How to consolidate discussion

[Larry Sanger]

This is a longish post.  Here's the basic point: we've got too many places to discuss things.  So I think we should have a discussion about whether to get rid of the forums, in favor of having general project discussion on the wiki itself.  Do you agree?  How should we do this, if so?  Note that I am not making a proposal.  I am gathering data and seeing how people feel about an idea that I am only toying with myself.


Now that the proposals system is in operation, as several people have pointed out, it constitutes yet another locale for discussion, even if it is more practically-oriented discussion.  Note that the proposals system can't be used merely to raise questions.  It must make specific proposals or raise specific and well-defined issues for decision.

I am personally concerned that there is just too many choices about "where to talk about things," even if the proper use of each of the venues on offer is fairly clearly defined.  I mean that we have

• Forums for general discussion
• CZ:Proposals for discussion of actionable proposals
• Various governance groups for decisionmaking-level discussion of proposals
• Workgroup mailing lists for workgroup issues
• Workgroup wiki pages for workgroup issues (too!)
• Citizendium-Editors for general editor discussion (not used much)
• The blog for general public discussion

I think that as we add various new things to CZ, to keep the overall CZ experience as simple as possible, we should start thinking about removing old ones that might not be working so well.  I have always wanted to prevent CZ from becoming a giant Frankenstein monster, with ever-creeping numbers of policy pages, etc.

So I am wondering if we should not do something radical in the present case and quite simply close down the forums.  How might this work?  I am going to make a rough first stab at a proposal, and then step back for a week (or so) and see what the community seems to think.  Here it is.

First, shut down the forums--all of the boards.  (Of course, keep them up, but make them "read-only.")

In place of the forums, we move general discussion of broad issues to talk pages attached to the relevant CZ: namespace pages.  For example, if you wanted to discuss the neutrality policy, you would now be directed to do so on [[CZ:Neutrality Policy]] instead of the special board on the forums.  I think wiki pages are substandard as venues for discussion for a variety of reasons, but I'm not so worried that they will get out of hand, or interfere terribly with article-writing--as they often did in Wikipedia's first year, when project discussion took place mainly on-wiki, before we created the Meta-Wiki and generally moved policy discussion to Wikipedia-L and WikiEN-L.

The advantages of having the discussion on the wiki, aside from the main advantage of consolidating discussion, are: it places contributors closer to the policy commented on, so they're better informed; moreover, they'll be better placed to improve and maintain those policy pages, which is something those pages badly need.  Finally, it is easier to link to articles--and go right to the articles to work on them!--if one is discussing policy on the wiki.

One possible large disadvantage that I can see is that it might distract some people who might otherwise use their on-wiki time for article writing.

General public discussion of CZ (questions from prospective contributors, help requests from wiki-newbies, etc.), which currently takes place on special forum boards, could take place on the blog.  We might add a new person or persons to the blogroll to post regularly and welcome new people, answer questions, address critics, etc.  Alternatively, we might add some sort of MediaWiki extension that would allow unsigned-in people to post (moderated) comments and questions on a few special CZ pages.  The latter would probably be better.

All discussion of specific workgroup issues might be directed to workgroup talk pages.  The workgroup mailing lists will remain in operation as announcement lists--especially, I'd like to suggest, as a way to get workgroup editors and authors (regularly) to review and improve specific articles.  But that's another issue, which I'll introduce hopefully before too much longer.

Well that's the general idea.  I am not married to it and I'm not proposing it (which is why this isn't in the proposals system!).  I haven't fully discussed the advantages and disadvantages...I leave that to you if you're interested.

[Aleta Curry]

My opinion is that it's an idea whose time has come.

Close the forums

Drop the workgroup mailing lists because those who are active will use the workgroups

Drop the editors thingy for the same reason.


I will heave a big sigh of relief.

My only problem is that then we'll be without a chitchat page, which was just starting to get going!

[Derek Harkness]

I am wary of putting too much faith in the proposals system untill it's had time to mature. There are some flaws in the current setup but I'll leave that to another post on a different thread.

There is a major problem with wiki based discussions - knowing about the discussion. Unless you have the page in question in your watch list, a disccussion can often take place, about which you might have contributed, but you just didn't know it was happening.

Mailling lists are no good for discussion. They are fine for making anouncements, but replies often get mixed up and threads broken. Really, mailing lists should be migrated into the forum and a mailling list plugin added to the forum so that the two coordinate.

Blogs, good for anouncements and discussions following on form the anouncements but not general discussions. There shouldn't really be a difference between the blog and the mailling list or even the forums. When larry posts to the blog, it should mail to the list and also post to the forum. When a reply is received on either the blog, maillist or forums it should be duplicated in the other mediums. The shouldn't really be different places. They should just be different views of the same place.

There are systems that can do the above. It is possible to coordinate all these things without requiring a super coder to do the work. I have worked on other open source programs where they had blogs, maillists, forums, wikis and other mediums and it was all coordinated properly. What is required is a Content Management System.

There are hundreds of CMS available that can be quickly deployed. They are usually easy to use and will organise all our discussions and announcements into one place. The idea of having blog, forum and maillist as separate entities is flawed. They should be united into a CMS.

[Warren Schudy]

There is a major problem with wiki based discussions - knowing about the discussion. Unless you have the page in question in your watch list, a disccussion can often take place, about which you might have contributed, but you just didn't know it was happening.

If there was a version of the "recent changes" page that:
* included only the most recent change to each article (like the watchlist),
* excluded boring things like moves and
* included CZ and all talk namespaces except "user talk"
, that could be used to monitor current discussions.

I do like the forums though; it's really annoying to get an edit conflict when discussing a hot topic. Perhaps we should adopt a more structured on-wiki discussion mechanism such as wikiHow's?

[Robert_W_King]

I've already said this elsewhere, but for what it's worth I'd shut down the following forum sections:

* initiatives and projects
* original research and citation
* taxonomies and categories
* new boards requests

Then as other systems are developed on wiki to replace other forum sections, deprecate and archive those also.  Create a stickied FAQ for each section that is archived.

[Christian Kleineidam]

When the goal is to make a Announcement to all members of a Workgroup, is it possible to simply sent a mail to everyone who is listed as an author or editor in that workgroup?

That would remove the hassle of subscribing to the mailing list.

When the purpose is simply to announce something a blog (with RSS) might also be better than a mailinglist.

Even if we keep the forums merging all Governance Issues into one forum and all Content Issues into one forum would improve usability.

[Robert_W_King]

When the goal is to make a Announcement to all members of a Workgroup, is it possible to simply sent a mail to everyone who is listed as an author or editor in that workgroup?

That would remove the hassle of subscribing to the mailing list.

When the purpose is simply to announce something a blog (with RSS) might also be better than a mailinglist.

Even if we keep the forums merging all Governance Issues into one forum and all Content Issues into one forum would improve usability.

I like the idea of making the workgroup the focus discussion page instead of the mailing list, if that's what you're implying.  I also like the idea of an RSS/blog to announce conversational updates.

[Warren Schudy]

Talk pages could perhaps be made easier to use with a mediawiki extension such as:
* http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:LiquidThreads
* http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MediaWiki_Bulletin_Board
* http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Discussion_and_forum_extensions

[Joe Quick]

Here's my dream:

The talk pages are converted into forum-like pages that allow people to create multiple threads to discuss different aspects of the article/policy/initiative/whatever.  I can watch talk pages and go to a central place to see new posts to all threads on talk pages that I've selected to watch.  There is a second place that I can go to see all new threads on talk pages so that I can keep track of whether I should be joining a conversation or adding a new talk page to my watchlist

As it is, I get most of my CZ news by clicking on the link at the top of the forums page that reads "Show unread posts since last visit."  I would hate for that functionality to totally disappear.

[Hayford Peirce]

As it is, I get most of my CZ news by clicking on the link at the top of the forums page that reads "Show unread posts since last visit."  I would hate for that functionality to totally disappear.

Me too.  As long as the Forums exist as a major source of discussion, then this is a vital feature.

[Aleta Curry]

Yeah, me three.

[Russell D. Jones]

The forums should be kept as a discussion space, but all discussions about policy, editing, content, etc., should be conducted on the wiki.  As this becomes larger and larger, people are not going to go to five different forums to find an answer to their issue.

[Larry Sanger]

I think there isn't a clear enough distinction between the discussions about general policy that we might want to keep on the forums, and the discussions of...um, more specific policy?...that we might want to put on the wiki.  I don't even know how to articulate the difference.

Joe: my idea about how to insure that the wiki works like a forum, so you can see "recent changes" for the forums, is (1) to have discussions of issues always in the "CZ talk" namespace, and then start using this handy log to keep track of those discussions.  We can easily link to that log from the sidebar.

Warren: I looked at LiquidThreads some months ago...it's annoying and not an improvement.  I haven't checked out the other pages, though.

Christian: there is no such functionality yet, that I know of.  If there were, we'd be using it.  But there could be!  I mean, surely it wouldn't take that much to write a function that would allow us to send mail to everyone who is (1) in a certain workgroup (as author or editor), but who (2) has NOT deactivated mail for that workgroup.  As I've said a few times now, we need a central location where people can manage various CZ subscriptions and accounts; but that can't happens until we have a proper CZ system architect.  Maybe soon...we've got money coming our way, I'm happy to say.

[Joe Quick]

Joe: my idea about how to insure that the wiki works like a forum, so you can see "recent changes" for the forums, is (1) to have discussions of issues always in the "CZ talk" namespace, and then start using this handy log to keep track of those discussions.  We can easily link to that log from the sidebar.

That's a pretty good start.  I still think the forums format works better than the wiki format for having discussions. 

[Larry Sanger]

Joe: my idea about how to insure that the wiki works like a forum, so you can see "recent changes" for the forums, is (1) to have discussions of issues always in the "CZ talk" namespace, and then start using this handy log to keep track of those discussions.  We can easily link to that log from the sidebar.

That's a pretty good start.  I still think the forums format works better than the wiki format for having discussions. 

For the record, I agree.  The question is whether centralizing discussion in this way would offer benefits that would outweigh the disadvantage of a poorer discussion tool.