Topic on Talk:Structured Discussions/Flow

The FAQ explains why the threading is limited. I'm not sure I agree. I've just tested threading in the sandbox and the threading level is very limited: after two replies threading starts getting messed up.

I've participated in many fruitful (and less full) discuttions in various Wiki projects. Often a discussion starts as a flame at level 1 or even 2 and ends up properly clarified after some discussion. Nesting allows discussion of finer points.

So, can one use the Flow platform to discuss this issue and make a good case?

For the record, the discussion about this feature in the village pump of the hewiki turned out to become a rather non-linear one. It discussed mostly this point (though does not raise any major new points). Only one of the non-linear threadings was done artificially by me (to prove a point when linking here). I think that reading the same discussion here would have turned out to be more confusing.

(Edited to fix the link now the discussion is archived)

While I'm at it: is the parenting relation preserved? See my "parenting test" in the sandbox. (how do I give an internal link to it?). Is there a way to tell if a message is a reply to another message?

Tzafrir: Thanks for the feedback, and the pointer to the hewiki discussion. (Sorry for the late response. I do try to take weekends off. ;-)

Re: Internal links: Because Flow is intended to be cross-wiki-compatible, and for links to be permanent even if the Title of a topic gets changed, the UUID string is needed. However,

1. they're discussing changes to the permalink button, whereby we could get both the URL and the Title copied to our clipboard, for easier pasting of a clear-link.
2. they're also working on using a different URL structure, eg [[Special:Flow/topic/UUID]], so that we can link to "a Topic within a Board" (Ie. it would show the topics above and below the target. In temporal context. Like current talkpages do.). That will be in addition to the current "topic by itself" view.

Re: Threading levels: More discussion about this experimental aspect is definitely encouraged. There have been a few prior discussions, but all before the limit was changed from 2 to 3 levels (the current state). See this thread in particular for research on the various options in use at other sites, including things like the 26 level indent LQT thread. (I have my own personal views, which I'm trying not to push too hard. :)

Re: Parenting relation: As your threading test demonstrates, it's not currently very easy to tell which post was being replied to, unless the author refers to the originating post. There has been some brainstorming done on this, but I can't find it right now; your ideas/suggestions are encouraged.

HTH.

Quiddity (WMF):

Thanks for your reply. After reading the particular thread, I see that the issue is not clearly handled. Someone pointed that threading is not clear in the current model and I agree. I do see people not using threading enough due to that. But there are simple technical ways to show parenting once you have that relation set. Thus this is not a good argument against multiple threading levels.

Tzafrir: To your point that "[o]ften a discussion starts as a flame at level 1 or even 2 and ends up properly clarified after some discussion" – I've seen many more counter-examples, where discussions start off calm and civil and quickly spiral into a deeply-nested, off-topic, back-and-forth argument that's completely counter-productive to resolving the original issue. That's a pretty common bad interaction pattern across the whole Internet, not just Wikipedia. To quote Joel Spolsky:

Branching is very logical to a programmer's mind but it doesn't correspond to the way conversations take place in the real world. Branched discussions are disjointed to follow and distracting. (...) Branching makes discussions get off track, and reading a thread that is branched is discombobulating and unnatural.[1]

It's not an uncontroversial statement, but you'll find quite a few Wikipedians do agree with it :) And since we have the opportunity to explore different threading levels in this early beta trial phase of Flow, I think we should do so and really test the hypothesis that threading is (or isn't) conducive to good discussions.

Maryana (WMF):

(Edited)

I saw that quote. Quoting Spolsky is nice. But so far no one has shown me a better alternative. The current Flow is inferios in that sense: it's great to comment on one point and its immediate children. But I suggest that you can't have a useful discussion without more depth.

Furthermore, even if there are off-topic/flamish sub-discussions, with a threaded structure you can ignore those sub-threads and with a flat structure they become the spam chorus for the whole thread.

Theory: removing context will not make it more difficult for flames to erupt.

While I'm at it: two nits I have while writing the recent comments:

1. The comments counter on the top of the thread does not update as I add a new comment (a minor issue)

1. A more serious issue that I cannot reproduce: while writing the previous reply, the textarea was just at the bottom of the screen. As with now: whenever I press a letter, the textarea will jump to have that letter appear on the screen. But there was an odd interaction with the input selector tool (the keyboard icon) - it appeared on the bottom and caused every key pressed to scroll back up(?) or so.

Browser: Iceweasel (Firefox) 24, Debian Stable (7.4)

Tzafrir: Live (aka "real time") updates are on the wishlist, at various levels of depth. Everything from simple comment-counter updates for the person making a post, to information about other people saving a reply whilst we're still composing our own. However, that all requires various levels of deep platform change, and I don't believe it'll be available "soon".

The jumping text-area, when it's at the bottom of the screen, and our comment is really long, is a known bug. I've re-opened bugzilla:58657 with extra details, though as I note there, the upcoming front-end overhaul will probably fix it. Thanks for the reminder. :)

I've seen a few people say that they want deep threading for Flow, but I haven't yet seen anyone who was genuinely confused due to the lack of it. Part of this is because most discussions (both in Flow and in wikitext) only involve two or three people, even in large communities. Even if you and I reply a dozen times, it's pretty obvious what each of us is replying to because there isn't anyone else around. Threading is pretty much unnecessary in that situation.

That said, four levels might occasionally be useful: I propose, you object, I counter-offer, you agree. Outside of major drama discussions, it's rare to actually have more than four levels in real use.

Thanks for your reply. I don't think four levels would have been enough for the reference discussion (now archived).

Note: replying now with Javascript disabled (using noscript). It seems to generally work. But the page is littered with reply forms. Those reply forms show my name, which is confusing.