Flow - the next Visual Editor debacle

[Vigilant]

Oh dear...
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... tations.22

I seem to recall asking that question at 21:14, 11 October 2013 (UTC). It seems rather late in the day to be collecting the documentation of the general research; and surprisingly laid-back to suggest that it might be worth collecting user expectation if it could be done easily. Can it really be that you currently do not have a clear overview of what users are going to need? (And if you do, perhaps you could point to it, please) Spectral sequence (talk) 18:13, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

[Vigilant]

HOooo-leeey fuck.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =578167607

I think Dank said it best:

Some new college campuses are built without sidewalks, so that the designers can see where the students are wearing ruts in the grass before the sidewalks go in. By the same theory, I think our free-form style (up till now) has given us a lot of very detailed experience suggesting what features Wikipedia talk pages do and don't need.

We have a pretty good idea of what our existing users need, just based on how they've been using talk pages for the past decade. We're tackling their needs first and foremost in the first release, because a good Wikipedia discussion system needs to be usable by current Wikipedians When it comes to people who aren't currently Wikipedians but could potentially be if we eliminated some of the user experience and interface barriers, as Oliver says, there are a lot of general best-practices from all the other discussion systems on the Internet that most people are familiar with and are comfortable using.
All that said, I definitely think there's value in reaching out to the class of people who aren't in either of those groups – e.g., users who've made some edits on Wikipedia but are still fairly new and may be struggling with the complexity of talk pages. We'll be working on a variety of methods to get feedback from those users (in-person user testing, more formal user experience research like card sorting, contextual inquiry, etc.), and a survey could certainly help. The reason this kind of research is not a more urgent need at this point, from my perspective, is that we're still a long way away from giving Flow to new users. Very few brand-new Wikipedians make their way over to WikiProjects – those tend to be more experienced user communities – so they're not our immediate target audience. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 21:06, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

They have no fucking idea what they're trying to build. None.

Unbelievable.

[dogbiscuit]

HOooo-leeey fuck.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =578167607

I think Dank said it best:

Some new college campuses are built without sidewalks, so that the designers can see where the students are wearing ruts in the grass before the sidewalks go in. By the same theory, I think our free-form style (up till now) has given us a lot of very detailed experience suggesting what features Wikipedia talk pages do and don't need.

We have a pretty good idea of what our existing users need, just based on how they've been using talk pages for the past decade. We're tackling their needs first and foremost in the first release, because a good Wikipedia discussion system needs to be usable by current Wikipedians When it comes to people who aren't currently Wikipedians but could potentially be if we eliminated some of the user experience and interface barriers, as Oliver says, there are a lot of general best-practices from all the other discussion systems on the Internet that most people are familiar with and are comfortable using.
All that said, I definitely think there's value in reaching out to the class of people who aren't in either of those groups – e.g., users who've made some edits on Wikipedia but are still fairly new and may be struggling with the complexity of talk pages. We'll be working on a variety of methods to get feedback from those users (in-person user testing, more formal user experience research like card sorting, contextual inquiry, etc.), and a survey could certainly help. The reason this kind of research is not a more urgent need at this point, from my perspective, is that we're still a long way away from giving Flow to new users. Very few brand-new Wikipedians make their way over to WikiProjects – those tend to be more experienced user communities – so they're not our immediate target audience. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 21:06, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

They have no fucking idea what they're trying to build. None.

Unbelievable.

As I said before, it is very obvious what they are trying to build; a phpBB forum per talk page; they just don't realise it yet.

Funnily enough, around the web, discussion boards are considered very passe and unfriendly. Nobody seems to know what to replace them with (as all the alternatives I see seem to be home made discussion boards). It seems that WMF are doing the same process as everyone else (with the same sense that something is wrong without any real sense of how to fix it).

[Vigilant]

And another long time editor's concerns are ignored and trivialized.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_ ... evelopment

I am not comfortable having this discussion against four people who get salary to promote flow. I am sorry. My business was to let you know that there is a large fraction of long-time users for whom flow is not acceptable. I am pretty sure you underestimate the problem. I have a long experience dealing with facebook style of comments, and I find them uncomfortable. You can of course reduce this to the wikiproject tags if you wish. Note that my real life job is, in particular, to teach, and I was able to formulate clearly what I do not like. Others will leave without trying to formulate anything. Whatever I tried yesterday is not a product I ever want to use, and I am not interesting in helping to develop it.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:44, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

From the middle of the "conversation"...
Calling it squarely how it is.

[Randy from Boise]

And another long time editor's concerns are ignored and trivialized.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_ ... evelopment

I am not comfortable having this discussion against four people who get salary to promote flow. I am sorry. My business was to let you know that there is a large fraction of long-time users for whom flow is not acceptable. I am pretty sure you underestimate the problem. I have a long experience dealing with facebook style of comments, and I find them uncomfortable. You can of course reduce this to the wikiproject tags if you wish. Note that my real life job is, in particular, to teach, and I was able to formulate clearly what I do not like. Others will leave without trying to formulate anything. Whatever I tried yesterday is not a product I ever want to use, and I am not interesting in helping to develop it.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:44, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

From the middle of the "conversation"...
Calling it squarely how it is.

Flow is a bigger disaster than Visual Editor, which was as big a disaster as a bunch of clowns can make.

No confidence. You're all fired.

Vigilant, you're boss, hire your team. You have $3M to play with.

RfB

[Vigilant]

And another long time editor's concerns are ignored and trivialized.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_ ... evelopment

I am not comfortable having this discussion against four people who get salary to promote flow. I am sorry. My business was to let you know that there is a large fraction of long-time users for whom flow is not acceptable. I am pretty sure you underestimate the problem. I have a long experience dealing with facebook style of comments, and I find them uncomfortable. You can of course reduce this to the wikiproject tags if you wish. Note that my real life job is, in particular, to teach, and I was able to formulate clearly what I do not like. Others will leave without trying to formulate anything. Whatever I tried yesterday is not a product I ever want to use, and I am not interesting in helping to develop it.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:44, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

From the middle of the "conversation"...
Calling it squarely how it is.

Flow is a bigger disaster than Visual Editor, which was as big a disaster as a bunch of clowns can make.

No confidence. You're all fired.

Vigilant, you're boss, hire your team. You have $3M to play with.

RfB

$3.5M as I stated before.

[Lukeno94]

I remember posting a pretty disparaging comment about Flow on the old prototype's page; sadly, that has gone, so I can't quote it verbatim.

[Hex]

Martynas Patasius (T-C-L), an editor in Lithuania, has recently been very patiently picking apart the way the WMF has been conducting a survey about Flow. However, a goon squad led by Guy Macon (T-C-L) don't like it. Look at the way these people react - they describe his comments as "dripping with contempt" and "aggressive bordering on abusive". It's like they have no idea how normal human beings communicate.

[Vigilant]

Martynas Patasius (T-C-L), an editor in Lithuania, has recently been very patiently picking apart the way the WMF has been conducting a survey about Flow. However, a goon squad led by Guy Macon (T-C-L) don't like it. Look at the way these people react - they describe his comments as "dripping with contempt" and "aggressive bordering on abusive". It's like they have no idea how normal human beings communicate.

Oh, but I'm sure the WMF team is "trying hard" ... unfortunately for them, that is not the standard that engineering teams are held to.

[Randy from Boise]

Martynas Patasius (T-C-L), an editor in Lithuania, has recently been very patiently picking apart the way the WMF has been conducting a survey about Flow. However, a goon squad led by Guy Macon (T-C-L) don't like it. Look at the way these people react - they describe his comments as "dripping with contempt" and "aggressive bordering on abusive". It's like they have no idea how normal human beings communicate.

Oh, but I'm sure the WMF team is "trying hard" ... unfortunately for them, that is not the standard that engineering teams are held to.

But it will get you a B in the American public school system...


RfB

[Vigilant]

Martynas Patasius (T-C-L), an editor in Lithuania, has recently been very patiently picking apart the way the WMF has been conducting a survey about Flow. However, a goon squad led by Guy Macon (T-C-L) don't like it. Look at the way these people react - they describe his comments as "dripping with contempt" and "aggressive bordering on abusive". It's like they have no idea how normal human beings communicate.

Oh, but I'm sure the WMF team is "trying hard" ... unfortunately for them, that is not the standard that engineering teams are held to.

But it will get you a B in the American public school system...


RfB

No. It really won't.

The AP/IB high school class sequences that I've seen are undergraduate college level material from when I was in school.
The engineering companies I've worked for are even more demanding than they were 10 years ago.

[TungstenCarbide]

Martynas Patasius (T-C-L), an editor in Lithuania, has recently been very patiently picking apart the way the WMF has been conducting a survey about Flow. However, a goon squad led by Guy Macon (T-C-L) don't like it. Look at the way these people react - they describe his comments as "dripping with contempt" and "aggressive bordering on abusive". It's like they have no idea how normal human beings communicate.

Oh, but I'm sure the WMF team is "trying hard" ... unfortunately for them, that is not the standard that engineering teams are held to.

But it will get you a B in the American public school system...


RfB

No. It really won't.

The AP/IB high school class sequences that I've seen are undergraduate college level material from when I was in school.
The engineering companies I've worked for are even more demanding than they were 10 years ago.

There is a large variation in high school education in the US. Rural areas might not even have an IB program. Metropolitan area high schools usually have IB programs, and students are able to take university classes for part of the day, if there is a local university, and receive both high school and university credit. I know one young man who completed the majority of his undergraduate math coursework (for a math major) at a prestigious university before graduating high school. My kids also took university classes while in high school. Occasionally some high school districts will even pay the tuition.

[Randy from Boise]

WMF moving forward and onward with Flow!!!

From Village Pump/Policy:

Just back from testing the FLOW and ready to give my feedback. I am afraid the best thing you can do if you want to keep me personally on the English Wikipedia is to stop developing FLOW immediately and give assurances it would not be switched on. If it gets switched on, I am likely to leave the project or to continue working in the article space. Specifically, I do not see how I can manage the messages left at the talk pages I currently have in my watchlist (several thousands) with the FLOW. I am a long-time FB user and I know what I am talking about.--Ymblanter (talk) 2:17 pm, 8 December 2013 & 2:16 pm, 8 December 2013.

Can you give me an example of what you mean by "managing" messages? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 9:58 pm, 8 December 2013

Right now, I have my watchlist. I use the custom script which shows where there are new edits, and which pages I have already looked at. There are many pages I do not look at immedialely and wait until there are more new edits which I can all assess at the same time. I decide whether I want to look at the page or not on the basis of the edit summary...

Now, at least for the talk pages, the wacthlist will be replaced by FLOW. Right now it does not show which edits were made since my last visit, but imagine it would be modified to show them in a different color, this must be doable. (Note that it is more useful if one can mark threads as read and unread). However, even if it does, there is no tree structure, so if I want so understand what the new replies are related to, I need to refresh the whole branch of the discussion...which is a lot more than what I am doing now, and is beyond the time capacity I have at my disposal.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:51 pm, 8 December 2013

It can and will change, but only based on the feedback/suggestions/etc that are given. The better (more detailed, and collaborative/friendly) the feedback, the better Flow will turn out to be. Please, consider elaborating on your concerns, and suggestions, at WT:Flow (rather than here). (Note that various aspects you mention, such as indent levels, are already being actively discussed/critiqued/refined, and changes are being considered...) Thank you! –Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 11:00 pm, 8 December 2013

I am sorry for not making my position clear enough. My feedback is that FLOW should not be installed on the English Wikipedia. Unless of course you find a way of opting me out.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:35 pm, 8 December 2013

Ymblanter, you don't have to threaten to quit Wikipedia to be heard – just tell us how you currently use edit summaries on talk pages. If they're vital to your and other editors' workflows, we'll add them in to Flow. It really is as simple as that!

In my experience, talk page edit summaries are generally not very useful; the most frequent thing that appears in that field on talk pages is something like "reply to User:Foo" or "cmt on blah," which is mostly redundant and purely conventional.... (big snip)

Tl;dr, the choice is not "stop deployment!" or "roll out everywhere with the product as it!" You have a team of world-class engineers and designers working for you; try the software, tell us what you need, and we'll make it happen! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 12:04 pm, 9 December 2013

Emphasis added for comedic effect.

RfB

[Vigilant]

The Flow proponents, as the VisualEditurd group before them, have decided that their project must be done even if they don't know what the project should do.

Any criticism is met with hand waving, aggressive assertions that the critic doesn't really understand what they're doing, etc, etc.


Here's a thought: If you can't convince someone that your project is a good idea while merely talking about it (without the attendant difficulties of trying to build it) you don't have a good idea for a project...

[Lukeno94]

"You have a team of world-class engineers and designers working for you; try the software, tell us what you need, and we'll make it happen!"

As a rule of thumb, you should never make this statement. Ever.

[Bielle]

"You have a team of world-class engineers and designers working for you; try the software, tell us what you need, and we'll make it happen!"

As a rule of thumb, you should never make this statement. Ever.

That quote needs to be posted after every request in respect of VE that has been denied for whatever reason.

[Vigilant]

"You have a team of world-class engineers and designers working for you; try the software, tell us what you need, and we'll make it happen!"

As a rule of thumb, you should never make this statement. Ever.

That quote needs to be posted after every request in respect of VE that has been denied for whatever reason.

For VE, the issue is already dead.

Nobody uses it.
It is universally reviled.
The only people who are still pushing this zombie project are getting their paychecks to do so.
It's pretty clear that when the VE CPR is called, the people on that team will be looking for new employment.

Spectacular claims all around. Spectacular, public failure.

Game over, man. Game over.

[Mason]

"You have a team of world-class engineers and designers working for you; try the software, tell us what you need, and we'll make it happen!"

As a rule of thumb, you should never make this statement. Ever.

That quote needs to be posted after every request in respect of VE that has been denied for whatever reason.

"Sorry, all of the world-class engineers and designers are working on Flow, we've had to make do with off-brand ones for VE."

[Hex]

world-class engineers and designers

[Vigilant]

I just did a quick check on recent changes...

Out of 10000 recent changes, 16 were made with VisualEditurd for a 0.16% usage rate.

I can only imagine that the Flow team would be thrilled to have a similar acceptance from en.wp.
Strike that, I think the Flow team will be lucky to achieve those levels.

[Lukeno94]

20,863 users have it enabled on enwiki, according to the "Beta" page. Which seems a very high number, given how few edits I see in my own watchlist using it (ie, basically none)...

[Randy from Boise]

I just did a quick check on recent changes...

Out of 10000 recent changes, 16 were made with VisualEditurd for a 0.16% usage rate.

I can only imagine that the Flow team would be thrilled to have a similar acceptance from en.wp.
Strike that, I think the Flow team will be lucky to achieve those levels.

How do you generate that stat?

Can you quickly count how many times VE was used in the last 100,000 recent changes, for example?

RfB

[Vigilant]

I just did a quick check on recent changes...

Out of 10000 recent changes, 16 were made with VisualEditurd for a 0.16% usage rate.

I can only imagine that the Flow team would be thrilled to have a similar acceptance from en.wp.
Strike that, I think the Flow team will be lucky to achieve those levels.

How do you generate that stat?

Can you quickly count how many times VE was used in the last 100,000 recent changes, for example?

RfB

Go to recent changes, set for last 10,000 edits.
Search for "Tag: VisualEditor" and count results.
Take 3-4 samples, about 5 minutes apart to disallow overlap, to generate a reasonable average.

Not scientific, but probably close to real mean usage.

[Vigilant]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_ ... e_board.3F

Why not start with an existing open-source message board?

Why are we not using an existing open-source message board and customizing it for our use?

In particular, I would like to see the documentation where the following were evaluated:

phpBB: https://www.phpbb.com/ https://wiki.phpbb.com/Main_Page

pyForum: http://pyforum.org/ http://code.google.com/p/pyforum/

--Guy Macon (talk) 20:59, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Silly boy!
How could they hire all their friends then?

[Kelly Martin]

At some point (and it would be a bloody day) a major change in markup may have to be made, abandoning the complex system of wikimarkup, add-ons, extensions, and pushing everything over to a combination of HTML5, xml, and calls to database records. Old talk-style pages may have to be archived in place and a new discussion system implemented. A competent WYSIWYG plus a referencing system, plus hooks for extendability modules would be required. The old system would be gone for good, along with its mystique.

It would be a massive, expensive undertaking, and have to be done by an outside dev team and then turnkeyed back to the existing software maintainers, who would have to be augmented by people from the outside team, forever.

If not done though, Wikipedia becomes obsolete within a few years and dies.

This should have been done in 2005. At the latest. The reason it was not is because there were no competent software engineers anywhere near MediaWiki. Still aren't, as far as I can tell.

[Hex]

DEAR LORD MY EYES!

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Breakfast (T-H-L)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Hampshire (T-H-L)

Announcement and discussion at Wikipedia talk:Flow (T-H-L).

[Zoloft]

DEAR LORD MY EYES!

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Breakfast (T-H-L)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Hampshire (T-H-L)

Announcement and discussion at Wikipedia talk:Flow (T-H-L).

*pokes at source code*

mmmm... tables and span tags...

We're up for a full dog's breakfast here.

[SB_Johnny]

DEAR LORD MY EYES!

Wow. It's just, uh... just, wow.

WT:FLOW is definitely a page to watch. We could probably just copy it and post it on the blog as an absurdity.

[HRIP7]

[Thracia]

Why is there so much whitespace/padding?

While most think white space = wasted space, the benefits from having whitespace and padding outweighs the wasted space concern. Whitespace is used for your eyes' resting spots. It helps you focus on content and increases content comprehension by 20%, which is important in discussing complicated issues. It decreases user unsatisfaction, which could result in an unhealthy discussion and harassment. We know what kind of harm to productive conversations misunderstandings and misinterpretation can do. [continues...]

And here was me thinking it looked shit.

[Zoloft]

*mutters*
p {margin:.5em 0 .5em 0}

[SB_Johnny]

Why is there so much whitespace/padding?

While most think white space = wasted space, the benefits from having whitespace and padding outweighs the wasted space concern. Whitespace is used for your eyes' resting spots. It helps you focus on content and increases content comprehension by 20%, which is important in discussing complicated issues. It decreases user unsatisfaction, which could result in an unhealthy discussion and harassment. We know what kind of harm to productive conversations misunderstandings and misinterpretation can do. [continues...]

Which solves the mystery of why the WMF dev team treats the Wikipedians like lab rats: it's because they literally* think that Wikipedians are lab rats.

*In the literal sense of literally, as opposed to the non-literal literal sense.

[Zoloft]

"It decreases user unsatisfaction ..."

You have no idea how ungruntled I am right now.

"Since Flow Boards are, for lack of a better word, "infinite ...""

I... I could come up with a word.

*turns off the obscenity, profanity, and scatology filters*

Looks like they bought the software from here: link

It's an infant activity center.

[DanMurphy]

Why is there so much whitespace/padding?

While most think white space = wasted space, the benefits from having whitespace and padding outweighs the wasted space concern. Whitespace is used for your eyes' resting spots. It helps you focus on content and increases content comprehension by 20%, which is important in discussing complicated issues. It decreases user unsatisfaction, which could result in an unhealthy discussion and harassment. We know what kind of harm to productive conversations misunderstandings and misinterpretation can do. [continues...]

Which solves the mystery of why the WMF dev team treats the Wikipedians like lab rats: it's because they literally* think that Wikipedians are lab rats.

*In the literal sense of literally, as opposed to the non-literal literal sense.

That gem is thanks to a Wikimedia Foundation employee named "Nick Wilson" or Quiddity (WMF) (T-C-L). His mother must be very proud.

[Vigilant]

AHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Who called it?
Come on, say the 'V' word with me!!

I'd give up software engineering if built shit like that.

There's going to be a mass revolt if they try to take anything like that live.

[The Joy]

It looks like a Cascading Style Sheet committed suicide or Adobe Dreamweaver and phpBB had a mutant baby.

[Thracia]

That gem is thanks to a Wikimedia Foundation employee named "Nick Wilson" or Quiddity (WMF) (T-C-L). His mother must be very proud.

Yet when Quiddity is offered a chance to expound his whitespace theory to a couple of unimpressed users, he deploys a stock, sloping-shoulders "I'll ask the design team" answer instead.

[dogbiscuit]

DEAR LORD MY EYES!

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Breakfast (T-H-L)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Hampshire (T-H-L)

Announcement and discussion at Wikipedia talk:Flow (T-H-L).

Try it on a tablet. Looks like My First Web Page.

[EricBarbour]

DEAR LORD MY EYES!

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Breakfast (T-H-L)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Hampshire (T-H-L)

Announcement and discussion at Wikipedia talk:Flow (T-H-L).

Try it on a tablet. Looks like My First Web Page.

Oh, yeah, I'm really "impressed" by this. Bit wasteful of screen space, eh?

[Jim]

DEAR LORD MY EYES!

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Breakfast (T-H-L)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Hampshire (T-H-L)

Announcement and discussion at Wikipedia talk:Flow (T-H-L).

Try it on a tablet. Looks like My First Web Page.

How does all the "hover" stuff, links etc. work on a tablet?

I mean, I think it's hideous and dysfunctional on a normal PC, but things like the "reply" link only seem to appear on hover in Chrome, so can you even activate them on a tablet? It's so horrible I really can't be arsed going and borrowing my daughter's iPad to check.

And yeah, way to waste all the great screen real estate everyone has available these days by forcing fixed width, big fonts and seas of white space. Good one.

Love how it breaks the talkpage headers on the test pages. Awesome.

Pile of crap, and that's generous. It's been ages since I did Greek - what's the letter that comes 4 before alpha, again?

[thekohser]

I enjoyed this... replies from Jayen that line up in left-justified space, so you have no idea which comment he's replying to, followed by the disgruntled hair-metal-tattoo fundraiser guy, telling him to go somewhere else.

Jayen466 (talk | contribs)
Diego Moya: This reply is to Diego's post above starting "Risker: Yup".
8 hours agoTue, 04 Feb 2014 04:59:51 GMT
Reply
Permalink
Jayen466 (talk | contribs)
Jayen466: This reply is to my own post starting "This reply is to Diego's post ...". I note that it is not now apparent to which of Diego's posts I was replying in that post.Show changes
8 hours agoTue, 04 Feb 2014 05:01:43 GMT
Reply
Permalink
Jayen466 (talk | contribs)
Diego Moya: This reply is to Diego's post starting "Okeyes (WMF): I must have missed it."
8 hours agoTue, 04 Feb 2014 05:03:13 GMT
Reply
Permalink
Jayen466 (talk | contribs)
Jayen466: Now, if I had not quoted the beginnings of Diego's posts, would Diego have been able to tell which one of their posts I was replying to in each case?
8 hours agoTue, 04 Feb 2014 05:06:31 GMT
Reply
Permalink
Jayen466 (talk | contribs)
Diego Moya: In other words, if Diego had five posts above, and I were to say, Diego, I totally agree with that, would he know which of his posts I was agreeing with? (This post was made by clicking on the Reply link under Diego's post starting "Risker: Yup ...")
8 hours agoTue, 04 Feb 2014 05:10:04 GMT
Reply
Permalink
Jorm (WMF) (talk | contribs)
Jayen466: Perhaps you would enjoy running your tests on an actual test page, such as this one.
6 hours agoTue, 04 Feb 2014 07:03:55 GMT
Reply
Permalink

[Jim]

I enjoyed this... replies from Jayen that line up in left-justified space, so you have no idea which comment he's replying to, followed by the disgruntled hair-metal-tattoo fundraiser guy, telling him to go somewhere else.

Yeah I saw that, too, and smiled.

Perhaps you would enjoy just answering the reasonable question, instead of knee-jerk juvenile deflection, "Jorm"? You'll never know until you try.

It's made of  "wet cotton-wool and Babycham", you know, this Flow thing.

[TungstenCarbide]

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Breakfast (T-H-L)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Hampshire (T-H-L)

Announcement and discussion at Wikipedia talk:Flow (T-H-L).

Awesome jobs guys, keep up the good work!

[Vigilant]

I feel bad for these WMF devs.
It's like when you watch a cringe inducing teen movie where the protagonist is cluelessly hurtling towards a terribly embarrassing encounter with the mean girl and you feel awful just watching him fail.

This stuff is SOOOOOOO bad that I feel reflected shame for them.

[Vigilant]

I love you, Fram!

Please disable Flow from enwiki

Why has Flow been enabled on enwiki, when the discussions and tests on Mediawiki have shown enough major, major problems to keep you busy for quite a while?

We have:

No decent history
No decent watchlist entries
No archiving
No good search options
No indication of how we can enable and disable Flow (locally, not by asking)
No categories (the old talk page was on what, four categories?)

And so on. Some of these were part of the minimal requirements and promised to be implemented before going live with it.

If you desperately needed to test Flow here, why not use this page instead of a live environment? Fram (talk) 14:00, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Honestly, as had been said at the tests at MediaWiki, this is not ready for enwiki. But why have we even bothered giving feedback as it obviously isn't taken into account... When you go to someone's history, you see

13:55, 4 February 2014 (topic) . . (+1,340)‎ . . Jayen466 (talk | contribs | block) added a comment. 05:10, 4 February 2014 (topic) . . (+468)‎ . . Jayen466 (talk | contribs | block) added a comment. 05:06, 4 February 2014 (topic) . . (+359)‎ . . Jayen466 (talk | contribs | block) added a comment. 05:03, 4 February 2014 (topic) . . (+295)‎ . . Jayen466 (talk | contribs | block) added a comment. 05:02, 4 February 2014 (topic | post) . . (+13)‎ . . Jayen466 (talk | contribs | block) edited a comment. 05:01, 4 February 2014 (topic) . . (+361)‎ . . Jayen466 (talk | contribs | block) added a comment. 04:59, 4 February 2014 (topic) . . (+276)‎ . . Jayen466 (talk | contribs | block) added a comment. 04:57, 4 February 2014 (topic) . . (+858)‎ . . Jayen466 (talk | contribs | block) added a comment.

No obvious display of where it happened, no edit summaries, no undo(!!!) or rollback(!!!). (Note: Jayen486's edits don't need undo or rollback, it's an example). Fram (talk) 14:38, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Fram. Tito☸Dutta 14:40, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Another funny problem; you can't see from your watchlist whether you have checked an edit yet or not; the "Pages that have been changed since you last visited them are shown with a green bullet." doesn't work, once you have been to a Flow page, all later comments will be stuck with a "blue" bullet as well. Apparently, when you've seen one, you've seen them all... So, like I said, history, watchlist, ... are all totally useless with Flow, and no alternatives are ready. Fram (talk) 14:49, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

They won't listen.
It's gonna be GREAT!

[HRIP7]

I enjoyed this... replies from Jayen that line up in left-justified space, so you have no idea which comment he's replying to, followed by the disgruntled hair-metal-tattoo fundraiser guy, telling him to go somewhere else.

Jayen466 (talk | contribs)
Diego Moya: This reply is to Diego's post above starting "Risker: Yup".
8 hours agoTue, 04 Feb 2014 04:59:51 GMT
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Jayen466 (talk | contribs)
Jayen466: This reply is to my own post starting "This reply is to Diego's post ...". I note that it is not now apparent to which of Diego's posts I was replying in that post.Show changes
8 hours agoTue, 04 Feb 2014 05:01:43 GMT
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Jayen466 (talk | contribs)
Diego Moya: This reply is to Diego's post starting "Okeyes (WMF): I must have missed it."
8 hours agoTue, 04 Feb 2014 05:03:13 GMT
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Jayen466 (talk | contribs)
Jayen466: Now, if I had not quoted the beginnings of Diego's posts, would Diego have been able to tell which one of their posts I was replying to in each case?
8 hours agoTue, 04 Feb 2014 05:06:31 GMT
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Jayen466 (talk | contribs)
Diego Moya: In other words, if Diego had five posts above, and I were to say, Diego, I totally agree with that, would he know which of his posts I was agreeing with? (This post was made by clicking on the Reply link under Diego's post starting "Risker: Yup ...")
8 hours agoTue, 04 Feb 2014 05:10:04 GMT
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Jorm (WMF) (talk | contribs)
Jayen466: Perhaps you would enjoy running your tests on an actual test page, such as this one.
6 hours agoTue, 04 Feb 2014 07:03:55 GMT
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Brandon "Jorm" Harris's mindset there doesn't exactly bode well for harmonious relations between the design team and the community.

[dogbiscuit]

I love you, Fram!
They won't listen.
It's gonna be GREAT!

It is a joy to see that they have had all the pain of the VE project where it was meticulously pointed out that throwing random bits of code at a live project does not equate to clever, agile programming and yet they are determined to throw themselves into the flames again. If I were CEO of that lot, I'd be throwing the whole project team into the flames.

It's such a waste of donors money it amounts to fraud.

[Hex]

Brandon "Jorm" Harris's mindset there doesn't exactly bode well for harmonious relations between the design team and the community.

So what's new?

You might want to check out his history in User:Scott Martin/Timeline of LiquidThreads (T-H-L), which I don't think I've linked to here before. (Although I know at least one WO reader has happened across it - hi!)

[TungstenCarbide]

AHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Who called it?
Come on, say the 'V' word with me!!

I'd give up software engineering if built shit like that.

There's going to be a mass revolt if they try to take anything like that live.

OMG, it's even worse than I had imagined.

The WMF folk interfacing with en don't even understand section editing, watchlist usage, page history or category usage. And they get irritated when pointed out. This could be even more entertaining than VE.

[DanMurphy]

Brandon "Jorm" Harris's mindset there doesn't exactly bode well for harmonious relations between the design team and the community.

So what's new?

You might want to check out his history in User:Scott Martin/Timeline of LiquidThreads (T-H-L), which I don't think I've linked to here before. (Although I know at least one WO reader has happened across it - hi!)

Good stuff:

if "community input" equates to "absolutely no way this is unacceptable no discussion" then I don't consider that "community input" i consider that "trollish obstruction." - Wikimedia Foundation developer Brandon Harris.