The existing "discussion" pages don't actually lend themselves well to actual discussion, so it has been suggested that we replace them with another system more suited to the task. The idea would be that each page in the wiki would link to an accompanying thread in the discussion system, and each page would have its own automatically-created thread.
I like this idea quite a lot, and am leaning towards the idea of it being a web-forum system. I'd at least like it to have RSS feeds and proper threading.
I'd like to know what you guys think, and whether you have any thoughts about system(s) we might use or requirements we should have in place when evaluating possible solutions.
> I like this idea quite a lot, and am leaning towards the idea of it being a > web-forum system. I'd at least like it to have RSS feeds and proper > threading.
Questions: - would we require registration for the forum? - would we be able to use wiki markup in the forum? - what are the key elements that must be present for you to consider it to have "proper threading"?
I think this is quite a promising direction, especially if we can keep the user databases coherent.
> Questions: > - would we require registration for the forum?
Ideally no, realistically yes.
- would we be able to use wiki markup in the forum?
Probably not, but it could be plausibly done given an extensible system (ie: vanilla). Would this be a requirement do you think? Just a nice-to-have? I'm not sure what we'd want it for, to be honest.
- what are the key elements that must be present for you to consider
> it to have "proper threading"?
People can respond to particular messages within the thread and those would be properly grouped together. I'd also like the discussions to be permanent, independently searchable, and archived, rather than the willy-nilly anyone-can-edit-or-delete nature of the Talk pages. Wikis are great for some stuff, but not so great for others.
I think this is quite a promising direction, especially if we can keep
> the user databases coherent.
Yeah, I'd like people to be able to send feedback (re: my other post today) and leave comments without having to register, but I'm not sure how realistic that is given the inevitable spam.
> > - would we be able to use wiki markup in the forum?
> Probably not, but it could be plausibly done given an extensible system (ie: > vanilla). Would this be a requirement do you think? Just a nice-to-have? > I'm not sure what we'd want it for, to be honest.
I'd want it so that people could discuss format changes and such using the same markup as the wiki, so that it would have relatively high fidelity with what they ended up doing on the page. It would also let people copy and paste from the wiki source into their message, to quote and reference appropriately.
> People can respond to particular messages within the thread and those would > be properly grouped together.
Natch.
> I'd also like the discussions to be > permanent, independently searchable, and archived, rather than the > willy-nilly anyone-can-edit-or-delete nature of the Talk pages. Wikis are > great for some stuff, but not so great for others.
Natch! Though I would want MDC search to include forum content in some/all searches (if we have to expose an explicit toggle for that, we could, but it'd be nice to avoid it if we can!).
> > I think this is quite a promising direction, especially if we can keep > > the user databases coherent.
> Yeah, I'd like people to be able to send feedback (re: my other post today) > and leave comments without having to register, but I'm not sure how > realistic that is given the inevitable spam.
A captcha might be enough to keep the spam down, or a moderation queue for unregistered posts or something.
But I more meant that people's logins and preferences (?) from the wiki and the forum should be unified, so that they don't have to remember different ones or set their timezone prefs or whatever in multiple places.
One nice thing about talk pages today is that would be a shame to lose is that when you "watch" a page you also watch its talk page. It's certainly possible to think of ways in which that would continue to work, but we'd want to make sure it was possible down the road without too much pain.
I like this idea as well. As long as we're careful about which of the zillions of web board packages we select, this can be a great way to improve communication regarding MDC.
> I like this idea quite a lot, and am leaning towards the idea of it > being a > web-forum system. I'd at least like it to have RSS feeds and proper > threading.
The biggest benefit for Talk pages currently, is the User_talk:User page(s). Where anyone can leave a "message" on them, and the wiki gives a "You have a new message" (or similar?) text at the top of (nearly) every wiki page the user visits until he visits his/her talk page.
That is the only thing I would not want to loose, (in addition to shavers allready stated preferences in his comments).
~Justin Wood (Callek)
On 7/4/06, Eric Shepherd <esheph...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> I like this idea as well. As long as we're careful about which of > the zillions of web board packages we select, this can be a great way > to improve communication regarding MDC.
> Eric Shepherd > Technical Writer > she...@mozilla.com
> On Jul 4, 2006, at 11:33 AM, Deb Richardson wrote:
> > I like this idea quite a lot, and am leaning towards the idea of it > > being a > > web-forum system. I'd at least like it to have RSS feeds and proper > > threading.
Many web forum systems have a similar concept in "private messages" that are actually much better than the wiki system. Personally the User talk pages drive me nuts because in order to trigger the "you have a new message" message, you have to post on that user's page, so maintaining unified threads in a discussion is impossible.
~ d
On 7/4/06, Justin Wood (Callek) <cal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The biggest benefit for Talk pages currently, is the User_talk:User > page(s). Where anyone can leave a "message" on them, and the wiki > gives a "You have a new message" (or similar?) text at the top of > (nearly) every wiki page the user visits until he visits his/her talk > page.
> That is the only thing I would not want to loose, (in addition to > shavers allready stated preferences in his comments).
> ~Justin Wood (Callek)
> On 7/4/06, Eric Shepherd <esheph...@mozilla.com> wrote: > > I like this idea as well. As long as we're careful about which of > > the zillions of web board packages we select, this can be a great way > > to improve communication regarding MDC.
> > On Jul 4, 2006, at 11:33 AM, Deb Richardson wrote:
> > > I like this idea quite a lot, and am leaning towards the idea of it > > > being a > > > web-forum system. I'd at least like it to have RSS feeds and proper > > > threading.
> Many web forum systems have a similar concept in "private messages" that are > actually much better than the wiki system. Personally the User talk pages > drive me nuts because in order to trigger the "you have a new message" > message, you have to post on that user's page, so maintaining unified > threads in a discussion is impossible.
Although I would argue that user talk pages also should only be used if you want to communicate with that user directly. If the topic is about an article though, post on this article's talk page.
Now, I certainly don't want to stop your enthusiasm regarding a forum, but for my taste, it should be *extremely* tightly integrated with the wiki. I don't want to be bothered with another account and one more password, nor should this forum allow to discuss any other topics than directly related to the wiki. I fear that people would use this forum as another user/developer support forum, whereas we already have plenty of mailing lists, the mozillazine forums, the XULPlanet forums, irc channels, etc.
In fact, I had even recommended to use your first proposal, adding a mailto: link to every article, and route answers to *this* mailing list (please, not one more mailing list...).
I, for one, am already annoyed by the multitude of forums I have to check if I'd like to help users, not to even start about that I have to search in 5+ places when I am looking for an answer.
YMMV though.
I haven't been quite active here lately, so you might not want to weigh my opinion that heavy.
> On 7/4/06, Deb Richardson <d...@dria.org> wrote:
>> Many web forum systems have a similar concept in "private messages" >> that are >> actually much better than the wiki system. Personally the User talk >> pages >> drive me nuts because in order to trigger the "you have a new message" >> message, you have to post on that user's page, so maintaining unified >> threads in a discussion is impossible.
> Although I would argue that user talk pages also should only be used > if you want to communicate with that user directly. If the topic is > about an article though, post on this article's talk page.
> Now, I certainly don't want to stop your enthusiasm regarding a forum, > but for my taste, it should be *extremely* tightly integrated with the > wiki. I don't want to be bothered with another account and one more > password, nor should this forum allow to discuss any other topics than > directly related to the wiki. I fear that people would use this forum > as another user/developer support forum, whereas we already have > plenty of mailing lists, the mozillazine forums, the XULPlanet forums, > irc channels, etc.
> In fact, I had even recommended to use your first proposal, adding a > mailto: link to every article, and route answers to *this* mailing > list (please, not one more mailing list...).
> I, for one, am already annoyed by the multitude of forums I have to > check if I'd like to help users, not to even start about that I have > to search in 5+ places when I am looking for an answer.
> YMMV though.
> I haven't been quite active here lately, so you might not want to > weigh my opinion that heavy.
Just as a comment from a outside spectator, please keep this group as distant from any spam trap as possible. I'm watching this group in order to follow architecture decisions, I'm not that interested in every-day content arguments. Nor in penis enlargements, however appropriate. Make it hang past my knees, to quote my favorite.
"Just as a comment from a outside spectator, please keep this group as distant from any spam trap as possible."
Yeah the feedback list would have to be separate from this list as it would have a completely different purpose and audience (and a much, much higher chance of spam).
> On 7/4/06, Deb Richardson <d...@dria.org> wrote:
> > Many web forum systems have a similar concept in "private messages" that are > > actually much better than the wiki system. Personally the User talk pages > > drive me nuts because in order to trigger the "you have a new message" > > message, you have to post on that user's page, so maintaining unified > > threads in a discussion is impossible.
> Although I would argue that user talk pages also should only be used > if you want to communicate with that user directly. If the topic is > about an article though, post on this article's talk page.
> Now, I certainly don't want to stop your enthusiasm regarding a forum, > but for my taste, it should be *extremely* tightly integrated with the > wiki. I don't want to be bothered with another account and one more > password, nor should this forum allow to discuss any other topics than > directly related to the wiki. I fear that people would use this forum > as another user/developer support forum, whereas we already have > plenty of mailing lists, the mozillazine forums, the XULPlanet forums, > irc channels, etc.
> In fact, I had even recommended to use your first proposal, adding a > mailto: link to every article, and route answers to *this* mailing > list (please, not one more mailing list...).
> I, for one, am already annoyed by the multitude of forums I have to > check if I'd like to help users, not to even start about that I have > to search in 5+ places when I am looking for an answer.
> YMMV though.
> I haven't been quite active here lately, so you might not want to > weigh my opinion that heavy.
I completely agree with Andreas' ideas (well, except perhaps we shouldn't make dev-mdc too high-traffic by routing feedback here).
Also I'm not sure I understand what problem you're trying to solve here. Is this idea a replacement for the feedback proposal you've made earlier or a complement? If the former, I like shaver's idea of a hendrix-like web form for feedback more (although when I first read the message I thought it was intended as an addition to the feedback system).
The "feedback" system and the "replace Talk pages with something more useful" have two completely different purposes:
Feedback system - meant to be a quick and easy system where any user, whether registered or not, can send his/her feedback about MDC with no intention of discussing it further or even expecting a response. This is simply to get user feedback about MDC.
Forum-instead-of-Talk: Talk pages simply do not lend themselves well to discussion, so it was suggested that they be replaced with a system that does.
Talk pages * ephemeral * unstructured * anyone can edit anything * no threading * no clear way to reply to particular parts of the discussion * no time/date stamps * no archiving or guaranteed permanenece
Forum system * permanent * structured * comments are protected from random edits * threading * easy to reply to certain parts of the discussion * time/date stamps * archiving
I do agree that the replacement system be tightly integrated with the wiki, particularly in terms of user registration and login etc. If users try to use it as a support/wider discussion system we can gently guide them to the right places for those discussions. If in the long run people end up trying to use the forum for support more than they use the mail/news lists, well, that's a whole other issue we can deal with if it comes up. I'm not particularly concerned about either of these things at the moment.
~ deb
On 7/5/06, Nickolay Ponomarev <asquee...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/5/06, Andreas Wuest <awu...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi
> > On 7/4/06, Deb Richardson <d...@dria.org> wrote:
> > > Many web forum systems have a similar concept in "private messages" > that are > > > actually much better than the wiki system. Personally the User talk > pages > > > drive me nuts because in order to trigger the "you have a > new message" > > > message, you have to post on that user's page, so maintaining unified > > > threads in a discussion is impossible.
> > Although I would argue that user talk pages also should only be used > > if you want to communicate with that user directly. If the topic is > > about an article though, post on this article's talk page.
> > Now, I certainly don't want to stop your enthusiasm regarding a forum, > > but for my taste, it should be *extremely* tightly integrated with the > > wiki. I don't want to be bothered with another account and one more > > password, nor should this forum allow to discuss any other topics than > > directly related to the wiki. I fear that people would use this forum > > as another user/developer support forum, whereas we already have > > plenty of mailing lists, the mozillazine forums, the XULPlanet forums, > > irc channels, etc.
> > In fact, I had even recommended to use your first proposal, adding a > > mailto: link to every article, and route answers to *this* mailing > > list (please, not one more mailing list...).
> > I, for one, am already annoyed by the multitude of forums I have to > > check if I'd like to help users, not to even start about that I have > > to search in 5+ places when I am looking for an answer.
> > YMMV though.
> > I haven't been quite active here lately, so you might not want to > > weigh my opinion that heavy.
> I completely agree with Andreas' ideas (well, except perhaps we > shouldn't make dev-mdc too high-traffic by routing feedback here).
> Also I'm not sure I understand what problem you're trying to solve > here. Is this idea a replacement for the feedback proposal you've made > earlier or a complement? If the former, I like shaver's idea of a > hendrix-like web form for feedback more (although when I first read > the message I thought it was intended as an addition to the feedback > system).
Deb Richardson wrote: > I like this idea quite a lot, and am leaning towards the idea of it being a > web-forum system. I'd at least like it to have RSS feeds and proper > threading.
Would it also send email? The major reason I dislike the current talk pages is that when people reply to me, I frequently don't get an email (or only get a "this page changed" email, which is just as useless).
For those of us whose life is organized around their inbox, the current "watch" and "talk" system is incredibly painful.
> Would it also send email? The major reason I dislike the current > talk pages is that when people reply to me, I frequently don't get > an email (or only get a "this page changed" email, which is just as > useless).
On 7/5/06, Benjamin Smedberg <benja...@smedbergs.us> wrote:
> Deb Richardson wrote:
> > I like this idea quite a lot, and am leaning towards the idea of it being a > > web-forum system. I'd at least like it to have RSS feeds and proper > > threading.
> Would it also send email?
Email and RSS notifications would be requirements, yes.
Deb Richardson wrote: > The "feedback" system and the "replace Talk pages with something more > useful" have two completely different purposes:
> Feedback system - meant to be a quick and easy system where any user, > whether registered or not, can send his/her feedback about MDC with no > intention of discussing it further or even expecting a response. This is > simply to get user feedback about MDC.
> Forum-instead-of-Talk: Talk pages simply do not lend themselves well to > discussion, so it was suggested that they be replaced with a system that > does.
> Talk pages > * ephemeral > * unstructured > * anyone can edit anything > * no threading > * no clear way to reply to particular parts of the discussion > * no time/date stamps > * no archiving or guaranteed permanenece
> Forum system > * permanent > * structured > * comments are protected from random edits > * threading > * easy to reply to certain parts of the discussion > * time/date stamps > * archiving
And I was wondering about the double posts :-).
> I do agree that the replacement system be tightly integrated with the wiki, > particularly in terms of user registration and login etc. If users try to > use it as a support/wider discussion system we can gently guide them to the > right places for those discussions. If in the long run people end up > trying > to use the forum for support more than they use the mail/news lists, well, > that's a whole other issue we can deal with if it comes up. I'm not > particularly concerned about either of these things at the moment.
Just to make sure nobody is suprised, the gentle pushing of users to appropriate forums totally failed on sfx. That may have a totally different target audience, though, so it may not be bad. We have seen this in this newsgroup, and we will see it in the forums. That's life :-)
But yes, a threaded way to discuss things would be good, just as I'd heart to just comment a documentation enhancement request so that it pops up in the eyes of writers. Filing a bug feels so BIG, and using the Talk page is just background noise, I guess. My comment from earlier today doesn't even show up anymore, I guess I do need to file a bug.
> But yes, a threaded way to discuss things would be good, just as > I'd heart to just comment a documentation enhancement request so > that it pops up in the eyes of writers. Filing a bug feels so BIG, > and using the Talk page is just background noise, I guess. My > comment from earlier today doesn't even show up anymore, I guess I > do need to file a bug.
On 7/6/06, Eric Shepherd <esheph...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> On Jul 5, 2006, at 4:43 PM, Axel Hecht wrote:
> > But yes, a threaded way to discuss things would be good, just as > > I'd heart to just comment a documentation enhancement request so > > that it pops up in the eyes of writers. Filing a bug feels so BIG, > > and using the Talk page is just background noise, I guess. My > > comment from earlier today doesn't even show up anymore, I guess I > > do need to file a bug.
> I would love to see more bugs filed on docs, at least for stuff the > person that sees the problem isn't comfortable enough to fix themselves.
Think Eric has a point here. Thats why I like usercomments (like on php.net manual) which point out errors in docs (if the person cannot/wont change themselves) .. And also bugs and code examples.
The most helpful resource for me whilst learning XUL was XUL planet Tutorial.. the most VALUABLE was the user comments in the reference.. with code snippets
Think that a threaded "User Contributed Notes" system at the end of the page would server well.. With comment categories as well eg doc error, example correction, suggestion, etc..so they can be filtered
Eric Shepherd wrote: > I would love to see more bugs filed on docs, at least for stuff the > person that sees the problem isn't comfortable enough to fix themselves.
> Eric Shepherd > Technical Writer > she...@mozilla.com
> On Jul 5, 2006, at 4:43 PM, Axel Hecht wrote:
>> But yes, a threaded way to discuss things would be good, just as I'd >> heart to just comment a documentation enhancement request so that it >> pops up in the eyes of writers. Filing a bug feels so BIG, and using >> the Talk page is just background noise, I guess. My comment from >> earlier today doesn't even show up anymore, I guess I do need to file >> a bug.
Deb Richardson wrote: > I do agree that the replacement system be tightly integrated with the wiki, > particularly in terms of user registration and login etc. If users try to > use it as a support/wider discussion system we can gently guide them to the > right places for those discussions.
One way of encouraging only page-specific discussion is to modify the forum system so that it doesn't allow users to create arbitrary topics/threads. Instead, the forum system creates a topic/thread when a wiki page is created, and the topic/thread is specific to that page.
Also, Pete has a point about PHP's "usercomments" system. It's worth considering putting the discussion thread into the page itself (f.e. at the bottom of the page) instead of or in addition to a separate page that we link to with a "Talk"-like link.
>> I do agree that the replacement system be tightly integrated with the >> wiki, >> particularly in terms of user registration and login etc. If users >> try to >> use it as a support/wider discussion system we can gently guide them >> to the >> right places for those discussions.
> One way of encouraging only page-specific discussion is to modify the > forum system so that it doesn't allow users to create arbitrary > topics/threads. Instead, the forum system creates a topic/thread when a > wiki page is created, and the topic/thread is specific to that page.
> Also, Pete has a point about PHP's "usercomments" system. It's worth > considering putting the discussion thread into the page itself (f.e. at > the bottom of the page) instead of or in addition to a separate page > that we link to with a "Talk"-like link.
Maybe not including, but I sure would like to have a clearer indication of traffic in the forum page than we currently have for the talk page.
Limiting the topics to existing pages sounds like an interesting 'spam' blocker, though we should probably expose some clear "get help elsewhere" links in the UI of the forum part, too.
Axel Hecht wrote: > Myk Melez wrote: >> Deb Richardson wrote:
>>> I do agree that the replacement system be tightly integrated with the >>> wiki, >>> particularly in terms of user registration and login etc. If users >>> try to >>> use it as a support/wider discussion system we can gently guide them >>> to the >>> right places for those discussions.
>> One way of encouraging only page-specific discussion is to modify the >> forum system so that it doesn't allow users to create arbitrary >> topics/threads. Instead, the forum system creates a topic/thread when >> a wiki page is created, and the topic/thread is specific to that page.
>> Also, Pete has a point about PHP's "usercomments" system. It's worth >> considering putting the discussion thread into the page itself (f.e. >> at the bottom of the page) instead of or in addition to a separate >> page that we link to with a "Talk"-like link.
> Maybe not including, but I sure would like to have a clearer indication > of traffic in the forum page than we currently have for the talk page.
> Limiting the topics to existing pages sounds like an interesting 'spam' > blocker, though we should probably expose some clear "get help > elsewhere" links in the UI of the forum part, too.
> Axel
What about this: put a few of the newest discussion threads at the end of each wiki page. Maybe headers only or limited length previews to avoid large file sizes / bandwidth waste (The php manual has some really long user comments pages.) Comments / discussion threads could be categorized but it does not seem too important if there is at least a subject field. The most useful stuff from the discussion could then be incorporated into the wiki manually.
After thinking about this quite a bit, I really don't see the need for a bulky discussion system. Perhaps there is a lightweight script available that will not take too much work to be fully integrated into the wiki. I'm willing to volunteer to help develop the system, I would rather take the time to create something really nice and useful rather than install some generic forum script and live with it's limitations from now on.
I have a lot of experience with coding in PHP and I have been wanting to learn more about MediaWiki so I am especially interested in this project. Maybe we can make a really cool Wiki extension that integrates the best features from one of the simpler open-source forum systems.
Anyone care to suggest a forum (or some library or other source?) that is particularly well suited to this task?
[reposted to public list, accidentally sent by private mail]
Deb Richardson wrote: > The existing "discussion" pages don't actually lend themselves well to > actual discussion, so it has been suggested that we replace them with > another system more suited to the task. The idea would be that each > page in > the wiki would link to an accompanying thread in the discussion system, and > each page would have its own automatically-created thread.
> I like this idea quite a lot, and am leaning towards the idea of it being a > web-forum system. I'd at least like it to have RSS feeds and proper > threading.
What's your timeframe?
Just to make sure you're aware, we've got a Summer of Code student working on a forum-style integrated discussion system for MediaWiki.
This is definitely not a high-temperature requirement for us, it's just a suggestion that came up during the Mozilla all-hands meeting last week. It's fantastic that you guys have an SoC person working on this -- certainly saves us a lot of time and effort since it looks like it would be sufficient for our purposes (on a first glance at least).
I think the wisest thing to do would be for us to wait for the SoC project to be completed, unless anyone can see any reason that it wouldn't work for us.
Thanks for pointing this out, Brion -- if it works out, you've saved us a lot of trouble :)
> [reposted to public list, accidentally sent by private mail]
> Deb Richardson wrote: > > The existing "discussion" pages don't actually lend themselves well to > > actual discussion, so it has been suggested that we replace them with > > another system more suited to the task. The idea would be that each > > page in > > the wiki would link to an accompanying thread in the discussion system, > and > > each page would have its own automatically-created thread.
> > I like this idea quite a lot, and am leaning towards the idea of it > being a > > web-forum system. I'd at least like it to have RSS feeds and proper > > threading.
> What's your timeframe?
> Just to make sure you're aware, we've got a Summer of Code student working > on a > forum-style integrated discussion system for MediaWiki.
I totally agree. An integrated solution such as this one would be a great way to go, assuming it meets our needs, which we won't really know until it's at least somewhat along the way toward done. Might as well wait around and see what develops.
> I think the wisest thing to do would be for us to wait for the SoC > project > to be completed, unless anyone can see any reason that it wouldn't > work for > us.
