User:Andrewa/Thread mode experiment

This is a work in progress, and not yet ready for promotion. In hindsight it should have gone into a user subpage first, and now has. If you think you can see what I'm working towards, feel free to jump in as some already have. At present it's still a mess cut and pasted from elsewhere, and may never be more than that. TIA. Andrewa 16:50, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

But the method I suggest is to raise a separate issue, and flag it as unthreaded (and not just on your signature) from the start. For the first few, I'd suggest we have two sections, one threaded and one unthreaded, see below. If this works and once a few others seem to be comfortable with the idea, drop the two sections... anyone who wants to can simply add a threaded section.

(of course, the heading above wouldn't be labelled 'proposed' and would be at the normal '==' heading level, and the two below then at '===', and this comment wouldn't be there at all)

Unthreaded

As unthreaded discussion is not the convention on the Pump, I've put this in two sections. Feel free to reply in unthreaded mode here, or in thread mode below. If you do reply below, be very careful referring to anything that what is said in this section, as it may change at any time. Far better, join this experiment, and reply in this section (please read the rules first). Or best of all, post your replies to both sections, to give us a comparison of how the two modes work. Andrewa 06:57, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Anthony DiPierro and I have been having an interesting experiment on my user page. As you may be aware, Anthony claims that it is good for him to freely refactor his comments on pages such as this one, and he has recently been linking his signature to this warning in support of this. On the other hand, I claim that it's not good to mix document mode discussions with thread mode.

We have been discussing the issues this raises at some length, using sometimes document mode, sometimes thread mode and sometimes mixing the two in what we both seem to agree is a mess. An archive of a threaded and semi-threaded discussion is at User_talk:Andrewa/archive2#Thread_mode. Some ongoing discussions in document (unthreaded) mode are at User_talk:Andrewa#Does_unthreaded_mode_work?_(unthreaded). My understanding of the issues has grown enormously in the process, and while neither of us has shifted our basic positions I'm very pleased with progress.

This topic on the Pump is an invitation to others to get involved. There are two things we can explore here, both at the same time. One is I'd like to get input on the issues raised. Another is that I'd like to involve others in a live experiment in using document mode for a Pump discussion.

The two sections will not stay identical. The matter of replying is different in each section, for a start, and the invitation is to reply in either section or both, in either section or both, in an appropriate way.

I don't propose to leave this in the Pump for more than a few replies, so as not to clutter this page. After that I propose to move it to the Meta, where anyone interested can continue both the discussion and the experiment. Andrewa 06:57, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

That's the idea, but there's no way I can post that to the Pump. Still far too long. Hmmmm. Try Meta:Thread mode experiment. Andrewa 06:57, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Threaded

This section is in thread mode - the normal village pump format. If you add to it, please don't modify your comments here once others have replied to them, and you can expect others not to either (regardless of disclaimers they may post elsewhere). So use this section to comment on the issues raised above if you're not comfortable to do so in unthreaded mode. Andrewa 18:38, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It's not called "unthreaded mode" it's called Meatball:DocumentMode, and mixing the two is called Meatball:MixedMode. And comments in Meatball:ThreadMode can be refactored into document mode. Honestly, this question has been discussed in much more depth on the older wikis. -- Tim Starling 00:21, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your input Tim, and your interest. Agree it's been done to death on the older Wikis. Thanks for the links, although as you will see I had these ones already.

Disagree that unthreaded mode and document mode mean the same thing. Unthreaded mode is not all that well defined, deliberately, but includes mixed modes. Document mode doesn't. See the articles en:document mode and en:thread mode and feel free to update (I know you will). Andrewa 21:15, 4 May 2004 (UTC)