David-
However, I haven't heard anyone comment about
changing the
"talk" pages into a threaded discussion group:
Yes, this is a good idea, and has come up before. See:
"How to improve talk pages", by me, Dec 2002
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-December/001758.html
"Talk pages redesign proposal", by Tomasz, Jan 2003
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-January/002022.html
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_media
and threads linked from there.
The bottom line:
1) We want to keep our mailing lists, although a WWW posting interface may
be desirable.
2) Having talk pages handle comments thread-style automatically while
retaining wiki-form would be desirable.
For 2), I would suggest an implementation approach whereby any defined
segment of a wiki-page can be retrieved and edited separately without
editing the wiki-page as a whole. This would also be useful in editing
sections of long aricles, instead of the whole articles. Edit conflict
handling should also be improved.
I have this in my to do list and will probably start working on it at some
point, but you could also make yourself a lot more popular by sending us a
patch ;-). We could surely use an experienced software designer like
yourself as an active developer.
Regards,
Erik