Flow - the next Visual Editor debacle

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:01 pm

Randy from Boise wrote:"Oh, I use that all the time — it's really good, almost always a good starting place for doing more research."

Perfect.

Yeah, the same thing could have been said for Yahoo or AltaVista in 1995, or for Google or Bing today. Whoop-dee-doo.

lilburne · Unread post by **lilburne** » Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:28 pm

thekohser wrote:
Randy from Boise wrote:"Oh, I use that all the time — it's really good, almost always a good starting place for doing more research."

Perfect.
Yeah, the same thing could have been said for Yahoo or AltaVista in 1995, or for Google or Bing today. Whoop-dee-doo.

One uses WP to support one's bullshit. If someone else uses WP to support their bullshit then one sniggers and requests that they provide additional confirmation given that WP is unmitigated rubbish.

That's how it works.

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Sat Oct 05, 2013 4:04 pm

See what I mean about "underappreciation of the product?"

RfB

lilburne · Unread post by **lilburne** » Sat Oct 05, 2013 4:13 pm

Randy from Boise wrote:See what I mean about "underappreciation of the product?"

RfB

I think you have to take the product as a whole. One would judge a airline by its worst aircraft not its best. A school by its worst teachers not its best. Similarly something that purports to be a reference work should be judged on its worst articles not its best.

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Sat Oct 05, 2013 4:18 pm

lilburne wrote:
Randy from Boise wrote:See what I mean about "underappreciation of the product?"

RfB
I think you have to take the product as a whole. One would judge a airline by its worst aircraft not its best. A school by its worst teachers not its best. Similarly something that purports to be a reference work should be judged on its worst articles not its best.

Nah, not at all. The relevant metric is whether normal people find it useful in daily life. We all know how the sausage is made. Many of us miss the fact that most people really like the sausage.

RfB

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Sat Oct 05, 2013 5:12 pm

Randy from Boise wrote:Nah, not at all. The relevant metric is whether normal people find it useful in daily life. We all know how the sausage is made. Many of us miss the fact that most people really like the sausage.

This is getting rather drastically off-topic, but it's a given that people will find it "useful in daily life," even at a fraction of its current size, article count, etc. Are you trying to justify the concept, or the implementation of that concept as it currently stands? Those are two different issues.

lilburne · Unread post by **lilburne** » Sat Oct 05, 2013 5:18 pm

Randy from Boise wrote:
lilburne wrote:
Randy from Boise wrote:See what I mean about "underappreciation of the product?"

RfB
I think you have to take the product as a whole. One would judge a airline by its worst aircraft not its best. A school by its worst teachers not its best. Similarly something that purports to be a reference work should be judged on its worst articles not its best.
Nah, not at all. The relevant metric is whether normal people find it useful in daily life. We all know how the sausage is made. Many of us miss the fact that most people really like the sausage.

They also like sugary carbonated drinks, salty snacks, McDonald, and fags.

When Google search goes down millions of people can't get to facebook, twitter, or their email account. For most people they have google as their homepage, enter a search term and click the first link. If the first link is somethiong other than WP they'll click and like that just as well. WP has no customer loyalty, if it was on page 2 of a google search it would get a 10000th of the present hits. If Google didn't pay Mozilla $300 million a year to be the default search page it would get a 1000th of its present usage.

Hardly anyone on the internet makes a conscious choice about anything. Search, click top link, that will do, move on.

Tell us what is the average time that a visitor spends on WP, what are the average page visits? IOW having got to a wikipedia page what do they do next?

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Oct 05, 2013 5:22 pm

Back on topic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flow/MVP

Minimum Viable Product, not Most Valuable Player.

It's interesting that they require Parsoid compatibility but never mention VisualEditor.
There's some more creaky-buzzword speak, Quelle surprise!,

A start new topic affordance, containing:
a dialog for naming and starting a new topic

*sigh*

Despite the hue and cry for "normal" editors to be able to edit other people's posts, this capability is strangely lacking...

I think the WMF is in for another giant ass beating when they try to roll this out.

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Sat Oct 05, 2013 5:42 pm

Vigilant wrote:Despite the hue and cry for "normal" editors to be able to edit other people's posts, this capability is strangely lacking...

I noticed that too, and while it's possible they believe (and/or realize) that the technical aspects of this are just too hard for them, regardless it looks like they're going to hold the line on what might be termed "delete or nothing" - in other words, regular users can't touch each other's Flow posts, admins can delete Flow posts but not change them, the poster's the only one who can make changes, and that's probably only within a limited time window. In other words, just like a regular forum.

I think the WMF is in for another giant ass beating when they try to roll this out.

On the one hand, most people (i.e., not admins, not "power users") would almost certainly prefer not to allow others to edit their discussion posts, for all sorts of very good reasons. But as we're already seeing, the admins and PU's would freak out over it. No way they would accept this, ever, under any circumstances - it's no exaggeration to state that many of them would simply quit Wikipedia altogether. So again, this only adds fuel to the "conspiracy theory" that this is what the WMF wants, now that they've accidentally discovered that this could be an effective strategy for getting it.

The fact that they've got Oliver "Ironholds" Keyes making the case for this really just adds even more fuel. It's like they want to verify in advance that this strategy will work to get rid of the (pesky, difficult, demanding, non-cooperative) top tier of users, and by putting Mr. Keyes out front, they're approximating those conditions without having to go to the trouble of making the product work well enough to take it past the demo/prototype stage. It's actually very clever of them, if that's really their strategy.

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Sat Oct 05, 2013 6:27 pm

As nearly as I can tell, what WMF wants to do is make Talk Pages resemble and function like the reader feedback pages on newspaper websites and so on. "Here's my comment!" "Responding to your comment here!"

They don't want that editable, they don't seem to have an appreciation for the function, they want it to handle reader feedback and to look pretty.

Somehow "easy" and "pretty" is gonna create new volunteers, in their minds. Functionality? Who needs it???

RfB

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Sun Oct 06, 2013 12:29 pm

Vigilant wrote:Brandon Harris should never be allowed to edit en.wp again.
He has the people skills of a manic chihuahua on meth and viagra.

Is this an attack on KillerChihuaha? I really can't see that the second part implies the first at all in Wikiland.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sun Oct 06, 2013 1:00 pm

Outsider wrote:
Vigilant wrote:Brandon Harris should never be allowed to edit en.wp again.
He has the people skills of a manic chihuahua on meth and viagra.
Is this an attack on KillerChihuaha? I really can't see that the second part implies the first at all in Wikiland.

*what*?!

It is not an attack on KC.

He's a small, unpredictable maniac who says shitty things to people on a seemingly random basis.

Good lord.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon Oct 07, 2013 6:02 pm

I'm so thrilled they've Oliver "punch a hole in the woman's throat" Keyes as the point man for this project.

He says the funniest things.

Red and green text boxes? And: yeah, we're going to test extensively. If you look at the deployment plan and such you'll see that we're deliberately rolling out on an incredibly small scale to start with (read: two wikiprojects) and incrementally after that. This should allow substantive bugs to be surfaced. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:57, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Where is your test plan?

The former, so in practise we're talking literally two talkpages. I think that's a pretty decent testing environment, and good for minimising disruption - it also means that the barrier that needs to be overcome for features to be complete non-starters is pretty low. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:58, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

*sigh*
Why should anyone trust you after VisualEditurd?
Why should anyone try to talk to a WMF employee who recently got desysoped for being a giant dick?

Oliver, do you fully realize just how big a millstone you are around the neck of the Flow project?

You seem to have missed Maryana explicitly saying that wikiprojects refusing to use it would constitute it not being viable. Anyway; at this point we're clearly not having a productive conversation - I would suggest we all split off to more productive things (like; providing pros and cons and use-cases for different levels of indenting, above). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:57, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

It's pretty hard to overestimate the disdain people feel for you.

And I quote from the front page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flow

Short-term (up to December 2013)

Yes Done Initial brainstorming and user research
Yes Done Defining the scope of the first release (Minimum Viable Product)
Doing... Build interactive prototype of the MVP on WMF Labs
Not done Community testing and feedback
Not done Limited, opt-in release on select WikiProject discussion spaces

Does anyone else notice that there is a specific phase for community testing, but none for WMF testing?
But, but, but, surely they're going to test during the currently underway "Build interactive prototype of the MVP on WMF Labs"!

Yeah, about that... there doesn't appear to be an official test plan.
Further, there don't appear to be formal specs...again.
No, Brandon, this (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow_Portal/Architecture) is NOT a spec.
Neither is this(http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow_Port ... teration_1)
You guys are typing near random shit all over the damn place and tying to say you've done the requisite analysis for a project start.

You WMF guys didn't seem to learn anything from the VE debacle.

I guess the easiest thing to do is to shoot from the hip, piss off the experienced user and just plow ahead regardless of objections or concerns.

Good luck, morons.
December is going to be a year without a Christmas for the WMF devs.

Mancunium · Unread post by **Mancunium** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 12:25 am

I'm not a thought leader and design visionary, and my solution to any computer-related problems is to curse the machine, but I see they are up to the nth iteration of Flow, and the specimen article they are using (link) is Fight_Quest (T-H-L).

This is a WP article that has been revised 146 times between 29 December 2007 and 25 September 2013: link

After six years of existence:

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2010)

The co-star of this short-lived TV show (13 episodes broadcast in 2008) was Doug_Anderson_(fighter) (T-H-L).

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (August 2011)
This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (August 2011)

This is what Mr Anderson's BLP says about him:

Anderson was born in New Jersey. He enlisted in the US Army in 2002 and served a full year in Iraq. He saw intense activity and was rewarded with numerous decorations.
...
The time spent in the military awakened his interest in martial arts. After becoming familiar with the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu techniques, he went on to be a bodyguard for a high-ranking officer who served in Iraq.
...
When he's not traveling around the world for the Fight Quest TV show, Anderson works as a volunteer for different civic organizations and spends his time with his nieces. He also enjoys drawing, painting and tattooing.

The most recent non-bot edit to his biography: link

Revision as of 21:05, 19 August 2013 (edit) (undo)
8.27.219.80 (talk)
(→‎Other interests: I know Doug personally...this is true.)

When he's not traveling around the world for the Fight Quest TV show, Anderson works as a volunteer for different civic organizations and spends his time with his nieces. He also enjoys drawing, painting and tattooing and is a raging homosexual.

I am curious to know why "I am made of steel wool and whiskey" chose that particular article to illustrate the Flow design. Wouldn't it be easier for Jorm (T-C-L) to just fix it?

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 12:48 am

What a charmer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =576212799

No, I've never done UI design for the colour-blind - this is because I'm not a UI designer. Instead I listen to the ones we have. I was not asking "what's wrong with colour?" I was asking "what red and green boxes do we have?" Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:39, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Can't you feel the smug rolling off of him?
What dimbulb thought, "I know! Let's get the guy who was just desysoped for being THE BIGGEST DOUCHE IN THE UNIVERSE and let's have him talk to a hostile userbase! It'll be great!"

Hell, I'd have chosen him, but only for the lulz.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 4:26 am

The WMF has never learned how to answer a direct question.
Never more obvious than in the case of Flow's features.

What you've linked to is IP vandalism or people editing in the wrong place, which really isn't that common. We're obviously not suggesting that editors not be allowed to change each other's article edits because there's so much vandalism and error. My question was what are the many, many reasons Jorm referred to here for removing the ability. It seems odd to potentially cause ill feeling over such a non-issue, so I'm genuinely interested to know how it managed to become an issue, and what the many reasons for that are. SlimVirgin II (talk) 01:34, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

@SlimVirgin: There's Maryana's earlier comment(link) in case you missed that. I'll prod them for another response tomorrow. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:58, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Which leads to

SlimVirgin, while removing personal attacks from otherwise constructive comments might happen in some high-drama corners of the wiki, I doubt it's something that occurs even close to frequently on most WikiProject talk spaces, which is where we're planning our first onwiki release If it's really a huge problem for the WikiProject members who choose to trial Flow, we can always change the comment editing permissions – but I want people to give this system (which, as Oliver said, has other easy ways of dealing with vandalism, spam, and personal attacks) a real shot before they dismiss it as untenable, and the WikiProject space is pretty safe-to-fail in that regard.

I'd also like to play devil's advocate for a moment here and ask whether this is really the kind of communication you'd like to encourage people to have. I'd argue that the ability to edit others' posts has created a culture that excuses (and thus tacitly encourages) personal attacks, since the attacker knows the body of his/her comment will be unaltered even when it's prefaced with flagrant ad hominems. Someone will have to clean up the mess, but the point will get through. This is a choice that the existing talkpage software has made for us, but we can choose to try another way. Perhaps users who are prone to issuing personal attacks will think twice about doing so if it's highly likely that their entire comment will simply be hidden? I don't know for sure whether this is true or not, but I think it's worth giving it a shot on a couple of discussion pages for a limited time and seeing what happens. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 17:25, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Which has nothing to do with the original question.
Let's launch into a long diatribe about how this isn't a likely feature to be needed by TehCommunitah and completely ignore the original question hoping to filibuster your way out of the danger zone.

If we were to line up a few thousand editors and ask for their top-ten wishlist of software changes, I'd be surprised if a single one of them said, "we don't want to be able to edit other people's talk-page posts." And yet Jorm says there's consensus about this within the Foundation and that there are many, many reasons for it. So this is an interesting divergence of opinion, and I'd really like to know what the roots of it are. I apologize if I'm banging on about it too much, but I think lots of other editors are likely to be just as surprised. SlimVirgin II (talk) 04:08, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Hey Slim,
Let me take a stab at this one.

They don't really give two wet shits what you guys want or think. They'd really prefer if you'd just sit the fuck down, smile like an imbecile and eat whatever dog shit they might happen to produce. They don't care what you guys want because they don't really give a crap whether you old timers stay or go. They're modernizing this shit and they know what's best for the new wikipedia.

If you thought that VisualEditurd was broken, if you thought the WMF team that put out that steaming pile of garbage screwed you guys, you ain't seen nothin' yet, sweet cheeks.

Hang onto your hats, we're Agilatin' up in here.

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 4:42 am

SlimVirgin wrote:What you've linked to is IP vandalism or people editing in the wrong place, which really isn't that common.

Oh? Then why do WMF employees Steven Walling and Maryana Pinchuk keep publishing items claiming that Wikipedia is suffering from considerable vandalism?

And why does Wikipedia need "product managers"? Perchance to force Visual Editor down their collective throats?

Vigilant wrote:They don't really give two wet shits what you guys want or think. They'd really prefer if you'd just sit the fuck down, smile like an imbecile and eat whatever dog shit they might happen to produce. They don't care what you guys want because they don't really give a crap whether you old timers stay or go. They're modernizing this shit and they know what's best for the new wikipedia.

Basically correct. If the old "cabalists" like SV can't destroy Wikipedia, perhaps the Foundation can pull it off.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 4:53 am

Oh, dear lord, the stupid, it burns us, my precious. It burns us!

This slideshow...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _Intro.pdf

Page 7 is my favorite. Spells it out in big, dumb letters.

Our responsibilities

1.Make sure we have a roadmap
2.Define what a product is, how it works, and who it’s for
3.Make sure the product actually meets that definition

Can't get much clearer than that.
If you get to decide all that by yourself, who needs feedback on the design or process?

It's nice that the big, soft WMF product managers will take on such nasty, dirty work for us so we don't get our pretty little heads to spinning with the overwhelming complexity of trying to figure out HOW COMMENTS SHOULD WORK!

Page 9 makes reference to adding some sort of mystical 'data' to the "Traditional" *scoff* *cough* *shakes head at the old people who know nothing* way of doing things that makes all of the WMF product managers such great people.

WHEN DO WE GET TO SEE THIS AMAZING FUCKING DATA?!

You talk a good game about making decisions based on data. How come this data is so damn hard to find?
You guys aren't just making this shit up by pulling your "data" out of your ass, are you?

Are you?!

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 11:23 am

Vigilant wrote:Does anyone else notice that there is a specific phase for community testing, but none for WMF testing?

Isn't that the Wikiway? Let the community crowdsource the testing. The WMF has a strictly hands-off approach.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 2:01 pm

Outsider wrote:
Vigilant wrote:Does anyone else notice that there is a specific phase for community testing, but none for WMF testing?
Isn't that the Wikiway? Let the community crowdsource the testing. The WMF has a strictly hands-off approach.

There's no other company that I know of that tries this "throw it over the wall to the customer" shit with such naked disdain.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 2:37 pm

Harsh, but true
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =576285112
Excerpt

Please, don't make the same mistakes as with VE again, don't release this (even as opt-in) anywhere but your own place (testwiki and/or MediaWiki) and to a much more thorough dev/WMF testing before you start thinking about "community testing", never mind releasing it. This product is so far from finished that it is laughable. Please don't send any en-wiki users to tools that are announced as nearly ready (released in December 213 at the latest!) but seem to be just starting development some weeks ago, on a remote, badly configured site where even the WMF have hardly made any edits.[4]. Fram (talk) 13:14, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 2:40 pm

Harsh, but true
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =576285112
Excerpt

Please, don't make the same mistakes as with VE again, don't release this (even as opt-in) anywhere but your own place (testwiki and/or MediaWiki) and to a much more thorough dev/WMF testing before you start thinking about "community testing", never mind releasing it. This product is so far from finished that it is laughable. Please don't send any en-wiki users to tools that are announced as nearly ready (released in December 213 at the latest!) but seem to be just starting development some weeks ago, on a remote, badly configured site where even the WMF have hardly made any edits.[4]. Fram (talk) 13:14, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

And more

I have provided feedback after my first encounter with Flow here. Please don't plan on releasing this in the the next few months, this is so far removed from a community testable stage that I don't know whether to laugh or cry. If I didn't know better, I would guess that development on this had started one, at most two months ago. If you need to release this, do it on MediaWiki only, where the "ommunity testing" will mostly hinder devs and WMF people and not so much regular editors. But it would be better if you would not bother us with this... thing for the next six months or so, make sure that both Flow and the implementation on Labs are working correctly and as expected (by the devs and WMF), and then ask us to test it (preferably not on Labs with its dreadful privacy strategy, but that's a different discussion). As it stands, the "interactive prototype" simply doesn't work at all. Fram (talk) 14:24, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

What do you have to say to this charge, Maryana and Brandon?
I'm taking bets that they refuse to directly discuss it with Fram and send a disposable underling to try to distract him.

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 6:35 pm

To be fair, the reference to "ommunity testing" is his typo, not theirs.

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 6:46 pm

Uh? Have you recently changed the style? The Sandbox has now a different look than the one it had in my browser a few minutes ago. The new one still has too big Reply and Thanks buttons and the text has been made light grey and harder to read, but at least it doesn't have the huge distracting bars for each comment (only for each topic). Diego (talk) 17:38, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

The code (including the design) on that site is changing constantly (sometimes daily, sometimes more), as code changes are made. It will not be stable for a while yet (and will continue to change as we give feedback). I've given some FAQ type questions to the design team, and will put those up when they've answered them. I'll also pass along / point at your comments. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:47, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Just one demo environment for people to try out, unversioned, that changes without warning.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 6:55 pm

Go over there and disable javascript.
http://ee-flow.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:Flow/Sandbox

I typically run with noScript. The WMF solution looks like utter shit without js.

Here's another bright boy answer

Copy-paste between wikitext and Flow could be complex; since we're planning on having a wikitext editor for Flow it may not be necessary. I agree that VE copypaste and copypaste within the Flow instance of VE will be required for it to be perfect, but those things are out of our hands to some degree - the VE team has to work on them. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:20, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

If you can't copy/paste in a comment interface, then I can't see anyone having much use for it.
It's hard for me to fathom that they've reached this point in the development and haven't even thought much about the baseline feature of copy/paste.

It's time to pull the plug on coding for Flow and go back and start a formal requirements specification with community feedback on the spec. Nothing gets done until there's a clear agreement on what needs to be in the product.

Is there nobody in the WMF dev team with a lick of common sense?
These yahoos wouldn't last a minute in the real world.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 7:11 pm

Here's an odd edit
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =576326542

Something Brandon hacked together two months ago...

Nice technology demo.

Morons.

TungstenCarbide · Unread post by **TungstenCarbide** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 8:09 pm

I agree with Fram here. If your going to start developing this use the lessons learned and base code from Liquid threads version 3. In fact what is the difference between Flow and Liquid Threads besides Flow being led by Jorm and Flow being a massive step in the wrong direction? 71.126.152.253 (talk) 16:37, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

ouch

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 10:10 pm

Here we go
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =576346012

Comment: Here's the reasoning from my perspective. Other folks working on the design side of Flow should feel free to chime in I'm cribbing from some of the things we've talked about, but I'm not a UI/UX designer, so I don't have the citations handy.

I thought that the new-hotness wiki product managers were data driven, to be differentiated from the old-brokeness of previous versions of product managers.
Can we see your data when you make assertions?

It's extremely rare for any modern discussion system present on the web today to allow for third-party comment editing, except in cases of content moderation.

Surely, you have data to support this.
You've done an exhaustive search of all major commenting systems and can provide both quantitative and qualitative analysis to back up this assertion. Right?

StackOverflow and Quora are the only examples I can think of (please let me know if there are more), and they actually have a Pending changes-like system, rather than a full-on edit.

Hmmmmmm...
Not so much.

As such, Internet users today have clear expectations that their comments are their own, and Wikipedia talk pages violate those expectations.

What?!
You said you can only think of two that have this edit other ability and then you claim that this constitutes clear expectations on the part of the totality of internet users. P.S. Internet is not a proper noun.

This isn't just about inconsistency; it's a barrier to participation. When people perceive uncertainty and a lack of control in an interface, it makes it much less likely for them to participate, even if they have something valuable to add to the conversation.

Surely, you have magical wiki data to back up this bald assertion? Right? Right?!
HELLO!?

A large portion of the use-cases for editing others' talk page comments, currently, have to do with fixing broken formatting/layout/signatures or creating de-facto features out of markup (closing off-topic threads, splitting or merging discussions). In other words, you're editing comments today because you're dealing with the bugs of broken commenting software

Teehee! Silly smiley face will mollify the plebs! Teehee!
No fucking data shown yet. No links, not even anecdotes.

We're building features in Flow that deal with the majority of these things much more simply and elegantly (e.g., auto-signing posts, one-click close and summarize a thread, etc.) than having to edit raw markup.

Where the fuck is the requirement spec that we can look at?
Show us the data driven approach you've trumpeted that calls for these features.
Or, alternatively, admit publicly that you're full of shit.

The rest of the use-cases for editing others' comments deal with abuse. Wikipedians currently deal with this abuse by having to spend a certain portion of their mental energy and onwiki time policing talk pages and cleaning them up when necessary.

Have you trotted these use cases out for inspection?
Does anyone get to vet this stuff?

It's still not clear to me that the benefits of having this be a free-form editing process outweigh the costs. I'm confident that the three moderation features we've built into Flow – hiding, deleting, and suppressing – can handle things like spam, vandalism, outing, and personal attacks just as well as talk page comment editing. They also require less work and time on the part of the user who's cleaning up the mess (you don't have to open up the comment, find the offensive portion, edit it out, and hit save – you can just click a button and hide the whole thing).

That's not the fucking point.
Nobody cares what is clear to you.
You are one person in an incredibly insular organization attempting to dictate software development that has a chance to radically break an existing site based on "It's still not clear to me".
Malfeasance is what we call this in the real world.

When you make something like editing comments into a social convention and not something limited by software, it becomes really easy for new/less experienced people to mess up – especially the kind of people who have the curious, bold disposition that makes them likely to be great Wikipedians someday (e.g., the kind of people who'll hit a button that says "edit" and mash some keys just to see what happens). And if those people are considerate and sensitive, they'll immediately feel horrible for messing up (doubly so if they then get yelled at for doing it) and will be less likely to try to participate again.

You have data that show that newbies screwing up talk pages is a a major reason for them refusing to continue editing?
You honestly think that this "problem" enters the top 10 reasons for newbies leaving? Seriously?

The fact is, participating in a discussion on Wikipedia is not like editing articles on Wikipedia. It never has been.

So what? This isn't a point in support of your desire to build out the next white elephant.

There's no need to come to consensus or have NPOV on each and every discussion element; there is, practically speaking, ownership of individual comments (which is why editing others' comments, while technically allowed in some special cases, is generally strongly frowned upon in Wikipedia policy).

Non sequitur.

I think that's perfectly okay, and has been working quite well for the 11+ years of Wikipedia's existence.

WHAT?!
This sentence supports not doing Flow. Are you off your meds?

That's basically it. I'm not saying it's crazy or impossible to have a structured discussion system where users edit each others' comments (again, see StackOverflow and Quora). I'm just saying that due to the technical limitations of talk pages, the Wikipedia community has never been able to explore any alternative, so we've kind of just been trudging down this path with no evidence that it's necessarily the best one to follow. All I'm asking for is a safe-to-fail experiment with the alternative, to see if it's really as unfeasible as some users here seem convinced it is. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

No, no, no, no!!!!

You are asking to build an entire replacement for an existing, well understood facility because "you think" it would be better.
You have shown no data to support any of your very tenuous hypotheses that a new comment system is needed.
You haven't shown that any of the features that you're proposing will accomplish the goal, poorly stated, of retaining newbie editors.
You've given contradictory evidence in a feeble attempt to support your position.
You're relied on personal opinions to justify an expensive boondoggle.
You've got one of the most vile people on the project as one of your spokesmen.

Flow looks like it is going to be run into the ground in very nearly the exact same manner as VE.
I cannot wait to see who replaces Sue Gardner and what they think of these two projects and the people who staff them.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue Oct 08, 2013 11:25 pm

Oh good, they have a volunteer victim.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:MHC#Flow

How I imagined Erik Mo:eller when he heard the blessed news.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Wed Oct 09, 2013 12:13 am

How I picture WMF devs

mac · Unread post by **mac** » Thu Oct 10, 2013 5:08 pm

Vigilant wrote:Oh, dear lord, the stupid, it burns us, my precious. It burns us!

This slideshow...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _Intro.pdf

Page 7 is my favorite. Spells it out in big, dumb letters.

Page 2 states "We don't sell products", yet has a photograph of one of the products they sell, and page 3 has a screencap of a scene from the 1999 film Office Space, despite the free license attached to the .pdf.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Thu Oct 10, 2013 5:26 pm

mac wrote:
Vigilant wrote:Oh, dear lord, the stupid, it burns us, my precious. It burns us!

This slideshow...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _Intro.pdf

Page 7 is my favorite. Spells it out in big, dumb letters.
Page 2 states "We don't sell products", yet has a photograph of one of the products they sell, and page 3 has a screencap of a scene from the 1999 film Office Space, despite the free license attached to the .pdf.

Page 4 is a kid wondering why his search on commons for "toothbrush" came back with something from r/spacedicks.

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Thu Oct 10, 2013 8:37 pm

Vigilant wrote:How I picture WMF devs

Damn, I've gotta see that one. It's how I picture the great bulk of administrators.

lilburne · Unread post by **lilburne** » Thu Oct 10, 2013 8:42 pm

Vigilant wrote: Page 4 is a kid wondering why his search on commons for "toothbrush" came back with something from r/spacedicks.

Page 10 is typical Commons.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Oct 11, 2013 2:57 am

*sigh*

Spectral_sequence (T-C-L) tries to talk some sense into the flow team here and here. There are lots of nice words, but no "You're right. That was fucked up. We won't do that again." type of responses.

When asked "Who speaks for the WMF?", the response was to point them to "We are a large, cross-functional team of ... blah blah blah".

Who's actually on this team?
I hadn't looked before.

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow_Portal/Team
Wow. Nine whole members makes a large, cross functional OH, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

You have a tiny, tiny team.
The team lead, at least, believes in Truth In Advertising as you can see from his page.

Breakdown:
* Three engineers.
* tech lead aka 4 engineers.
* a GUI douche aka Brandon Harris (Mr. Steel wool and Whiskey) plus some unknown number of other GUI douches.
* community liaison because they dare not let Brandon Harris speak in public again.
* a business analyst who likes to masturbate about killing women slowly
* a "product owner" aka pointy haired boss
* a scrummaster!!! I love it that they play rugby!!! Oh, wait. NOoooooo. Ok, scrummaster == team bitch. Got it.

This whole page makes me uncertain whether I want to laugh and laugh and laugh at their utter pretentiousness or whether I want to cry for what has happened to an engineering team.

There's no way this ends well.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Oct 11, 2013 3:13 am

Good lord

Oliver Keyes...
What is it about him that's soooooo valuable that you keep him around after all this shit?

Is there anything that he's ever done where he HASN'T pissed off virtually everyone?

I'd like to see it.

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Fri Oct 11, 2013 3:44 am

Vigilant wrote:Good lord
Oliver Keyes...
What is it about him that's soooooo valuable that you keep him around after all this shit?

As I've said about Don Buchla before: at this point they could shit in a box and someone would buy it......

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Oct 11, 2013 8:53 pm

Can someone please translate this comment for me?
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =576768114

Well, so the precise plan isn't to replace all of the informal structures with formal structures at our end; while that's a desired goal it would be incredibly difficult to provide every necessary structure here. We're not going to pretend it's possible for, well, 4 or 5 engineers to build every possible thing that every community could want, and then indefinitely maintain them. We're not approaching this with hubris.
Instead, we're approaching this with the idea that Wikipedia exists due to the fact that many people making small contributions is greater than a small number of people making many. We may as well extend this to the software. So, what we're hoping to build is some kind of structured workflow language that can be used to define non-standard formal methods of interaction on talkpages; individual wikis can build the ones they need as the use cases arise, and modify them as the use cases change. In the long term, we hope this will also allow for things like Page Curation to be more easily adaptable to other projects and to changes on this one. I hope that makes sense.
In terms of documenting that, Adam Wight (one of the fundraising engineers) took a stab at drafting out what it could look like here. None of that has been built yet (it's a pretty long-term project) but, thankfully, rolling Flow out to a lot of pages is also a long-term project. So we have time to discuss the problem and work out what workflows look like - once we've built the Flow structure, of course, which is the current priority. Hope that's helpful . Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:17, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

I recognize the words, but the overall intent is indecipherable.
The only thing I can make out is the bolded section which translates to "Screw you veteran users" in English.

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Fri Oct 11, 2013 9:13 pm

Vigilant wrote:Can someone please translate this comment for me?
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =576768114
Well, so the precise plan isn't to replace all of the informal structures with formal structures at our end; while that's a desired goal it would be incredibly difficult to provide every necessary structure here. We're not going to pretend it's possible for, well, 4 or 5 engineers to build every possible thing that every community could want, and then indefinitely maintain them. We're not approaching this with hubris.
Instead, we're approaching this with the idea that Wikipedia exists due to the fact that many people making small contributions is greater than a small number of people making many. We may as well extend this to the software. So, what we're hoping to build is some kind of structured workflow language that can be used to define non-standard formal methods of interaction on talkpages; individual wikis can build the ones they need as the use cases arise, and modify them as the use cases change. In the long term, we hope this will also allow for things like Page Curation to be more easily adaptable to other projects and to changes on this one. I hope that makes sense.
In terms of documenting that, Adam Wight (one of the fundraising engineers) took a stab at drafting out what it could look like here. None of that has been built yet (it's a pretty long-term project) but, thankfully, rolling Flow out to a lot of pages is also a long-term project. So we have time to discuss the problem and work out what workflows look like - once we've built the Flow structure, of course, which is the current priority. Hope that's helpful . Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:17, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
I recognize the words, but the overall intent is indecipherable.
The only thing I can make out is the bolded section which translates to "Screw you veteran users" in English.

Well, lemme have a go with translation...

"We understand that talk pages, which use templates, archiving scripts, etc. are capable of doing things which are so far beyond the capacity of our small team to replicate. We'll get the ball rolling with a basic system for comments and nested replies and add new features as we go along. We believe that many users informally contributing small bits of information is more important to WP's mission than a handful of expert style gnomes and content writers and we want WP software to be Easy-and-Pretty to attract and keep these casual users. We have plans for what talk pages will eventually look like and function like but so far do not have the time, manpower, or expertise to implement them. This is going to be a long-term project, however, and the fact that our efforts are thus far minimal and incomplete is not troubling to us. xoxo, Oliver."

RfB

Thracia · Unread post by **Thracia** » Sat Oct 12, 2013 7:48 am

Vigilant wrote:Can someone please translate this comment for me?
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =576768114
Well, so the precise plan isn't to replace all of the informal structures with formal structures at our end; while that's a desired goal it would be incredibly difficult to provide every necessary structure here. We're not going to pretend it's possible for, well, 4 or 5 engineers to build every possible thing that every community could want, and then indefinitely maintain them. We're not approaching this with hubris.
Instead, we're approaching this with the idea that Wikipedia exists due to the fact that many people making small contributions is greater than a small number of people making many. We may as well extend this to the software. So, what we're hoping to build is some kind of structured workflow language that can be used to define non-standard formal methods of interaction on talkpages; individual wikis can build the ones they need as the use cases arise, and modify them as the use cases change. In the long term, we hope this will also allow for things like Page Curation to be more easily adaptable to other projects and to changes on this one. I hope that makes sense.
In terms of documenting that, Adam Wight (one of the fundraising engineers) took a stab at drafting out what it could look like here. None of that has been built yet (it's a pretty long-term project) but, thankfully, rolling Flow out to a lot of pages is also a long-term project. So we have time to discuss the problem and work out what workflows look like - once we've built the Flow structure, of course, which is the current priority. Hope that's helpful . Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:17, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
I recognize the words, but the overall intent is indecipherable.
The only thing I can make out is the bolded section which translates to "Screw you veteran users" in English.

I read it like this - although it involves running most of it through a NOT gate/BS filter:

The vague plan is to replace all of the informal structures with formal structures at our end; while that's a desired goal it would be incredibly difficult to provide every necessary structure here.

Nevertheless, we are going to pretend it's possible for, well, 4 or 5 engineers to build every possible thing that every community could want, and then indefinitely maintain them. We are approaching this with hubris.

<snip meaningless bluster>

None of that has been built yet (it's a pretty long-term project) but, thankfully, rolling Flow out to a lot of pages is a long-term project. So we have time to discuss the problem and work out what workflows look like - once we've built the Flow structure, of course, which is the current priority, and which is not subject to discussion, so please stop bothering us with your tittle-tattle.

I know that's unhelpful - and I will now stick the customary smiley on the end to signal as much.

To the extent it answers the original questions, I think it's pretty much: No. None. No idea. Not yet. Nope.

lilburne · Unread post by **lilburne** » Sat Oct 12, 2013 8:23 am

Flexibility of workflow in software is a BAD THING which ultimately stymies any improvement in the software and generates a huge maintenance task of bug fixing.

The worst code I see is when the workflow isn't nailed down, and users are allowed to do things in ad hoc ways. The result is that every stage needs to account for the user not having supplied some prerequisite. In a complex system the chances of every stage doing so is zero as you've effectively exploded the number of legal paths through the system.

Additionally once you have allowed sloppy workflows by users it is almost impossible to fix it, unless stick your fingers in ears and go "la la la la" and don't listen to the user base whines. Whether you get away with it presupposes that you can convince the user base that the one true way is ultimately better. Which presupposes that the one true way works and is demonstrably better. I guess that means WMF is fucked.

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Sat Oct 12, 2013 8:34 am

lilburne wrote:I guess that means WMF is fucked.

DINGDINGDING We have a winner!

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Oct 12, 2013 12:27 pm

In a complex system the chances of every stage doing so is zero as you've effectively exploded the number of legal paths through the system.

This.

Given how utterly awful the testing has been on VisualEditurd (we're hiring one of them thar testers 4 months after the product goes live!!), does anyone really think adding complexity to a WMF project is a desirable thing?

At this point, I'd be impressed if Jorm and company could get a reasonable "Hello world" program working.

Jim · Unread post by **Jim** » Sat Oct 12, 2013 3:40 pm

Vigilant wrote:
At this point, I'd be impressed if Jorm and company could get a reasonable "Hello world" program working.

Now you're scaring me.
They probably did that very early in the game, and then commented it out as they moved onto hard things like not trashing section headers, or tables. There'll be a note about it on a beer mat somewhere...

Which of course leaves the almost certain possibility that the code for it is still in there, lurking behind a "jigsaw" piece, ready for that glorious moment when they fix the bug that inserts chess pieces for no apparent reason, simultaneously "introducing" the feature that every VE edit replaces every occurrence of ]] in the article with "Hello World" as a small, understandable side-effect.

This will, of course, be the fault of the users for nagging on and on about fixing basic inadequacies and forcing them to address existing massive flaws when time would be far better spent by developers introducing more shit that nobody wants and which doesn't work anyway.

This will be marked in edit histories as "Hello World added" by a new filter, for the toiling masses to eagerly repair, and the WMF will respond to the "Bugzilla" with WONTFIX, explaining that they are "not convinced this is a major problem", "probably caused by poor existing wikicode in the articles" and "your own fault anyway you ungrateful bastards..."

At the ensuing rantfest on Jimbo's page, Wikid will post an analysis of the number of articles affected, with numbers pulled out of his ass which even he doesn't understand, rounded to the nearest thousand, but the first sentence of his post will be reassuringly bold and meaningless.

Wnt will post 6 gibbering, salivating paragraphs about something else entirely in response. He, of course, has already seen the writing on the wall (he just couldn't read it or remember what it was about...).

Jimbo will ask some people some questions about the matter, in a thoughtful way, and ask all those involved to be calm and respectful until he gets back to us, early next (insert time period...)

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Oct 12, 2013 9:26 pm

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue Oct 15, 2013 6:10 pm

Oh, Jorm.

And there you're wrong, and this may be why you seem to have difficulty communicating. Let me disabuse you of a notion: We are not your servants and never have been. --Jorm (WMF) (talk) 01:09, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

You're a paid employee who makes tools for volunteers to use.
Who is the customer, bright boy?

DanMurphy · Unread post by **DanMurphy** » Tue Oct 15, 2013 6:18 pm

Vigilant wrote:Oh, Jorm.
And there you're wrong, and this may be why you seem to have difficulty communicating. Let me disabuse you of a notion: We are not your servants and never have been. --Jorm (WMF) (talk) 01:09, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
You're a paid employee who makes tools for volunteers to use.
Who is the customer, bright boy?

The full context is instructive:

I'd say here you are being too hard on them. If they do not understand the question, there is nothing wrong with asking for clarification. Anyway, perhaps the worst thing about communication from WMF side is much harder to define. It is the slight - but almost constant - belittling of the opposing side, coupled with self-righteous outbursts when opponents do not show them the respect they seem to expect. I am sure they do not even notice that (unfortunately, such level of social competence is rare). That is not going to be changed by any "ground rules"... It's the question of attitude: WMF representatives seem to be acting as if they were masters of Community members or (when they feel generous) their equals, while in fact they are supposed to be their servants... --Martynas Patasius (T-C-L) (talk) 19:29, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

And there you're wrong, and this may be why you seem to have difficulty communicating. Let me disabuse you of a notion: We are not your servants and never have been. --Jorm (WMF) (T-C-L) (talk) 01:09, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

A perfect illustration of the dismissive and condescending attitude that Martynas was complaining about.

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Fri Oct 18, 2013 4:53 pm

I just noticed that Flow has its own bugtracker. Why development tracking for both it and VisualEdsel aren't in the same system, I don't know.

SB_Johnny · Unread post by **SB_Johnny** » Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:29 pm

Hex wrote:I just noticed that Flow has its own bugtracker. Why development tracking for both it and VisualEdsel aren't in the same system, I don't know.

Because it's better to have the most complicated back end systems possible when attempting to make the front end simpler. It's an agility thing.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:30 pm

SB_Johnny wrote:
Hex wrote:I just noticed that Flow has its own bugtracker. Why development tracking for both it and VisualEdsel aren't in the same system, I don't know.
Because it's better to have the most complicated back end systems possible when attempting to make the front end simpler. It's an agility thing.

Perhaps the bugzilla DB for VE has become full?