Mailing List Archive

On mar, 2003-01-07 at 09:13, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Current talk pages are extremely unfriendly.
> I think they should be abandoned and replaced by
> more "natural" system of posting.

You mean, not a wiki?

I think not.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

On Tue, Jan 07, 2003 at 12:23:11PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On mar, 2003-01-07 at 09:13, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > Current talk pages are extremely unfriendly.
> > I think they should be abandoned and replaced by
> > more "natural" system of posting.
>
> You mean, not a wiki?

Exactly.

> I think not.

Wiki is not any good for discussion.
There have been many complaints from people who know Wiki well
that talking that way is bizarre, and that it's hard to find out
to whom and to what which reply refers.

It must be a lot harder for people who don't know Wiki.

> > Current talk pages are extremely unfriendly.
> > I think they should be abandoned and replaced by
> > more "natural" system of posting.
>
> You mean, not a wiki?
> I think not.

I agree talk pages must remain wiki style for three reasons.

First, adding another system for talk pages makes users learn another
system and that makes things inherently more complex.

Second, talk pages are intended to help people make articles, and
therefore the requirement to learn wiki syntax to post on talk pages
just keeps out those who wouldn't take time to learn to contribute to
actual articles.

Ever since Ward's Wiki is that there is some minimum requirement to
participate -- namely the ability to figure out wiki syntax. This is
not hard, but it does require a little effort. And many have argued
that this is one of the reasons that wiki's can maintain a higher level
of discourse than newsgroups and web based discussion groups.

Third, an important part of the "wiki way" is refactoring, I have
refactored a number of large talk pages removing the dross, keeping
sustentative contributions, and putting it all together to flow more
naturally. This is only possible because of the flexibility of the wiki
system.

On Tue, Jan 07, 2003 at 03:41:53PM -0500, Mark Christensen wrote:
> > > Current talk pages are extremely unfriendly.
> > > I think they should be abandoned and replaced by
> > > more "natural" system of posting.
> >
> > You mean, not a wiki?
> > I think not.
>
> I agree talk pages must remain wiki style for three reasons.

And I do not. There is nothing sacred about wiki.
We're already doing many things in "not a wiki way".

> First, adding another system for talk pages makes users learn another
> system and that makes things inherently more complex.

Not at all.
Almost every Net user knows posts-based discusion systems:
things will get simpler, much simpler, not more difficult.

And such system will be more powerful too.

> Second, talk pages are intended to help people make articles, and
> therefore the requirement to learn wiki syntax to post on talk pages
> just keeps out those who wouldn't take time to learn to contribute to
> actual articles.

I disagree very strongly with that.
First, it's system not syntax that's a problem.
Posts will still use current syntax.

There should be a way for readers to comment about articles without
having to learn how Wiki system works. I know many Wiki readers
who told me on external communications channels that "this is wrong"
or "that is not clear", but asked why don't they say that on Wikipedia,
they answered that they don't understand this system.

> Ever since Ward's Wiki is that there is some minimum requirement to
> participate -- namely the ability to figure out wiki syntax. This is
> not hard, but it does require a little effort. And many have argued
> that this is one of the reasons that wiki's can maintain a higher level
> of discourse than newsgroups and web based discussion groups.

It's not syntax that's difficult. It's concept that's difficult.
"Talking by editing" is something not used anywhere else than
Wikipedia. And it's much inferior to "talking by posting".

> Third, an important part of the "wiki way" is refactoring, I have
> refactored a number of large talk pages removing the dross, keeping
> sustentative contributions, and putting it all together to flow more
> naturally. This is only possible because of the flexibility of the wiki
> system.

Current/old/deleted magic will do that.
Flow fixes are only necessary because of using system that isn't
meant for discussion at all.

----

If you find that too heretic to accept, there is less radical option:
add an "Add a comment" link to every article page, where user can write a post
that will be appended to contents of Talk page (Talk page will be created
if it doesn't exist yet).

Also, if user is not logged in, "Username" field should also be provided in
"Add a comment" page. Being identified is more important in discussion than
in article writing. If that field is left empty, message should say
'From: Anonymous'.

> Current talk pages are extremely unfriendly.
> I think they should be abandoned and replaced by
> more "natural" system of posting.

Tomasz,

please read my post

http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-December/001758.html

for some problems with this approach, and for the alternative, which still
allows us to use the wiki-advantages (of which there are plenty!) while
having "reply" links and reducing edit conflicts. The relevant portion of
the above post on what I think we should do:

- Auto-merge after edit conflicts. Do a paragraph-wise comparison, merge
when paras are the same or new, trigger conflict when paras are
different. Show warning when another user has recently started editing a
page.
- Make better use of existing comment demarcation. When a user inserts a
sig --~~~ this could be used to also render a "reply to this comment"
link. This link could lead to a blank edit form, the content of which
would be automatically inserted in indented form after the comment in
question.
- Have better context-sensitive help. Our current editing screen is nice
and all, but it could use some refinements to direct users to pertinent
information.

[.New: As for the last point, if we use the comment demarcation approach
described above, we need to make sure that everyone understands the ~~~
syntax, and possibly change it. Right now this is a bit of a "secret" that
every newbie discovers at some point.]

Regards,

Erik

> Current talk pages are extremely unfriendly.
> I think they should be abandoned and replaced by
> more "natural" system of posting.

Tomasz,

please read my post

http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-December/001758.html

for some problems with this approach, and for the alternative, which still
allows us to use the wiki-advantages (of which there are plenty!) while
having "reply" links and reducing edit conflicts. The relevant portion of
the above post on what I think we should do:

- Auto-merge after edit conflicts. Do a paragraph-wise comparison, merge
when paras are the same or new, trigger conflict when paras are
different. Show warning when another user has recently started editing a
page.
- Make better use of existing comment demarcation. When a user inserts a
sig --~~~ this could be used to also render a "reply to this comment"
link. This link could lead to a blank edit form, the content of which
would be automatically inserted in indented form after the comment in
question.
- Have better context-sensitive help. Our current editing screen is nice
and all, but it could use some refinements to direct users to pertinent
information.

[.New: As for the last point, if we use the comment demarcation approach
described above, we need to make sure that everyone understands the ~~~
syntax, and possibly change it. Right now this is a bit of a "secret" that
every newbie discovers at some point.]

Regards,

Erik

Brion Vibber wrote:

>On mar, 2003-01-07 at 09:13, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
>
>>Current talk pages are extremely unfriendly.
>>I think they should be abandoned and replaced by
>>more "natural" system of posting.
>>
>>
>
>You mean, not a wiki?
>
>I think not.
>
>
>
Agreed. For the reasons Mark Christensen gave.

>
>

Brion Vibber wrote:
> On mar, 2003-01-07 at 09:13, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > Current talk pages are extremely unfriendly.
> > I think they should be abandoned and replaced by
> > more "natural" system of posting.
>
> You mean, not a wiki?
>
> I think not.

I think not, too. I do acknowledge the difficulties that Tomasz
identifies. But I think that moving away from wikiness would lead to
unpleasant consequences.

--Jimbo

On Mon, Jan 13, 2003 at 09:27:18AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > On mar, 2003-01-07 at 09:13, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > > Current talk pages are extremely unfriendly.
> > > I think they should be abandoned and replaced by
> > > more "natural" system of posting.
> >
> > You mean, not a wiki?
> >
> > I think not.
>
> I think not, too. I do acknowledge the difficulties that Tomasz
> identifies. But I think that moving away from wikiness would lead to
> unpleasant consequences.

Still, I think that we should add "Post a comment" feature,
which would append whatever one writes to Talk page, without
any edit conflicts and with nicer interface.

My proposal outline (simpelst):
* Have a "Post comment" button
* That adds a comment you write in a blank edit box, attaches your
signature, date, etc.
* It also inserts some tag in front, to keep track of "who answered what
to whom"
* All that is added/inserted into the talk page
* The talk page is still wiki-editable
* Every comment contains a "Reply"-link (part of said tag) which opens
an edit box (see above).

We'd be adding some tree-like structure without losing the wiki way.

Magnus

P.S.: I'm too busy to code something like that in the next few weeks ;-)