Topic on Talk:Structured Discussions

I noticed in multiple topics on this page (e.g. here), that threaded discussion is not really taking place.

The problem is that people reply to a specific post by using the "Comment on {topic title}" box. Therefore they're replying to the topic on the lowest nesting level when they actually wanted to reply to a specific post and the answer should thus have been on a higher nesting level.

I see two problems here:

1. The design is tempting people to just use the most obvious way to reply (which is currently "the reply to topic" box). I assume that the "reply to post" button is much to inconspicuous.
2. The intended structure (initial comment by topic starter is created as first post of a topic) is not optimal. People consider the content of the first post of the topic to be the content of the topic. Therefore if they reply to a topic they think this is equivalent to replying to the first post (which it is not in Flows current design)

In my personal opinion number 2 should be reconsidered as this might solve number 1 at the same time. I'm open for other thoughts though!

How should i interpret the silence? I hope my post did not sound rude but I'm seeing a real (and fundamental!) issue here which should not be taken lightly.

Silence usually means that people are busy with other things.

For most discussions, I don't think that "proper" threading is important. My reply here is to both our your posts; I'm not even sure what "proper" threading would look like. That's common for discussions: I'm replying to everything that went before, not specifically to your first or second message.

WhatamIdoing: So your reply is on both on my posts and you replied to the topic (therefore to none of them). Congratulations!

I don't know what is actually considered important about Flow (and what people might be "busy" with) but if proper threading and therefore a reasonable discussion structure is not considered important then I'm afraid I'm at a loss with Flow.

Why do we even design a "modern discussion and collaboration system for all Wikimedia projects" if we then come up with something each and every forum software has offered years ago?

Patrick87: Is this not a "reasonable discussion structure"? Are you honestly confused about what I say, how my comments relate to the discussion, or whom I'm talking to?

WhatamIdoing: Yes I am!

What if people post replies to my second post in this thread? Nobody will ever get why you wrote something about "silcence" somewhere down the topic at that point (even if it currently is the third post and therefore next to my second post – that might change and then your post doesn't refer anymore to what I said).

Right now the discussion is between you and me and doesn't contain many posts (therefore I can calm you that I still can figure out what we're talking about). But if the system already shows weaknesses when two or three people are having a conversation with only few posts – how is it supposed to be fit for full grown cross-project discussions with hundreds of participants and countless posts?

In the other thread you're writing that you want to be able to reply to multiple people: That's something Flow actually does not really support at this point. By replying on a higher level you're not replying to everything that was before but you're starting a new branch of the conversation, maybe with a new argument to talk about. By exploiting this to "reply to multiple posts" you're destroying the bit of threading that is possible in Flow currently and force an unthreaded forum-like discussion structure. This however gets disturbed as soon as people use the system "correctly" and therefore "squeeze in" comments before your post destroying the chronological sequence of arguments.

WhatamIdoing: Currently I'm replying to your post that's at the top level, despite my comment being placed below all of Patrick87's comments.

Preferably, the discussion would be threaded in a similar way to how reddit is. Imagine if you tried to have that same conversation with people jumping around in the "levels" which their comments are placed. It'd be impossible to read.

Currently, this is more like Facebook or YouTube's comment system. The threaded discussions go one level deep and that's it. On Talk pages currently I've seen and been involved with threads which went 7-levels deep. If everyone in a conversation like that started using the top-level instead of threading it, or even threading it to a single level, it'd be unreadable and a complete mess. Potentially moreso than the clusterfuck that is Talk pages presently.

While it's not your fault for replying in the most convenient way, it does cause large problems in how the conversation is structured.

Again, I see reddit as the way we should go for this (albeit, without the upvote system). Already, people use the indentation provided by colons in Wikitext to make threaded conversations which are incredibly similar to that of reddit, but nothing like Flow. If we want Flow to be accepted by the community, and god do I hope it is, it should have the capability of handling multi-level threaded conversation which allows for the conversation to branch off between different replies to the same comment, rather than having them all listed in a single row.

Nobody will ever get why you wrote something about "silcence" somewhere down the topic at that point

And if I'm the second person to reply to you, and we have a long sub-thread based on the first person's reply to you, then we have exactly the same "problem", even though everything was don't "properly", according to your definition of "proper".

Flat vs current vs improved vs "branching and merging"

It's already very much difficult to follow a discussion that makes use of the full capability of the current paradigm (i.e. either comment at topic top-level or reply to individual post with only one-level depth visual indent complemented with "being replied to" username).

The current paradigm with just one level indent could be made a bit more efficient by identifying the post being replied to instead just a user. See my proposal of 1^st Jan.

Of course, a variant with more indent levels has been proposed many times already, which I would prefer as well.

Some people seem to try out another discussion paradigm, completely flat. OK, why not. For me, if even the one level indent and the "being replied to" usernames are gone, then it's not a discussion anymore and following the thread becomes nearly impossible. I rate this attempt as worse than the already poor current model. Maybe other people like it, after all, but so far we've barely heard their voices and arguments.

Now, if anyone is willing to code this... I'd be happy to try out a really different paradigm, also supporting replies to multiple posts: what about threads that could both branch and merge, as implemented for code in Git?

Klipe: I like this idea, but I'm not sure exactly how it would look?

If you want this changed, please consider voting on the relevant bug on Bugzilla, as that will get it noticed by more Wikimedia developers.

For the sake of visibility by those interested in the topic at hand, please consider voting on the relevant bug on Bugzilla, as that will get it noticed by more Wikimedia developers.

@Patrick87

Nicereddy: Please be aware that voting on a bug is effectively meaningless, as the number of votes does not determine the whether or not a bug gets fixed or addressed.

Jorm (WMF): Can you turn off voting for Flow, without needing to turn it off for all MW extensions?

WhatamIdoing: That's up to Andre Klapper, I suppose. I have no idea if it's possible to do on a submodule level.

Patrick87, WhatamIdoing, Nicereddy, and Klipe: Sorry about my delays in replies, I'm a bit behind at the moment with multitasking and email backlog.

Re: indents: You'll be somewhat pleased to see https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/115110/1/Flow.php (a third level of nesting). It needs to get some testing to make sure none of the UI needs additional tweaking to encompass it, then hopefully that'll be riding the deployment train to here and Enwiki within the next couple of weeks. Once it's here and we've used it, they'll then ask us for more feedback regarding how to progress from there. With options including:

• leaving it there (to enable tangents, but discourage long rambling tangents),
• or increasing it further,
• or adding a toggle to enable/disable autocollapsing any nesting deeper than that (Eg. similar to how Reddit separates any replies deeper than level 10)
• or other (ideas welcome :)

HTH.

Quiddity (WMF): That is good news. It'll definitely improve the current situation a lot by making it actually possible to bring some structure into a discussion. How much of an improvement it will be we'll have to test though (as you wrote yourself).

On a general note (since you're asking for ideas):
I still think (as has been brought up a few times already) that the first post to a topic should be on nesting "level 0" (that means the same level as the topic title).

The rationale is simple:
A topic title is just too short to be enough to define a topic. Therefore you have to include the first post as part of the title instead of making it a first comment on the same level as later comments will be put on. At the same time this will "magically" add a virtual level of threading depth (as people can actually reply to the first post without already replying on the currently deepest (with the update second deepest) level.

Patrick87: Ah, yes, I meant to also reply to your top-post in this thread, agreeing that this is an interesting idea.

(There was even a design-draft at one point, that placed the first person's post within the gray topic-titlebar, but they dropped that because some first-posts are very long.)

Are there any use-cases that would conflict with this, or reasons that we should hesitate in contemplating it? (Ie. this would be equivalent to forcing everyone to use at least one : (colon) in talkpages, when replying to someone else. No more "reply at root" possibility)

Quiddity (WMF): I like the idea of a post "at the same level as the topic header".

I would not like the idea of limiting the current top-level post level to just 1 post, as this would remove one level of nesting! And the current top-level post level is typically where is makes sense to possibly introduce sub headings, e.g. to organise a discussion around a few possible options.

Unlike the topic header itself, however, the "post at the same level as the topic header" should be "signed", and editable only by its author if that rule is set for all other posts as is the case now.

Quiddity (WMF): The only I can think of would be in the case of someone suggesting a feature/idea/concept, etc. as the first "level 0" topic and then others being unable to respond to it at the same level.

However, this is easily remedied by having a "Request for suggestions" or similar as the level 0 post, with all others being level 1 or deeper.

The potential issues it can cause are, in my opinion, vastly outweighed by the benefits of usage and readability of the thread structure. I would definitely be interested in discussing this idea further, as I feel it could be greatly beneficial to Flow.