Structured Discussions/Deprecation

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T332022

StructuredDiscussions (SD - Flow) is used on a few wikis. This extension is not maintained. DiscussionTools (DT) is the default discussion system on wikis now.

The Growth team (SD maintainers) and the Editing team (DT maintainers) have started thinking about how to deprecate StructuredDiscussions (and possibly LiquidThreads) and replace them with DiscussionTools.

The idea is to have DiscussionTools provide equivalent features of what StructuredDiscussions offers, so that current SD users would switch to DT.

This project has no formal deadline or plan.

Project updates

• 2022-06-08: first internal document by Kosta Harlan (Staff software engineer, Growth team) and Benoît Evellin (Community Relations Specialist, attached to the Growth team) on sunsetting SD
• 2023-03-14: first meeting with Growth and Editing about SD deprecation
• 2023-03-14: Comparison table of the two tools.
• 2023-03-29: creation of the project page
• 2023-09: Data on usage of StructuredDiscussions

StructuredDiscussions and DiscussionTools Comparative review

	StructuredDiscussions/Flow	LiquidThreads	DiscussionTools
Dedicated workflow for starting a new topic	Done	Done	Done
Dedicated workflow for adding a new comment	Done	Done	Done
Subscribe to be notified about new comments to a topic	Done (via Echo)	Done (via special page)	Done (via Echo)
Be notified when a new topic is started on a talk page	Done (via Echo)	Done (via special page)	Done
Auto-subscription to a topic you created	Done (default)	Done (by watchlisting)	Done (default for new users)
Each topic is a different pages/each conversation has a permalink	Done	Done	In progress
Hide (moderate) a specific comment	Done in reading mode	delete (but no undelete UI)	Partially done via undo/revert
Hide (moderate) a topic	Done in reading mode	delete (but no undelete UI)	Partially done via undo/revert
Move topics between pages	N Not done (planned but not implemented)	Done	via wikitext editing, breaks permalinking
Include discussions on another page and reply to them there	N Not done (planned, including cross-wiki transclusion, but not implemented)	?	Done
Backwards compatible with wikitext	N Not done	N Not done	Done
Thank a comment from within the talk page	Done in reading mode	Partially done via Page history	Partially done via Thanks in Page history
Sort topics by recent comment	Done	Done	N Not done
Sort topics by start date	Done	Done	N Not done
Summarize a discussion	Done	Done	Requires templates
Mark read / unread	N Not done	Done	N Not done
Show/hide (collapse) subthreads	N Not done	Done	N Not done
Supported editors	wikitext and visual editing	wikitext editing	wikitext and visual editing (the latter with limitations)
Templates support	Done	Done	Partially done not all templates are allowed in replies in VE mode
Permalink to a given comment	Done	Done	Partially done if the comment is not moved elsewhere
Topic and contents preload	Done	Done	Done
History fully integrated to the rest of the wiki	N Not done	Done	Done
Indication of edited comments when you read a topic	Done	Done	N Not done
Notification of edited comments	Done	Done on your own comments only	N Not done
Direct access to user talkpage, contribs and more	Done	Partially done if linked in the signature	Partially done if linked in the signature
Highlight a quoted comment	Done	N Not done (can link to comments but only as standalone pages)	Done
Highlight a set of unread comments	Done	N Not done	Done (only when subscribed to a topic and using links from notifications)
Mobile web support	Done	N Not done	Done
Mobile app support	N Not done	N Not done	Done

Data on usage

In August 2023, on average:

• DiscussionTools is used about 18,780 times per day.
• Flow is used about 250 times per day, mainly at French Wikipedia.
• LiquidThreads is used less than once per day.