Talk:Structured Discussions/2014/01

The Core Features team has enabled Flow on this talk page.

• Please conduct testing at Talk:Sandbox, retaining this page for discussions and suggestions.
• If you find bugs, report in Bugzilla if you can, and here if you can't.

Previous feedback is on Talk:Flow Portal/Archive2 (using old Liquid Threads), and on our labs server.

History?

I get, on using "View history", a recent change I made, and then it jumps to seven days ago... I can see comments made yesterday below, so apparently the history is still useless? Very strange this. Fram (talk) 08:24, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Fram: This is due to be changed, but the current setup has just the "Board" history on the main history page (ie topic additions, and board-header changes), and the individual topic-histories (where the posts/comments histories are stored) are separate. Again, this is due to be changed (merged, as is logical), as it's confusing for us regulars. :) –Quiddity (talk) 18:53, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

So, this works again (Flow, I mean, not the history which is still as useless as before, with "last week" starting ten hours ago :-) )

Any method to see these "individual topic-histories"? Fram (talk) 07:54, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Fram: Topic histories are not the same as board histories. Topic histories can be gotten by clicking on the timestamp in the topic header (I know, it's not the most intuitive - I think it should also be in the actions menu).

I think there's also reason to investigate being able to navigate to a topic history from the board history in some cases.

The reason why topic histories are not kept on board histories is because the connectivity between a board and a topic is not 1:1. A topic can appear on many boards. Jorm (WMF) (talk) 23:37, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Jorm (WMF): Oh, thanks, that's indeed not intuitive at all.

As for the connectivity between topic and board: is that something that is supposed to be possible, or is it something that already works? I don't think there is any way now to have e.g. this topic appear on the sandbox as well, but feel free to show me that it works and how it is done.

And if that's the case, then the "view history" which is now at the top of this topic is useless of course, as that shows the history of the Talk:Flow page, not of the topic, which can be on multiple pages somehow. Fram (talk) 17:47, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Error for "older topics"

The bottom of this page now shows for me (in a pink box):

Older topics

An error occurred.

The error message received was: Exception Caught: Missing Posts: {"28":"050de353cea1034818d4782bcb077299","29":"050de356f59823bf2b5f90b11c2788f0"} Fram (talk) 08:02, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Still happens, error message slightly changed though:

Older topics

An error occurred.

The error message received was: Exception Caught: Missing Posts: {"34":"050de353cea1034818d4782bcb077299","35":"050de356f59823bf2b5f90b11c2788f0"} Fram (talk) 11:29, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Works for me now. In fact it broke while I was writing a post, and I have a suspicion of why it broke, but let me post this one before it happens again.  ;) Qgil-WMF (talk) 17:34, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Continuing. I don't have time to test now, but this is what I did yesterday right when it broke, just i case it is useful:

1. Land here for the first time since Flow was enabled.
2. Before scrolling or anything, select the "Small view" to see all the topics. By doing this I retrieved several loads of "Older topics".
3. Found an interesting topic and clicked it to expand it.
4. Started typing.
5. Then the page made a jump. I was lost. First I thought I had typed some combination of keys accidentally. Then I started thinking that maybe another user had created a new topic or something, pushing my current view somehow.
6. Since I wanted to write a proper response and I didn't want to get it lost, I mved the text to my local notepad.
7. Then 10 minutes later or so I came back and I posted the reply to the same window that I had already opened.

Then I got that error message for the first time, and I report it to S and Benny, who in the meantime had also found it.

Could it be something related with having one user half-way in a reply to an older topic (in small view) while another users create replies or topics elsewhere? I still wonder what "sudden jump of the page" really was. Qgil-WMF (talk) 17:44, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Qgil: Yes, works for me now as well. Let's hope it stays that way! Fram (talk) 17:45, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Now I see that maybe I just clicked outside the textarea when typing, then pressed space, causing the page to jump.

Hm, it's the first time I realize this shortcut exists. Are other sites using it? I have no opinion yet, but here it is the precedent of a user that got confused about hitting it accidentally. I don't remember getting such a surprise when typing replies in other sites. Qgil-WMF (talk) 17:53, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Qgil: Flow had a cache bug that messed up new posts, which we fixed around 8pm PDT yesterday. But the Flow board remained unable to load them (hence "Missing Posts"), and rather than showing the other 8 posts and a couple of "fail whale" icons, it gives up.

It looks like you were able to add your new post despite the pagination failure; if you weren't, let us know.

Bsitu has been clearing the cache keys for these Missing Posts, so keep reporting them, thanks. SPage (WMF) (talk) 23:51, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Qgil: The sudden jump of the page could be infinite scroll (automatically load more topics when you're near the end) kicking in, loading the next 10 topics. Should we turn it off if you're in the middle of a reply? We could disable infinite scroll while you're replying but still leave the [Older topics] link available to click on if you really want to get more stuff. SPage (WMF) (talk) 23:55, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

S Page (WMF): when a user is typing nothing should move that textarea. Then again, I have been unable to reproduce that jump with normal typing. More if/when this happens again.

PS: all in all I'm liking Flow a lot, considering how far you have gone already and the speed of progress. Very well done! Qgil-WMF (talk) 00:00, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Qgil: Hitting spacebar will do a pagedown in Firefox (not sure about other browsers) - it's default browser behavior, not something Flow or MW-specific :)

S Page (WMF): infinite scroll should just append the new content without causing any page scroll, so that probably won't have caused it (unless we have some weird bug in there) Mmullie (WMF) (talk) 09:52, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Mlitn: That in mind; tabbing out of this reply-rextarea, will move focus to the "Cancel" button.

One would probably expect that when hitting spacebar will trigger the "Cancel" action (just like spacebar on "Preview" and "Reply" triggers the preview & reply functionality)

I'm pretty sure it doesn't work on cancel because it's a link (a element) and the other 2 are input elements. Hitting spacebar on an input element will trigger a click - it won't do that on a link.

We could either fix that (by making the cancel link an input element - when focussed, it will than execute "cancel", instead of triggering default pagedown.

Or we could do nothing, because apparently people accidentally tab, then click spacebar. They'd lose their content.

I'd say we need to go for #1, that's what keyboard-only (impaired, may not be able to use mouse) users would expect/need.

I've filed https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59990 to make hitting spacebar on "Cancel" trigger the cancel action. If anyone disagrees, I'd suggest replying in Bugzilla :) Mmullie (WMF) (talk) 10:08, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Test page jumping. Yes, if I type something, then "tab" (focus on the cancel button), and then press space, the page jumps to the bottom of the next topic. No idea whether that is in any way useful, it is not as if every space then jumps to a further topic, you just stay where you are, so I see no value in this behaviour. Seems unintentional, not really a feature. Fram (talk) 18:07, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Show / hide seems to go all wrong!!! Fram (talk) 10:44, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Email notification in HTML

Today I got my first Flow notification, yay! Thanks Fram for this opportunity to test Flow.  :)

I *think* it is the first Wikimedia/MediaWiki that I get in HTML format, and now I'm unsure whether this is due to the fact that no text-only alternative exists or it's because my email preferences.

Defaulting to HTML is fine with me, it works for the default user, but still I would like to have an option to get them as text if possible.

Another details about the HTML email: it includes one image (and only one, not essential) which implies a notification from the email client asking to download the images or not. Again, I'm not sure whether this is the case for the average user out there. A possibility to evaluate is to save that image, purely decorative, in order to save one dialog and one click to our users. Qgil-WMF (talk) 18:29, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Qgil: All Notifications are Echo-based. You can set preferences for text/html (and more) at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo (separately for each wiki, as usual ;)

Images in the HTML email annoy me too; plaintext all the way! Afaik this was the only sub-sub-thread that mentioned it. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:16, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Deleting own replies?

Is it possible to delete your own replies? Qgil-WMF (talk) 20:59, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Qgil: Not currently, but that is being planned. Suggestions welcome, as always. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:06, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): I see. My first reaction was "I can delete anything in Talk pages now, so why not with Flow". Then again it is true than in reality no regular user is going to do that lightly. So yes, limiting the action to a short period of time sounds sensible. As long as nobody has replied, because in that case, I'm sorry, things get more complicated (will your deletion cause the deletion of the replies?).

I saw that you can't save changes when you edit a post leaving it empty, which makes sense. Only then I started missing a way to delete my test post as a regular user. Users can still edit an own post and convert it in a simple dot, and/or hide it. I would say this is enough as soon as you get used to the idea that this is still a ffree wiki (where all contributions become part of the common pool as soon as they are published) and not Facebook, Twitter, etc.

So yes, so far so good. Thank you! Qgil-WMF (talk) 00:15, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Missing the Thanks extension integration already  :)

\o/ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects#Flow_.22Thanks.22_button & https://trello.com/c/BJgrJCyX/37-update-needed-thank-user Qgil-WMF (talk) 23:02, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Diffs in notifications

Now that we have diffs for editing comments, the notifications entries should link to the diff. Also, links to new posts should somehow highlight the posts. Jay8g (talk) 04:26, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Show / hide goes all wrong!

I have used hide/show on the above post, nothing else... Fram (talk) 10:45, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

And apparently the "show" doesn't get saved, so after refresh only the effect of the "hide" is visible... Fram (talk) 10:47, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Now again tried "Show", we'll see what happens... Fram (talk) 13:16, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Nothing, so "hide" works incorrectly and "show" only works during editing but not on saving... I don't think this is intentional! Fram (talk) 13:17, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Fram: Thanks! Bug logged at bugzilla:60020. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:38, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

So how do I search?

One of the biggest secondary utilities of talk pages, such as WikiProjects on Wikipedia is the ability to easily search the archives and the talk page(s). This is ever so often used when linking to consensus, previous discussions and general tasks that have to do with using old discussions. Discussion with a sleek interface is great, but it's just as important to refer back to old ones.

So how would I go about doing this in Flow? For one, the "older topics" doesn't appear until scrolled all the way to the bottom (and ever then, only a portion), so I cannot free-text search. There isn't even a table of contents for headers that I can see. The default MediaWiki search did not have any hits to older topics I tried to search for. Of course, there are no obvious search boxes here, so I'm assuming it's not just me unable to locate it. In fact, how will the old content pre-Flow integration be searched (which is in some places 15 years of discussions and consensus building)?

I originally wanted to post this at local English Wikipedia WikiProject as this is a major impedance to an actual use case of the system, at least for me. Hellknowz (talk) 22:08, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Hellknowz: Search in general, is one of the major features that they've been holding off on, because the new Extension:CirrusSearch is in the process of being deployed everywhere (details at mw:Search). Once that is in place and settled, the Flow devs will be devoting some concentrated time into implementing search for Flow content, and including old archived talkpage content.

Regarding infinite-scroll pages, and the difficulty of using ctrl-F, those concerns have been raised before, and there's no firm decision at the moment, but a variety of options. There are some technical notes at Flow/Functional Specifications/Search and Filter, and I'll nudge the team to discuss it again, or to update me if I've forgotten something. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:22, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): Thanks for reply. I guess there is no way to search presently if deployed for testing. Hellknowz (talk) 10:49, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Is there any news on this? Bovlb (talk) 18:25, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Flow (the software used on this page) isn't under active development, so new features are not being added.

As a work around, putting your search terms plus site:mediawiki.org into your favorite search engine usually works for me. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:08, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

So if we're using this for a user talk page or a project chat page, there's just no way to provide an archive search? Bovlb (talk) 21:16, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

At most WMF-hosted wikis, all the namespaces are indexed by all of the major web search engines, so it should work on both User_talk: and Project_talk: pages. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

I think we must be talking at cross purposes here.

It's common practice on WMF projects to provide an archive search box, like the one seen at the top of wikidata:Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive. I'm not seeing how it is possible to add such a search box on pages that have switched to using StructuredDiscussions, and I don't see how to reproduce it with third party search engines. Bovlb (talk) 21:49, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

There is no perfect method of recreating that, and it can't be done on wiki at all for Flow pages. However, you can usually get close to it with a search like whatamIdoing VisualEditor/Feedback site:mediawiki.org. That would find threads containing my username on the page VisualEditor/Feedback at this website. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:53, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

OK. I'm still struggling to see how to set up an archive search link for, say, wikidata:User_talk:Bovlb. I don't seem to be able to find any of it in Google. Bovlb (talk) 20:18, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately, if Google isn't indexing the pages, then that workaround won't work. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:39, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

OK. The lack of search seems to be a major barrier to recommending wider adoption. Do you have any suggestions for how I could escalate this concern? Bovlb (talk) 01:47, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

I agree that it is a major shortcoming. Unfortunately, active development of this software stopped several years ago. New features, such as integration with search, are not being added. The software will probably be considered for "sunsetting" (removal). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:04, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Location of "Flag" and "Permalink"

Presently, the location of the "Flag" and "Link" icons is a bit confusing to me. This may be just be a personal preference, but seeing as I'm fairly experienced with Wikipedia and user interfaces I hope my contribution will be of use, and representative of more than just myself.

Due to the use of negative space in Flow, it's a bit hard to tell which comment each respective icon set is associated with. It's aligned with the bottom of the comment, rather than the top aligned with the username. This causes me to immediately associate it with the comment below that which it is actually associated. I would personally prefer if these were moved to the top for clarity's sake, as that's where most users would immediately go after being trained to do so by most other user interfaces. Nicereddy (talk) 22:00, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I also wanted to note that when holding the mouse over the "Flag" icon, no tooltip appears. This'd be a nice addition, in my opinion. Nicereddy (talk) 22:02, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

No idea why they didn't do it to begin with, but they're working on this. Here's a mockup - File:Flow type-style-updates-26.png Hahnchen (talk) 17:59, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Hahnchen. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks :D Nicereddy (talk) 05:34, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

The ability to set font size?

I'm not sure if I'm just missing this, but a preference for changing the font size in Flow conversations would be nice. I personally think the size is great right now, but other users are obviously not so enthused. The large text may also cause issues once the system is implemented and conversations with dozens of responses are made. Nicereddy (talk) 22:07, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Nicereddy: Maryana commented on that possibility at en:Wikipedia talk:Flow/Design FAQ#Line length/measure. I agree (in my personal capacity) that options/toggles would be nice.

You may also be interested in the various "Beta Feature - Typography refresh" discussions, at Typography refresh. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:39, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure a preference is the right solution. What is puzzling is that content under the Page and Discussion tabs have different font sizes. Have you noticed this type of differences / inconsistencies in any site you use regularly? I personally don't have a strong preference over body text font size (and when I do I can fine tune it with my browser), but having two different sizes in the same site is problematic, and somehow telling that one of them is wrong. Qgil-WMF (talk) 22:15, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

"Nicereddy added a comment" in User Contributions page

I feel that this isn't descriptive enough for what the Contributions page is supposed to be used for. It'd be preferable for the contribution to be listed as "Nicereddy added a comment to Talk:Flow" with "a comment" linking to that specific comment and "Talk:Flow" linking to, of course, that page.

There may be reasons for this existing as it is now, I just wanted to point it out and see if anyone else had opinions. Nicereddy (talk) 22:21, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Nicereddy: There are a number of tweaks to the Contributions/History/RecentChanges/Watchlist entries, for Flow items, that are coming soon (2 weeks?). See the links in this post and just below.

Once that is done, we'll all bounce some ideas around for next steps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:50, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): Excellent, if possible could you reply to this thread again once they're implemented? I'd love to see the progress. Nicereddy (talk) 05:42, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Default the mobile view to Small

I know that the mobile version is not high priority. But please just set the default mobile view to Small, to make it remotely usable and mimic current Mediawiki talk page behaviour. Hahnchen (talk) 18:02, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Hahnchen: I've submitted it as bugzilla:60266. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:55, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I wanted to add a page on the Talk:Sandbox, but...

I got the error

An error occurred.

The error message received was: Insufficient permissions to execute this action. Fram (talk) 08:03, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

I get the same message when I try to reply on the Sandbox as well, not just when I try to add a new topic... Fram (talk) 09:24, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

test reply Theopolisme (talk) 11:45, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Is it intentional that we can't link to pages in the section title? It works here, Talk:Sandbox, but not above, where the annoying VisualEditor "nowikis" are probably added (but since we can't see the code, I can't know for sure) Fram (talk) 08:05, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Fram: Correct. Topic Titles are plaintext only. There is not a <nowiki> tag added, it's simply intended to be plaintext only. The problem is one of "limited parsers" - ie. something that will accept wikilinks and italics, but not complex templates, magic words, etc. Limited parsers are more complicated to integrate and to bug-test for, than a full parser. There are a few details in bugzilla:57153, and a simple bug-request to display a warning at bugzilla:57950. (There's another thread with more discussion, but I can't find it at the moment. I'll update this when I do.) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:23, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): The edit summary already has a "limited parser". It only allows internal and interwiki links. If you just add external links that would be all you'd need. 138.217.77.110 (talk) 13:52, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): That's indeed a pity not to have internal links interwiki links working in topic titles. Personally, I think that no other parsing is required, just those 2 (both are needed, especially in the context of future transwiki Flow boards). Klipe (talk) 15:02, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

So, the last post on Sandbox was some four days ago, and it seems as if no one has been able to post there since... Fram (talk) 15:10, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Fram: I just tried to post there as well: same issue (Firefox 17 on Windows 7) Klipe (talk) 16:10, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Resolved

Sorry about that. Talk:Sandbox is editable again now. And it helped bring another bug into the cleansing light! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:39, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): Yes, works again, thanks! Fram (talk) 08:33, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Another boring test...

...here, because I can't edit on Talk:Sandbox

does it support tables and other wiki markup?	column 2
yes it does!	nice!
I like it

Support Geraki (talk) 14:36, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Geraki: Talk:Sandbox is fixed now. Sorry about that. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:25, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

What links here

It seems that Flow boards and topics are not listed in the "What links here" page of linked files. For example, I expected

• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Talk:Flow_Portal/Archive2 to list the Talk:Flow board
• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/File:Flow_type-style-updates-26.png to list the topic Location of "Flag" and "Permalink"

This is probably not the most urgently needed functionality, but I do hope that it is on the long to do list of Flow developers. Klipe (talk) 16:07, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Klipe: Indeed. Tracked at bugzilla:57512. Thanks as always :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:44, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Can not move a thread to other discuss pages

In Chinese Wikipedia, there're not a Request for comment page, and all discussions about policy and article contents are discussed in Village pump and archive to talk page of policies or articles if discussion finished. And if somebody ask a question unrelated to Wikipedia, this discussion should be move to Reference desk. This is currently impossible if using Flow. GZWDer (talk) 15:31, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

GZWDer: Moving and splitting/merging topics (threads), is an important feature that is on the to-do list. (See Flow/Release planning for the long and incomplete list. More suggestions welcome!). It will definitely be in place before any large scale rollout, but it's not a part of the MVP (minimum viable product) that we're currently using here. What we're using here, is just the beginning! But it does need feedback and suggestions continuously, so thank you for the comments. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:20, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Deleting a comment?

Let's say I reply to the wrong comment or post. I'm unable to delete this, as far as I can tell, and it just creates a needless (and useless) extra post to clutter the stream. I didn't see this mentioned on Flow/Release planning, so I figured I'd mention it. Nicereddy (talk) 05:50, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Nicereddy: I agree you can't delete. Interesting. Gryllida 07:34, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

That's a proposed feature, tracked at https://trello.com/c/zdPGUBaQ/71-delete-my-new-topics-posts Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:57, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Integrating helpme, help desk, and talk pages, or not... And also invisible categories in posts

Hopefully Flow would automate the {{Helpme }} work at English Wikipedia, and the myriad of places where people can ask for help. They'd ask at a help thingie and the discussion would show up both there and at a user's talk page. Like the help desk + helpme + flow = 1 thing. Gryllida 07:32, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida: This is one of the first use cases that I investigated, actually. There's lots of thoughts about how to integrate such functionality directly into a solid workflow, like, say, a welcome system with a prominent "I need help" button.

This is, however, something for the future. Jorm (WMF) (talk) 04:25, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida: Flow intends to support a topic appearing on multiple boards. But if and when anyone replies to a user's new topic on the "Help" Flow board, it would trigger an Echo notification for that user, so I'm unclear what benefit it would be for the discussion to appearing on the user's talk page as well. SPage (WMF) (talk) 09:11, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

S Page (WMF): Well, something needs to be done anyway, e.g. I don't think you can currently add topics and/or Flow pages to categories, but when someone posts a "helpme" on e.g. their user talk page, it has to be included in something like Category:Help. I don't believe that adding

here will change anything... Fram (talk) 14:37, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Note that in my previous post, Category:Help remains visible, but without the colon, it disappears, but doesn't seem to trigger any category. Right? Needs fixing, I think. Fram (talk) 14:38, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

S Page (WMF): It could be somewhat comfortable for a contributor to not have to load a large board of different contributors’ help queries, but instead just view his/her one specific thread for help at his/her talk page. Gryllida 22:33, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

S Page (WMF): note how helpme}} things reside on a contributor's talk page. It is rather nice. Gryllida 22:34, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Fram: Categories not working for Flow Boards, is bugzilla:58197.

I've submitted a new bug (bugzilla:60510) for the "invisible" problem (which has been a long term problem in our regular talkpages... I've corrected many a [[category:foo]] into [[:category:foo]] ) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:57, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

On a second thought, you're probably right. A contributor talk page is for talking about the contributor; things like helpme taking place there is a consequence of a broken system where notifications didn't exist. Making the contributors talk pages less cluttered by things like article discussions, help queries discussions may be a good thing. Gryllida 02:36, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

To be more specific, the contribs could already be more intuitive, with verbs like 'opened a new thread', 'asked for help at', 'edited', 'created'. Contribs already links to individual threads. (Contributor wouldn't have to browse entire queries page.) Gryllida 02:55, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

View source

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T62465

Will there be a way to view the source of someone's comment, for things like viewing code examples where the commenter hasn't put it in <code> tags?

I don't expect just anyone to be able to edit others comments, but being able to see their code would be useful. 137.147.93.250 (talk) 09:01, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

137.147.93.250: neat idea, I filed it as bug 60465.

Currently you aren't presented the edit action if you don't have rights to change a post, and even if you guess the URL for action=edit-post , it fails with "Insufficient permission to access the content", rather than falling back to presenting read-only wiki source the way action=edit works on a protected wiki page. (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?action=edit ) SPage (WMF) (talk) 09:43, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

S Page (WMF): I wonder if it wouldn't be better to allow anybody to edit anyone's comment, as long as "Edited by X" appears. That way you could correct someone's syntax, or clarify formatting. Skalman (talk) 20:24, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Skalman: See the "Comment editing" section in Flow/FAQ#Components of the discussion system (4th down), for details on that possibility. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:18, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Not sure why this wasn't done yet. It is so trivial to do this that a very naive implementation doesn't even take more than 9 lines:

$(".flow-reply-link").parent().append('<a class="flowviewsource"> View source </a>');
$(".flowviewsource").on("click", {	type: "normal"}, function (){
	flowPost = $(this).parents(".flow-post-meta").siblings(".flow-post-content")[0].innerHTML;
	$.post("https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/transform/html/to/wikitext", {
		html: flowPost,
	}).then(function (data) {
		alert(data);
	});
});

It can probably be polished up and made into a gadget if the developers aren't interested. 197.218.89.234 (talk) 13:13, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

My username is too prominent, too similar to the way existing posters are displayed

One thing that repeatedly confuses me is the appearance of my username at the top of the comment box on each thread. My first thought is always "oh, I don't remember commenting on this. I wonder what I said."

I'd say the username there is both too bold, and too similar to the way usernames are displayed for existing comments. I'd much rather have more visual emphasis on the comment box itself, and less on my username in each thread.

[edit: vandalism] Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:30, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Sage Ross (WMF): A fix for this (removing the name) is being worked on at bugzilla:58413 (plus discussion in gerrit). Thanks :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:16, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Creating subsections

Wanted to create subsection, to discuss the invisible categories. Don't see such button. Gryllida 03:29, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida: In the future, there will be a "split topic" function, so that tangents like this could be separated properly.

Hmm, just thinking outloud... If there's also going to be a "merge topics" function, then depending on how that works (ie. how the merged-content is visually presented within the original topic), possibly it could be adapted to also handle "split and re-merge as subtopic" ?

Further ideas (with their pros and cons) welcome :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:23, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

=== Does this look like a sub-section? === Klipe (talk) 22:39, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

I just entered === Does this look like a sub-section? === to see what it would look like. It could possibly be used as a way to indicate a sub-section, when used in a 1st-level comment (I mean at same level as the initial comment instead of as an actual reply to it).

Because an empty paragraph is automatically added at the end, the vertical space between that "sub-section title" and the start of the "content" of that sub-section (actually the first reply on the post containing the "sub-section title") is quite big, but maybe that empty paragraph could be removed? Klipe (talk) 22:43, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida: What do you mean exactly with "sub-section"? Would such a simple title at the beginning of a 1st-level comment correspond to your need? Klipe (talk) 22:43, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Klipe: I'd contemplated suggesting that, but didn't want to endorse a hack-solution! ;) However, yeah, that will probably be the best idea, until the aforementioned "split" and "merge" functions are available. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:00, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): It all depends on the goal, the expected result (visual, functional...). Personally, I think that sub-sections may be wanted in situations where a split would not be welcome. Such as organising a discussion on a very precise topic around a small set of options: it's better to have just one topic covering the whole discussion, with each option identified as a "sub-section title" in the sense I proposed. Klipe (talk) 23:18, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Linking to a thread

https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flow&workflow=050f35daa31600e9aae290b11c2788d8 — shows old title. Gryllida 03:32, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida: Old title where? Possibly you just needed to hit refresh? Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:59, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

You're right, it took its time, I already did ctrl+shift+r before asking... Gryllida 20:41, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Internal link to a thread

I don't appear to be able to create an internal link, one to put into [[]]s. Gryllida 03:33, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Talk:Flow#Deleting a comment?? Nope, apparently such links still go to the top of the page, not the wanted section. Fram (talk) 09:42, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Testing by experiment is a nice thing. :-) Gryllida 12:49, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

The source code shows no id identifying headers, therefore links like #Internal link to a thread won't work. I don't know what is the plan here, but it might be a bit tricky due to the fact that topics are loaded as the user scrolls down... Qgil-WMF (talk) 18:58, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

A full URL is currently required. Options are being thought about, and the hex-string in the permalink URL is being shortened quite a bit in an upcoming patchset, but here's some background...

Using a basic [pagename#sectiontitle] is not stable for a few reasons:

• Anyone can change the wording of the #sectiontitle which leads to broken links (as in current talkpages). [That's the main reason that we have so many uninformative topic titles in current talkpages - we're all hesitant to change an existing title, because it will break backlinks.]
• Infinite scroll means that the #section might not be loaded in the user's browser-window.
• cross-wiki communication, and topics eventually appearing in a "Feed" of some sort, adds various other complicating factors. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): Full URLS don't help when a page is moved though, and are not user-friendly at all. Fram (talk) 08:01, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity: Oh, not necessarily section titles. Although you could support redirects from old thread name to the new one and still use sections, consistent with how page renames work. ☺

The Flow threads have some sort of unique IDs anyway, you could perhaps use them as anchors. I don't know what they look like; bonus points if they're not completely ugly gibberish. Other options:

• Random sequence of numbers.
• Contributor name + time-stamp (assuming contributor can't click two submit buttons in the same nanosecond; if he does, add a '_2' to the next ones). Gryllida 09:14, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Note: There's further discussion about this at en:Wikipedia_talk:Flow#Links Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:42, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Permanent link: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Flow/Archive_8&oldid=597751502#Links Helder 23:37, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Watchlist

What are the plans with the watchlist? I know that the history for Flow pages will be changed in the near future, but how do you envision the watchlist? At the moment, it is flooded by the changes made to this page and the sandbox page; in a real environment, for editors with a large watchlist, this is entirely unwanted and makes watchlists basically useless. I have in my preferences not used the "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent", but still I get way too many results for these two pages. Fram (talk) 09:40, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Fram: The long-term answer is "Feeds", which your thoughts and suggestions would be most welcome on. How would you want to be able to triage article/documentation page changes, from discussion/workflow changes? There are a variety of known options, but I think it would be good to ask many people this question without seeding the issue (ie. not limiting it to the ideas that have been mentioned thus far). Anything is possible - dream big.

(Side-note: I'm a user with a very large watchlist, and I find it frequently overwhelming. If I get more than couple of days behind (as I am currently), then it's exhausting to even contemplate looking at.)

The short-term answer is that they're initially seeking to roll out to locations that don't have very high daily traffic. Flow is definitely not arriving at ANI anytime soon! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:54, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): The short term asnwer is of course unsatisfactory, this is just hiding the problem, not solving it. The long term answer: the current (old talk page) system works fine for me. Being able to add topics to your watchlist instead of page smay be useful, but I still want to known when someone adds a new topic as well. I don't want to get every change on my watchlist though, only the most recent one. A long list of "X added a comment" "X added a comment", "X edited a comment", "Y added a comment" is totally useless and uninformative.

If you roll this out in any meaningful way on enwiki, I will have to remove all pages that use Flow from my watchlist, which would mean that Flow actually makes for less collabration and discussion, not more... Fram (talk) 08:06, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

I think that the most useful solution for me would be:

• Group edits by topic, by default hiding multiple edits to the same topic (like enhanced RC)

  For people watching a lot of pages it might make sense to group by page

• When I follow the link to a topic, all new comments are highlighted Skalman (talk) 23:32, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Skalman summarises very well what I would consider as the minimum. I hope that the functionality can then be expanded to include also the following:

• In the watchlist, highlight those topics that have changed since I last viewed them (bold, as for pages).
• From the watchlist, have access to the post history (as opposed to the page/board history), from which I should be able to see individual or combined diffs (I mean real diffs, showing all added posts, edits within posts, edits within topic title...) with the usual possibility to navigate between diffs (see next diff etc.), for me to follow the progress of the discussion.
• Make watchlist entries look like the ones for pages, because consistency induces efficiency. Example:

• (diff | hist) . . Talk:Flow; 03:24 . . (±123) . . Klipe (talk | contribs) (→‎Watchlist [[hello]] '''what is this''': new comment: Skalman summarises very well what...)

...where

• "diff" links to the specific diff for this topic that corresponds to this entry in the watchlist.
• "hist" links to the history of the topic.
• "Talk:Flow" links to a board that contains the topic. This should be the name of a board that I added to my watchlist. If I only subscribed to the individual topic, then it would be my personal subscriptions board appearing there. I don't see any value in mentioning any kind of "main parent" board, especially in the future trans-wiki context.
• the topic title (→‎Watchlist [[hello]] '''what is this''') points to the current version of the topic, where "all new comments are highlighted" (as asked by Skalman).
• "Skalman summarises very well what..." is the beginning of the new post, serving as automated edit summary. Klipe (talk) 12:59, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Skalman and Klipe: The minimum suggested, is what they'll be tweaking the output to initially. (ETA 2 weeks). The rest of these great ideas are under consideration, and I'll do a summary of the options once we've had a chance to try out the upcoming iteration. (Also, sorry for the late reply here) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:36, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): Thanks for the answer. It's indeed good to do it in 2 steps, with the community being able to consider several enhancement options. Klipe (talk) 00:24, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

There is

|-

!System

!Object it targets

|-

|Echo

|Contributor (private, but over public events which one can easily identify as related to the contributor)

|-

|RecentChanges

|Everything

|-

|Watchlist

|Contributor (private, over public events one can not easily identify as related to the contributor)

|-

|History

|Article

|-

|{Move, Deletion, User creation, etc} logs

|All {Articles, Users}

|-

|Special:Contribs

|All edits and actions of a contributor

|}

They are all very similar. I would personally suggest ingegrating them all into something single.

• Special:MyNotifications for my notifications (including everything on the watchlist),
• Special:Notifications for recent changes on everything, and
• Special:Notifications/<Page or category name> for events related to the specific page or category.

gry 129.94.239.191 (talk) 01:37, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

(Now, I logged in; the above was me logged out.) Gryllida 01:55, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Minor

I should be able to indicate that some edits are only minor...

(like this one) Fram (talk) 09:44, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Fram: Hmm, maybe 'editing' a post should show a minor edit checkbox? I would hope/assume one isn't needed for the initial post.

(Sidenote: The current impossibility of replying to your post below, is logged as bugzilla:60702. So that worked out well! Bugs, gotta catch em all.) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:38, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

User:Quiddity (WMF), thanks for the reply. Yes, that would be sufficient.

If you want another bug (probably already known): if I use "reply" beneath your post, my name gets added at the start, not yours (I have manually added yours instead). Fram (talk) 08:50, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Fram: Yup, that's bugzilla:60376. Thanks though! –Quiddity (talk) 08:51, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Jaredzimmerman (WMF): ? Not clear what you mean here? Fram (talk) 08:10, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Formatting toolbar?

There is no editing toolbar here, I don't see a way to make text bold. In fact, I tried three «'» symbols and they worked. I think an editing toolbar with basic things (like the one in VE) could be very useful. :S Gryllida 20:42, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida: Yup, that's on the to-do list (here). Ditto for VisualEditor-as-an-option integration. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:41, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

! hello

|-

| what 20251008084517

|-

| ~~~

|}

do sortable tables work? what about RFC 123? MZMcBride (talk) 06:06, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

You appear to have posted in an old topic. Guess the UI should be more compact here. Gryllida 08:30, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Also I don't see your message source code. Can't say what it was supposed to do. :S bugzilla:60465 Gryllida 08:30, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida: test Gryllida 08:35, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

MZMcBride: By the way, your table is sortable. It has a triangle and it sorts. Gryllida 08:36, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida: Yeah, I think it only works after refreshing the page (cf. bugzilla:57157). MZMcBride (talk) 20:24, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

MZMcBride: Please do testing at Talk:Sandbox, and leave this page for discussion/feedback. Thanks! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:07, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): Hush. MZMcBride (talk) 17:33, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

De-emphasizing hidden topics

When a full topic is hidden, it should be somehow visually de-emphasized (likely through a smaller font size). Currently, hidden topics seem too similar to normal topics visually. Jay8g (talk) 04:49, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Jay8g: They're currently applying the "small view" styling to moderated topics, per bugzilla:58140. I think there was some hesitation about using multiple font sizes at-once in the titles, but I'll ping the team to confirm and/or re-examine. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:37, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): I don't see any difference in size between the screenshot in that bug and the current view here on mediawiki.org. Am I missing something?

Anyway, to me the main problem is that the hidden topic is so big. The text "This topic was hidden by Skalman" is quite long. Skalman (talk) 21:54, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Skalman: Ah, I had it backwards, sorry! - They are indeed going to use a smaller font. You can see the latest code with a few hidden topics near the top, at http://ee-flow.wmflabs.org/wiki/Talk:Sandbox

Does that seem like enough, or should the default text be re-examined too? (Eg. removing the grammar to make it simply "Topic hidden by Skalman" ?) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:04, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): Having the text smaller and lighter makes it less of an issue. Skalman (talk) 07:10, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF):The smaller text is nice, but it would be even better if the grey box could be shrunk to match. Jay8g (talk) 01:44, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello there

User talk/contrib links in headers

The (talk | contribs) links that are only visible when hovered over really shouldn't appear in areas where the background is clickable, in my opinion. ("This topic was deleted/hidden by", etc.) I keep trying to expand the box, only to have a just-starting-to-appear link behind it. It's quite annoying. Yair rand (talk) 13:57, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Yair rand: Previous to bugzilla:58919 being fixed, the (talk | contribs) links were pre-expanded.

I'll file a new bug for this, bugzilla:60597. Thanks! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:10, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

The same goes for the history link in the header "7 hours ago" vs. "Wed, 29 Jan 2014 ...". Skalman (talk) 21:45, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Skalman: That link is being moved into the action menu, and the timestamp will no longer be a clickable link. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:06, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): Nice. Skalman (talk) 06:57, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Topics with recent posts

Some discussions take a long time to complete. Sometimes something goes unanswered for a long time and you'd like to bump the topic to get responses.

There should be some way to view topics with recent posts. And topics with recent posts must be visible by default.

The ideal initial/default view for me would be:

• Topics ordered by creation date, the most recent at the top
• Displaying the ~20 topics with the most recent posts

I don't know how you'd combine this with infinite scrolling. Maybe ordering by "recent post" date is the only solution. Skalman (talk) 20:46, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Skalman: Ordering options for topics, is definitely on the to-do list (the 3rd item down at Flow/Release planning#Search.2Fbrowse.2Ffilter). Criteria suggested so far, are:

• "by creation date", (current/default)
• "most recently active", (as you suggest)
• "most active", (maybe useful?)
• "unsummarized/unresolved", (once the 'close&summarize' feature is implemented)
• "topics I've participated in", (maybe useful?)

Other suggestions welcome. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:43, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

The elephant in the room seems to be that "most recently active" ordering of topics is still not enough to find what new posts have been added recently.

In a topic with above 1000 posts, where users can add new comments at any point, the only way to find the new posts would be to scroll through the whole thing looking for changes. I've seen proposals to highlight posts added since the last visit, or to collapse some of the oldest posts; but those approaches were tried at Liquid Threads, and they were terrible.

The way I would approach the problem of finding recent posts is by mimicking the current behavior of diffs and Watchlist's "X changes since last visit":

• Each topic header should allow to enable a filter to "show N most recent posts", with N being editable by the user.
• Within the topic, detect the group of the N posts with the most recent time stamp. For each post P in that group:
  • Show the base level, 0-nested post from which P hangs.
  • Show the post P' from which P is a direct answer.
  • Show P, highlighted to showcase that it belongs to the group of N recent posts.

This filter should be allowed at the board level too, to allow users to find the most recent posts in the whole page. If this was done, reordering topics would not be really needed - the most recently active topics would be the only ones left after applying this global filter. Diego Moya (talk) 00:09, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Diego Moya: I think I agree with you. Your solution requires more thought about the design, but it's probably a good idea. Skalman (talk) 12:03, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

The key point of such design for me is that what is hidden/collapsed should not depend too heavily on my navigation status.

Any form of "X posts since your last visit" is nice as a default, but it will be lost if I refresh the page, open it in a new browser, or merely close the window after reading only half of the new posts, reserving the other half for a latter time.

There should always be a way to recover recent posts as defined from the thread status itself, just like the history diff tool allows now in the mediawiki software. Diego Moya (talk) 13:04, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Some new visual design changes now live

Take a look and see what you think :) MPinchuk (WMF) (usurped) (talk) 21:16, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Here are my design complaints, some new, some not.

• Too low contrast, especially placeholders. Edit: Also the "..." to access a menu is close to invisible.
• The small view isn't small enough. I'd like a way to see a very compact list of topics + date of most recent post, maybe showing 50 topics at once.
• It's good that my name isn't shown above the Comment box unless I'm editing it, but when I'm editing, the distance between my username and the box is too large.
• While logged in only: The small view is borked. The "speech bubbles" are weird, and the "This topic was hidden by Skalman" is misplaced. See screenshot.
• The primary button's white disabled state is slightly bigger than when it's green.
• A "normal" button's enabled state looks identical to the primary button's disabled state. (e.g. [Preview] and [Reply] respectively)
• Keyboard navigation lacking. Focusing something should highlight it somehow.
• External links such as this aren't marked as such.

(In case it matters: I'm on Firefox 28 on Linux) Skalman (talk) 22:04, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Skalman: Thanks, very useful! We're doing a design review of the new styles right now; much of this reinforces issues we've identified, and there are some new ones you've found (e.g., the size of the active/vs inactive buttons) that we missed. MPinchuk (WMF) (usurped) (talk) 22:47, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

While the edit buttons (on your own posts) were changed to links (a nice change...), it would be nice if the history buttons were changed as well (possibly a "history" link text to the timestamp?). I do not think that pencil icons make sense as history buttons either, especially without edit pencil icons.

Also, perhaps the header pencil icon edit button should be changed to an edit link to match.

Also, the header of this page shows two fonts - the standard one in the bulleted sectionand the bold grey one (formerly?) used for the header for everything else. I am assuming this was not intentional. Jay8g (talk) 01:54, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Jay8g: The pencil icons being used for 2 different purposes is on the "reexamine" list.

The bold/non-bold mix in the page-header is an experiment to compromise between

• Everything in bold (the previous design) which had negative effects on header templates
• Nothing in bold, which makes plaintext header messages look too similar to posts.

(this is also on the "reexamine" list (bugzilla:59155 and trello 45). :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:58, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Keyboard navigation

Lots of room for improvement!

• Make it possible to expand/collapse topics
• Currently the topic's "..." for more actions is focusable and hitting Enter shows the menu. However, it's impossible to access the items, and also impossible to hide the menu.
• Focusing the primary button barely changes its appearance. (e.g. [Add topic])
• Focusing the "Cancel" link doesn't change its appearance at all. The same goes for "Reply" and "Edit" links.
• Hovering a username shows (talk|contribs). Focusing either of the links should also show (talk|contribs). Especially weird is it to be able to focus the "talk" link without seeing it.
• Currently you have to tab 6 times to reach the Reply button from the comment box. Reorder the HTML to have the Reply button first, then Preview, then Cancel and then terms of use links.
  • A shortcut for saving would also be appreciated. Either accesskey S (but how would you deal with multiple comment boxes+save buttons?) or Ctrl/Cmd+S or Ctrl/Cmd+Enter.
• It's impossible to focus any of the "buttons" for full/collapsed/small view. Skalman (talk) 22:16, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Skalman: Some great ideas in here, thanks!

I've heard (elsewhere) that there are difficulties with adding keyboard shortcuts (aka accesskeys), because most of the letters on an English keyboard are taken.

For documentation, (note to self, and any devs), see:

• en:Wikipedia:Keyboard shortcuts
• m:Help:Keyboard shortcuts
• mw:Manual:Interface/Access keys
  • (I'm not sure which of those are up-to-date?)
• and tangentially mw:VisualEditor/Portal/Keyboard shortcuts Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:19, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity: Yes, most are taken, but Accesskey+S is already used for saving and could easily be reused here, and both Ctrl/Cmd+S and Ctrl/Cmd+Enter would be free as well. Skalman (talk) 19:36, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Switching to collapsed/small view

If I'm writing a comment but then click on "Collapsed view" or "Small view" my all topics are collapsed, including my comment box.

If I've entered something in a comment box, either don't collapse that topic, or very clearly mark the topic as "Unsaved edit" or something similar. Skalman (talk) 22:26, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Good catch; I'll throw it into Bugzilla. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:18, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Bugzilla:60686 Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:20, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Notification link

Current format is when someone replies is:

X replied to your post in Topic on "Talk:Flow".

Beginning of post...

I see two main problems:

• The link is external, which is weird since the target is actually a local page.
• The topic title might be something that looks weird in the text, so it too should be quoted.

Just making the link internal would make it less visible, so I'd suggest either:

X replied to your post in "Topic" on "Talk:Flow".

Beginning of post...

Or:

X replied to your post in "Topic" on "Talk:Flow".

Beginning of post... Skalman (talk) 00:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I think there may be engineering reasons for this - I'll poke an Engineer and find out :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Okeyes (WMF): Evidently not! I'll throw it in BZ. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:29, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Bugzilla:60687 for the first issue - are you recommending quoting for 'topic', or just....something that makes it more distinct? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:32, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Okeyes (WMF): Yes, I recommend quoting the topic name. Leaving it unquoted is asking for confusion. Skalman (talk) 19:53, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

User:Skalman: absolutely, not doing anything to it is asking for trouble - but I more meant is quoting what's wanted, or just something to avoid the confusion? So, if we're quoting multiple elements we could generate new confusion. There would be several ways to emphasise topic titles without leading to the possibility of confusing page and topic, such as italicising the topic title rather than quoting it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:25, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Okeyes (WMF): Oh ok. No, quoting isn't the only solution. If we want to quote only one of {topic, page title}, I'd prefer quoting the topic since the page title is less volatile. You could also link+bold both the topic and page title:

X replied to your post in "Topic" on Talk:Flow.

That has the advantage of focusing more on the discussion. Skalman (talk) 19:32, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Reply link issues

When you hit reply on a level 2 comment, the generated "reply to" link is for the user who added the level 1/0 comment, not the user who added the level 2 comment you are replying to. Jay8g (talk) 01:47, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Yep, this is a known :). Thanks for testing it! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

(bugzilla:56811) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:42, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Search box?

It would be nice to be able to search through all previous sections on this page. Gryllida 15:17, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Agreed! Search is a big focus for the next 6-12 months. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

User mentions, revisited...

With Echo rolled out, these things happened.

• People started typing user mentions into message text because it does not pick up user mentions in edit summary (yet).
  • That's a change which adds clutter.
    • That's a change. People will resist.
    • It loses focus on message content. (Meta:Karma; "I was mentioned but she wasn't", "I should get more social")
  • When I saw other peoples messages source code, I could copy paste [[User:Yadda yadda|yadda yada... etc bits from their message. It's manual work and it sucks.
• With current Flow, if people desire to add someone in addition to whoever the reply button added, they appear to need to type them manually with nowhere to copy from.
• It would be nice to visualize who's notified, perhaps as a list of contributors at (the right or at the left bottom of, or a nice 'show notifyees' button and a popup) a message box: defaults to a list of everyone who participated in a section, with parent messages authors ticked, and a box at the bottom to type someone to add. Gryllida 15:29, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida: Frequency of messaging (Echo Notifications), and how messaging is both triggered and displayed, are definitely a set of complex issues, that will take time and experimentation to perfect. Thanks for your good ideas here. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:40, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Which bug should I copy paste my thoughts, or link to this section in, for them to not get lost in this chatty page? Gryllida 23:03, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida: Ideally reply here, both to test out Flow (helping to find it's flaws and strongpoints through realworld usage), and because it's generally best to discuss things before submitting a bug. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:06, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Is there a single place, as opposed to multiple threads here, where you draft ideas which aren't sufficiently precise and specific for a bug report? Gryllida 01:56, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida, Quiddity (WMF): Perhaps a separate notifications box, the content of which would just be plaintext usernames and would not be shown, would be a useful addition, to mitigate the clutter and formatting issues. Jay8g (talk) 04:43, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, and interface to such box. However, I think that the list of people mentioned should be visible. (Just so I can remove someone whom I added accidentally.) Gryllida 05:18, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida: Re: "Is there a single place [...]" - That's one of the problems that Flow will hopefully eventually solve - fragmented discussions! However, that will require upcoming features like "merge topics".

For now, the best place to draft/discuss complex feature ideas is at this page, or Enwiki's en:WT:Flow - anywhere else would suffer from a lack of page-watchers. Regarding the multiple-threads issue, we can link to prior threads in this topic. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:34, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity: Thanks. I think that there is a third feedback place, the labs server wiki instance's Talk:Flow. I suspect you may want to [soft-] redirect 2 of the 3 places to one, preferably so users can use their CentralAuth and not sign up again (so not the labs instance for actual feedback, it's for testing only). Gryllida 23:17, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Message summary

I would benefit from ability to type an edit summary when sending a long message I think. Easier to locate a certain message without skimming through the entire discussion. Gryllida 15:32, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida: There was some good discussion about edit-summaries at en:Wikipedia_talk:Flow/Archive_7#Edit_summaries, and the current plan is to try out auto-excerpts (trello card). Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:29, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Word choice

I won't like the 'post' word choice. At Wikipedia and other projects it usually is a 'message'. Gryllida 15:32, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida: Message/Post/Comment are all reasonable synonyms for this object, and I think they'd each have different supporters depending on who we asked. I'd guess the developers are using "post" in the URL and among themselves because it's the shortest!

What we (and all non-English wikis) use in the interface, is changeable as needed, as with all user-facing terms. (Eg. the "2 comments" in the topic-titlebar, or the "comment on foo" below each topic). Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:35, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I think that it should be 'replied to your <something>' in mail notifications, and '2 <something>' in the topic title-bar, with the <something> being the same. For less user surprises, I would use the term 'message'. Gryllida 23:01, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Permalinks

I notice that permalinks now include square brackets:

https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flow&topic[postId]=050f7854fbeb1e9b25a890b11c27a364&workflow=050f60e47753c65f22ff842b2b7829bb

Result: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flow&topic[postId]=050f7854fbeb1e9b25a890b11c27a364&workflow=050f60e47753c65f22ff842b2b7829bb

Is this really a good idea? Should each user now know that these characters need to be replaced with %5B and %5D for the link not to be broken?

Sorry, but I totally miss the logic behind this choice. Klipe (talk) 22:12, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Klipe: The square brackets are bugzilla:56196. Patch-to-review at the moment. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:50, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

By the way... The example permalink was taken from a post that I wrote as a second-level reply in a topic. However, when using it (incl. square brackets replaced with corresponding codes like this: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flow&topic%5BpostId%5D=050f7854fbeb1e9b25a890b11c27a364&workflow=050f60e47753c65f22ff842b2b7829bb ), I only end up at the top of the topic: my post is not focused nor highlighted. Klipe (talk) 22:17, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Klipe: That is/was bugzilla:60638, and is fixed but not-yet-live. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:53, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Reply functionality appears to have broken here recently

I clicked reply to a message. It inserted my nickname, not the one of who I'm replying to. (Although I did start the thread.) I think that's a bug. Gryllida 23:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida: Yup, that's bugzilla:56811. Thank you for noti[ci]ng it. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:42, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Design feedback: too pale

It's not very easy on the eyes... Even the text I'm typing is of some light-grey colour. Gryllida 23:05, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Gryllida: There's an FAQ entry related to this at Flow/Design/FAQ#Why is the text grey instead of black.3F, and some discussion about this at bugzilla:58683 (but please don't reopen that bug, we need to discuss it onwiki more first.). A number of people have commented on it, and I believe it's on the "reexamine" list. There are definitely some light-grey aspects that must be changed (they're almost invisible for people without perfect vision and room-lighting), and some dark-grey aspects that warrant more research & discussion. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:48, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

IIRC the dark gray was supposed to be #030303. Right now at this page, my browser shows a computed color of rgb(51, 51, 51) for text. Diego Moya (talk) 23:51, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Diego Moya: Hmm, you had suggested that at en:Wikipedia_talk:Flow/Design_FAQ#Text_color, but the Design FAQ says "#333" (as does the site it references). Do you recall where you got the 030303 from? Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 03:11, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): It may be #333. I told the above from memory (although when I wrote that post in the FAQ I had just read it). I recall seeing the value as recommended in one of the documents you linked as design references; it may have been wishful thinking on my part. I'm not fond of this online fad for medium-grey text. It looks like shit on CRTs, and doesn't seem to make much of a difference on led screens anyway Diego Moya (talk) 07:22, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for being sincere. I agree it is strain on eyes ... Gryllida 10:02, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): I have checked, and indeed the source used says #333, so I misconstrued it.

However, the source doesn't seem to be particularly reliable. It's an opinion piece by a somewhat successful designer, and it lacks any research supporting the "benchmark". In fact, the very page where that value is published uses #111 instead for its text, which is a much denser black. So much for an argument from authority. Diego Moya (talk) 17:04, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

There really does need to be more contrast. Pretty much everywhere except the Reply button. — Scott • talk 01:44, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

In my first encounter with Flow, I completely missed the "Start new topic" box, for being too light grey. (+-sign is #D0D2D3 and text is #D1D1D1). And then, wanting to add this comment, I nearly missed the "Add comment" box for the same reason. DePiep (talk) 18:36, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

DePiep: Thanks for nudging this issue. The bugzilla ticket has been updated, and a patch is undergoing review. If all goes well, it should be fixed in the next rollout (the following Thursday at this wiki, and the week after that at Enwiki). Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF): OK. Outside of enwiki, I am a newby. I get hinted & linked helpfully through en:WP:VPT. and such. I can see my Q has landed. Have a nice edit. DePiep (talk) 21:18, 27 April 2014 (UTC)