MediaWiki

LiquidThreads 3.0

LiquidThreads 3.0
A planned re-write of LiquidThreads to improve its back-end and UI. The work led to StructuredDiscussions instead.
Group: Features
Start: July 2010
End: 2012-06-30
Team members: Andrew Garrett, Brandon Harris,
Management: James Forrester
← LiquidThreads 2.0
Flow →

Rationale

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Currently, MediaWiki discussion pages are unstructured free-form wikitext pages. There are many disadvantages to this system, including but not limited to:

  • Lack of obvious threading
  • Lack of consistent user identification
  • Lack of intelligent archiving
  • Lack of sorting
  • High difficulty for new/inexperienced users to engage in discussions
  • Inability to "watch" specific discussions; user must watch entire page (which may be sub-optimal).

With LiquidThreads, we attempt to solve these problems while bringing new features to the table:

  • A more "standard" approach to threaded discussions, greatly enhancing the ability for new users to engage. This feature includes:
    • Replies are nested within discussions.
    • Automatic signing of posts.
    • A single "reply to" button and other mechanisms to aid inexperienced users instead of simply throwing them into wikitext.
    • User avatars.
  • Ability to sort discussions by differing criteria.
  • Individual discussions (and posts within the discussion) are treated as single pages (which potentially allows for categorization, individual watching/unwatching, etc.).
  • Automatic archiving: older discussions naturally "fall off" the visible page, retaining permanent links.

The ultimate goal of LiquidThreads is to encourage community health, editor participation, and editor retention.

Timeline

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  • "Further deployments of LiquidThreads are indefinitely on hold because we don't have the resources to support it." – Andrew Garrett (2012-03-19)

Additional documents

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Obsolete documents

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