Myrtonos (talk · contribs) (without user page and thus a known role on this wiki) seems to be doing routinely conversions from talk pages to structured discussion boards. I'm not saying it's bad, but is that actually wanted? Is the goal to activate structured discussions on all talk pages?
Topic on Project:Village Pump
I thought it was the goal. There are a lot of advantages to threaded discussion as noted here.
Please don't, especially not in User, Extension and Skin talk namespaces.
Why not?
It is not always beneficial. I do get requests occasionally to disable flow on their talk pages.
@Myrtonos: Please do not convert any further pages until a consensus on this has been reached.
Do some users have some problem with structured discussions?
Yes. There are users which find it irritating and I've been asked in the past to disable Structured Discussions on their userpages.
As for the other pages, there isn't any consensus as far I as I know to do that.
Yes, "structured" discussions are heavily disliked in many communities, some of them even forbid using it. I am no friend of it either.
I don't want to force structured discussions on people who didn't request it and are maintaning their extensions and skins in their free time. Personally, I would consider it a serious disruption, if someone was impacting my workflow like that without asking first.
But so many web users are used to something similar on any forum, and on various blogs.
But so many wiki users are used to wiki syntax, that's why don't we change it. These users do much work and we don't want to disrupt their workflow.
But apparently structured discussions (on this wiki) are enabled on all new talkpages. I still don't understand why threaded discussions are a taboo on wikis. I'm sure plenty of wiki users do post on forums and blogs where this is the norm.
Could some sort of education program get more users used to the idea?
For us admins at least, there are things which Structured Discussion does poorly. For instance, hiding/deleting is awkward compared to normal wikitext mode. Additionally, revision-delete is not possible, which means that offensive titles stay as it is. And there are more.
Here, it says that there are equivalents to revert, revision deletion and oversight.
Revision deletion (actually simple deletion) applies only to the topic contents. One cannot apply revisiondelete to the title or the username who posted that content. It even stays on recent changes - the log can't be hidden by mere admins.
Locking topics is not possible either.
I don't think you can change community views that easily. We have to keep in mind that this is a developer platform and is controlled by MediaWiki developers. That's why the software has to fit their needs in the first place, as they work with it. If the want to work with Flow, let them, if they want to keep traditional talk pages, let them as they please.
We do want to convert all the active discussion pages on this wiki, it's just we didn't have the time to convert. Thank you, @Myrtonos, for your work on this.
Is there a link to a discussion that reachead consense to do so? Otherwise, what are your reasons for this claim?
The decision was made in IRC years ago. I'm the bureaucrat that signed it off.
I imagine that was a time when flow/structured discussions seemed much more viable. Given the incomplete execution of that decision, combined with a stalled/abandoned development and multiple flaws (even with some good elements), it might be better to seek a new consensus.
If development has been abandoned, that is a pity.
It hasn't been abandoned. There are definitely flaws that need eventual fixing, however.
Can you publish the logs or otherwise make some mention to this effect so that the community is aware of it.
I'd expect such an important decision to be voted on a wiki page rather than on IRC
I agree with Leaderboard and Ciencia here. I don't consider IRC the viable option for a decision as important as this one, but would still like to see the logs.
Nevertheless, I agree with Clump that we should probably take the new situation into account instead of relying on old decision just because some people (?) said so years ago.
Of course, you are welcome to start a technical discussion about reversing the decision, but you should go into it with appropriate expectations about how this wiki decides such things (to my occasional regret, see e.g. the continued blight that is CodeReview).