Talk:Tech/News/2014/20

Flow

The point about Flow is difficult to translate, because there is no documentation what the variable is. I also wonder what workflow means in this context. --Nikerabbit (talk) 21:37, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

The problem with Flow is that no one seems to know what workflow actually is. Feel free to translate it any way you like. I'll add documentation for the variable in a moment. odder (talk) 23:07, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

@Nikerabbit: Per Wiktionary, the term as used is translated to the Finish word "työnkulku"; not sure if that helps. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 05:00, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I know how to translate the word, but I do not understand how it fits in the context of Flow. I believe the readers would have even less of an idea. --Nikerabbit (talk) 07:20, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

@Nikerabbit: Then surely the job of Tech/News is to help them find out? Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 07:27, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

@Jdforrester (WMF): If there ever was good documentation on what a Flow workflow is, then we would link to it. There is not. odder (talk) 09:39, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I translated it into "discussion unit" in Japanese, but I'm not sure. mw:Flow/Nomenclature says a "topic" is a "workflow instance", but it doesn't say what a workflow is. whym (talk) 10:47, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

The term workflow as used within Flow is describe a class of things at a high level. Possible workflows to support(eventually) include but are not limited to:

* user conversations

* Request for deletion

* Request for adminship

* General consensus discussions

* Village Pump, Forum, etc.

* AN/I

* Help desk

* Barnstars/Wikilove (and other templates of this variety)

* Block Notices (you've been blocked, click this button to appeal)

A workflow is just the highest level most generic thing Flow deals with, each of the above things and many others will be implemented as individual workflow instances. A flow board is a time sorted list of these workflows performed against a page. Hope that helps. Ebernhardson (talk) 17:52, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I whipped together this list, Workflows, of everything workflow-related that I could find, last year. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:04, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I also translated it literally in French "flux de travail". The way I understood it was that it was to designate a group of "flows" (translated "flux", which inherently has a direction, assumed to be over time, so in this context it is a thread of discussions on an initial topic). The workflow was then understood like a talk page, containing messages and replies (in separate sections or not, it does not really matter)

However in the contect of Flow, you can insert several threads listing topics: if you click on a topic, you get to a page showing the actual messages.

In mediawiki some pages require several distinct talk pages to sort things, and you insert links in a list to reference them and drive peopel to the appropriate discussions. manual maintenance is needed for handlng archives and hide old messages you have already read. Flow streamlines this to avoid maintenance.

If we were using email, a workflow would be a sorting folder in your inbox, or it coud be the sending address of a mailing list, hosting multiple topics with their replies. If you were consulting a web archive of the mailing list, it would allow reordering these messages by main topic. If we were using a classic web forum, we would find a directory of topics with sub-topics: the forum admin creates the major topic sections (wrokflows) in which all other public discussion occur, and where there woucl be separate sets of moderators, or moderator moving some messages from one forum to another to help sort these messages and their associated replies.

So for me the workflow is a meta--topic: a topic of threaded topics. It's something we have in talk pages only by using subpages to handle subdiscussions. The workflow could even be a whole site (except navigational bars and site presentation pages or user account management pages; support pages could be a separate page with its own workflow, using a different publication policy, such as private).

If we were using IRC, a workflow could be a private room (by invitation) or the public room. Some workflows could also be readnly formost users (e.g: a "site annoncements" page). If we wre a blog, the user publising his blog would have his own workflows for his posts, but comments below each post are a separate workflow, unless they are grouped in a single one for discussng a group of blog articles in a series, such as a diaporama with one page per photo or graphics or data tables (e.g.: sites creating comparison benchmarks tycally publush a single workflow split in separate pages for each benchmarked product, plus an intial presentation page and final pages of annexes detailing the compared details of all products and all these pages in the same workflow would show below them the same workflow of visitors messages for the series.

Biut for now I've not seen any use of "worlflows" with Flow in Wikimedia projects that use it, or in any other wiki-based site.verdy_p (talk) 03:29, 13 May 2014 (UTC)