopedia do not care at all about "good ideas" in the abstract, because such ideas are plentifully available, for a dime a dozen. They care only about the implementation of those ideas in the least disruptive fashion. Speaking for myself, I am a 63 year old guy who is it not a professional programmer but had no problem whatsover learning wikicode when I started writing and improving encyclopedia articles in 2009. I do not want to learn new software features that are less productive and less intuitive than old software features. I welcome any upgrades that are entirely intuitive and non-disruptive to existing editors. I will oppose ill-conceived and poorly-implemented make-work projects for professional programmers. This is not an employment program for coders. It is an encyclopedia created by volunteers, who are article writers and researchers.

Well said that man.

[Poetlister]

Also, note the block button: it's right next to every username at the top of the posts, revealed by mouse-over. Not sure what that says about anything, but it's an interesting feature.

Have you ever looked at Recent changes or the Revision history of any article? You'll see the block button next to every user name, clearly visible without a mouse-over.

[Hex]

The stupid never ends. From Wikipedia talk:Flow (T-H-L):

Analyzing User:Flow_talk_page_manager

What is Flow talk page manager (T-C-L) actually doing? It seems to edit every topic that gets created, as if every individual topic needs to be "Flow-enabled". This seems like a lot of overkill. Strangely, while one can see in the contributions of Flow talk page manager that these edits are made, they can not be seen in the history of the topic. I didn't know that some edits could be shown in one edit history (by user) but not in another (on the page the edit was made). I also don't think this is a good idea, it certainly seems like a dangerous precedent.

The edit summary for the edits, "This page has been converted into a Flow discussion board" is also quite wrong, as no page is being converted, only a new topic is being started.

The topic edits are not deleted when the actual page gets deleted, although edits made to pages are deleted apparently. It makes it hard to follow what the "manager" actually has done (of course, the nonsensical topic titles also don't help one bit).

The same "user" also created templates like Template:LQT post imported with supressed user (T-H-L) (with typo in the name) and Template:LQT Moved thread stub converted to Flow (T-H-L). I don't think enwiki has even a single LQT page, so why the manager was used to create useless templates is not clear.

Is it correct that blocking this "manager" would basically disable Flow on a complete wiki (no more new topics or Flow pages, only posts in existing topics remain possible)? That's ... interesting and potentially useful, if the WMF would reverse its position and try to impose Flow against the wishes of a community ;-). Perhaps not using the Flow manager for other stuff like importing unwanted templates will reduce the likelihood of it getting blocked here. Keep automated edits to Flow pages and topics and other stuff separated please, for your own good. Fram (talk) 08:14, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

[Hex]

RFC - Remove Flow from WikiProject Breakfast?

Summary by AlbinoFerret

There is consensus to end the test. The majority opinion is that Flow is a hindrance to discussion here and it is buggy. AlbinoFerret 09:33, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

[Jim]

RFC - Remove Flow from WikiProject Breakfast?

Summary by AlbinoFerret

There is consensus to end the test. The majority opinion is that Flow is a hindrance to discussion here and it is buggy. AlbinoFerret 09:33, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

The funniest part of that was that "Flow" confused the RFC mechanism enough for that to become an issue.

Unless the funniest part was this typical wikipedian stamp and pout:

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)
@ scott Just wondering if you are interested in participating in breakfast discussion?

Aren't they precious?

[Hex]

Unless the funniest part was this typical wikipedian stamp and pout:

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)
@ scott Just wondering if you are interested in participating in breakfast discussion?

Aren't they precious?

And:

Scott
As consensus has been found to remove Flow I have requested that at Phabricator.

Ottawahitech
WHY? You don't seem to have any interest in participating in this trial, do you? So why impose your views on those of us who have spent hours and days trying to get this thing going?

Ottawahitech (T-C-L) is really not happy. Their user page is... different, too.

[Poetlister]

Will we have a repeat of what happened on the German Wikipedia when they switched off VE as a default and were overridden by the WMF?

[Vigilant]

Will we have a repeat of what happened on the German Wikipedia when they switched off VE as a default and were overridden by the WMF?

Perhaps we'll get lucky and the current incarnation of Jorm will stamp his impotent feet and leave.

[Hex]

Ottawhitech seems to have completely blown a fuse.

[Jim]

Ottawahitech seems to have completely blown a fuse.

Oh my, "a hijacking strategy". You fiend in a gang of fiends, you... At least Sherry is there to help. Bless.

Their user page is... different, too.

Have you seen how often they manually update that? Nothing obsessive there, then...
Way back, an admin tried to correct the count - reverted without comment. Odd fish, Ottawahitech...

Could we have kippers for breakfast?

[Hex]

RFC - Remove Flow from WikiProject Breakfast?

Summary by AlbinoFerret

There is consensus to end the test. The majority opinion is that Flow is a hindrance to discussion here and it is buggy. AlbinoFerret 09:33, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Following this, I requested on Phabricator that Flow be removed from the page. In what will probably come as a surprise to none of you, there's no defined exit strategy.

[Jim]

But it seems to have woken up this task, which nobody had touched since August, apparently.

[Hex]

But it seems to have woken up this task, which nobody had touched since August, apparently.

Oops, that was supposed to be the second link in my post. Thanks.

[Jim]

I have no idea how you link to a diff in that morass of a thing, so here's just a c/paste of one that made me smile.
I guess it's recent, because it says "edited 16 hours ago", but really, how would one tell? Diffs don't work, history is WTF.

Anyway, here's the attempted pout:

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)
I started a new topic on Joe's special for those interested in Breakfast discussion.
...but got a [dbccce17 Exception Caught: Undefined is not a valid UUID] when I tried to post the permalink to the new Topic

translation: "I desperately tried to post something, anything, actually about breakfast here, to show you were all being big meanies, and we really, really want to talk about kippers with Flow, but Flow fucked up..."

At least that's honest, I guess...

[Randy from Boise]

I have no idea how you link to a diff in that morass of a thing, so here's just a c/paste of one that made me smile.
I guess it's recent, because it says "edited 16 hours ago", but really, how would one tell? Diffs don't work, history is WTF.

Anyway, here's the attempted pout:

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)
I started a new topic on Joe's special for those interested in Breakfast discussion.
...but got a [dbccce17 Exception Caught: Undefined is not a valid UUID] when I tried to post the permalink to the new Topic

translation: "I desperately tried to post something, anything, actually about breakfast here, to show you were all being big meanies, and we really, really want to talk about kippers with Flow, but Flow fucked up..."

At least that's honest, I guess...

Shutting down the Flow project was the first thing WMF did right in quite a long time. Other than raising lots and lots of money to finance their fiefdom — they are quite good at that.

RfB

P.S. Never forget that Jimmy Wales was a big, big advocate of Flow and probably one of the reasons behind the scenes that that deformed zombie of a project remained animated for as long as it was. Huge fail for the WMF Board in their technological oversight duties...