On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 20:51:32 +0100, Frando <frando(a)xcite-online.de> wrote:
My idea is to transform the discussion pages to a real
forum, as known
from phpBB, Woltlab Burning Board or vBulletin.
I think everyone will agree that some move to incorporate the
advantages of forum systems within the context of the wiki would be a
good idea. Let's face it, wikis just *aren't* suited to linear
discussions. *But* the fact that everything within a MediaWiki wiki is
- well, within the wiki - has it's advantages too, and I (and, I
suspect, many others) would be wary of just plain ripping out the
discussion pages and putting a forum in instead. Better to improve
what we have than to replace one set of flaws with another.
The forum structure could be like this:
<snip>
This is where your thinking is already diverging from mine - wikis
don't have a hierarchical structure of this sort, and for good reason.
One of the longest-standing concepts of a wiki is that, because
everything can be editted, everything can be "refactored" -
reorganised, renamed, disassembled and put together in a different
order, summarised, combined, split...
Although MediaWiki's use of discussion pages has already diverged from
that original concept (where discussions are simply "turned into" an
article about the subject under discussion), there is still a definite
feeling that things are "fluid". And a discussion page on MediaWiki is
still just that - a page full of discussion, which can be linked to or
not by any related page you feel like, but doesn't need to have a
"place in the universe" just *in order to exist*. [Hierarchies are
useful, but why should there have to be any one definitive hierarchy?]
Of course, you then have a section of the hierarchy labelled "subforum
for each article" - since the articles aren't hierarchical, this has
to be one big flat structure; so why do we not just have one big flat
structure for the whole site? [BTW, I'm not sure what you are
referring to by "portals" here, but that's a minor point]
I think this way the discussions would be much more
effective and
purposeful.
I agree with the "effective" bit, in as much as they'd be using tools
more suited to discussions rather than anything else. I'm not so sure
it would make them any less "purposeful" though, since people seem
quite happy to define the purpose of a conversation under the current
system.
You are here: [Wikipedia Forum] -> [Articles] ->
[Foobar] -> [Delete
this article?]
Are the first two steps of that example really useful? Effectively
they tell you "you are in Wikipedia" and "this is the discussion of an
article", both of which are clear from all sorts of explicit and
implicit parts of the current design [and if they aren't clear enough,
they can be]. This may seem like nit-picking, but what I'm getting at
is that the remaining two are also available in the current system, in
the sense that the page Talk:Foobar contains all the discussion about
"Foobar", and everything under the heading "Delete this article?" can
be editted as a section, referenced directly ("[[Talk:Foobar#Delete
this article?]]"), etc.
The most important thing is that the discussion is
really organized in
forums, subforums, threads and posts, EXACTLY the way it is in the known
Burning Boards.
The thread and post model is certainly useful. But as for the forum
and subforum one, I'm far from convinced. Thus, I can't agree with
your "EXACTLY".
Because currently you hardly find ever a real
discussion, i.e. about
feature requests. Many people out there have fantastic ideas how to
improve wikipedia ... so a real discussion forum would be great.
Well, for feature requests about the *software*, we have an
installation of BugZilla, because the developers find it useful for
tracking things. For ways of improving Wikipedia, the best place is
probably the "Village pump", or its equivalent in other languages and
projects; that has plenty of discussions on it. Or, of course, you can
take advantage of this being a wiki and *do* the thing you're
suggesting; then people can discuss its merits with you if they feel
the need.
Or when somebody just doesnt understand a part of an
article, he could
just start a new thread in the article's forum and get an answer...
They can do that already: click "discussion", click "edit" or
"+",
type your question, click "save". That's not to say we couldn't do
with better features for tracking the answers (as a simple one, how
about seperating watchlists by namespace? or, more radically, how
about giving "sections" enough real existence that the software can
answer questions like "when was the last edit *to this section*?"?)
and all sorts of other things, but to imply you need a forum before
you can ask a question is just wrong.
Like I say, I don't want to dispute the fact that there are definite
advantages of forums/bulletin boards which a page on a wiki really
can't emulate; but I don't agree that *structure* is one of them. In
fact, I would argue that a wiki can give *better* structure in some
cases, simply because it is not rigid, and you can create new kinds of
relationships between pages and sections just by describing them.
"Eloquence" has described a kind of "ideal world" discussion system
at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LiquidThreads, and I think I agree with
the advantages stated there: basically, a threaded discussion gives a
solid meaning to "discussions" and "comments", allowing information
about those to be processed and manipulated; and, crucially, allowing
them to be "watched".
The exact balance between solid relationships and complete editability
is a difficult one to get right, and LiquidThreads certainly *sound*
good, but might be very hard to get right in practise. One of the key
problems, for instance, is how to avoid the system becoming so complex
that people are put off taking part in discussions because they don't
understand the proliferation of options, views, controls, special
cases, etc, with which they are presented.
So my opinion is that wikis can definitely learn something from
forums, but I think forums could well learn something from wikis too.
[This protracted ramble brought to you by my tired and distracted
brain. We apologise for any boredom caused.]
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]