David McCabe's Summer of Code Blog

At last!

2007-10-01T20:39:00.001-07:00

To my surprise, nobody took the initiative to finish Liquid Threads while I was busy with other things. So this summer I had a go at it. It is my great pleasure to announce the first real-world wiki to use Liquid Threads, WikiEducator.

If you want to try Liquid Threads, check out the liquidthreads branch from SVN. (It is kept in sync with the trunk). Then follow the instructions in the file README.liquidthreads. It is still considered beta, so do be careful.

Thank you, Erik Möller, Wikia, COL, and Google.

End of SOC Status Report

2006-08-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

Well, today the Google gig is over. Don't worry; I intend to stick with the project at least until LQT is on the English Wikipedia. The status of the project is:

There is an alpha that works now.
I am refactoring the program; it will be significantly more flexible and maintainable in a week or two when that is finished.
LQT will need to work in multiple modes and configurations. For example, on some sites they don't want nested threads, but on others they need it. With the new design I just mentioned, both groups can be satisfied.
We are scrapping several features, most notably the arbitrary ordering of comments, for the time being. Nobody seems to care about them, they're difficult to protect from abuse, and they can be added later.
I am contemplating how categories or something like them could be used together with saved searches or something like them to make life on Wikipedia a lot easier.

Advice for next year's SOC mentors: Send your students to a conference!

Wikimania

2006-08-03T05:20:00.000-07:00

Here I am at Wikimania! For the first three days, called Hacking Days, we are meeting at the OLPC office. Amazing, amazing place. I am surrounded by famous, brilliant people. The number of wizards here -- not to mention the number of laptops! -- is truly unbelievable. A few months ago I would have envied my present self.

Yesterday we went to SIGGRAPH. More brilliant people and amazing technology. My favorite demo was an interactive, tactile, graphical, digital musical instrument. But there were dozens of amazing demos -- far too many to list them.

Off to Boston!

2006-07-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

I'm busy getting everything ready for Wikimania next week. I'm doing a presentation on LQT August 2nd. So much to do: Implement a couple more features, make sure everything's slick -- no backtraces! -- and prepare the presentation itself. And, on top of that, prepare for travel. Wish me luck!

Brion Vibber told me that we could actually have LQT live on Foundation projects (Wikipedia etc.) by the end of the year! Wheeeeeeee!

Delays. Fun delays, but delays.

2006-07-03T22:00:00.000-07:00

Hello, world.

Since we last met, I have made leaps and bounds with Liquid Threads, but there's still a long ways to go in less than two months, and I still don't feel that LQT is ready for public demoing. However I feel about it, though, the server I was going to host a demo on fell through.

Meanwhile, my Linux installation blew up when I tried to upgrade it. My CD-ROM is broken, so I can't readily reinstall it. It's times like these I'm happy to have automatic nightly backups.

Well, I was going to get a Macbook Pro anyways, so I thought I might as well get one now, now that my desktop is out of commission and would take as long to fix as it would take to migrate to a new computer. So, that's what I did. I'm typing on it now, and it's beautiful. Student discounts and rebates are wonderful inventions. Thank you, Apple, for helping me realize how pathetic Linux-on-the-desktop really is.

However, making everything work on it and transfering my files through a cantankerous router has taken a long time. It's frustrating. At the moment, I can't log into the SVN server and I don't know why, so I thought I'd write this update.

Until next time...

UP FROM THE GRAVE HE ROSE

2006-06-17T21:07:00.000-07:00

Hi folks! Thanks for your comments on the previous posts. I have been drowning in the end of the school year. I'm a little behind schedule, but I'm back now in full swing, and things are looking up. Almost all the pieces are in place for basic functionality. Demos this week. Now, back to coding!

Commencement

2006-05-26T18:53:00.000-07:00

The day after the announcement, I was pretty much dead to the world. The stress and lack of sleep and excitement prevented me from getting anything done. My family was kind enough to take me out to dinner, though.

The new student mailing list already has over 500 messages in 45 threads, most of it drivel (which, I confess, I helped to instigate).

I'm trying to balance SoC and school (which ends June 15th), so no code yet. Hopefully I'll have something neat for you to look at by Monday. At present I'm working out the database schema and figuring out the best way to integrate the code -- MediaWiki's API is, shall we say, multifaceted.

Suggestions on the URL scheme would be most welcome.

Acceptance!

2006-05-24T22:01:00.000-07:00

It was a tiring, nerve-racking day.

Mentors had to send in their choices of students at 8:00, May 22nd. Google said they would announce the winners on May 23rd... time unspecified. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. Half past midnight. And there was much rejoicing. Then, I couldn't sleep a wink.

The Proposal

2006-05-24T21:59:00.000-07:00

LIQUID THREADS: Improving the Talk Page in MediaWiki.

David McCabe
davemccabe you-know-what gmail.com
(my phone number)

SYNOPSIS
========

Improve MediaWiki talk pages by decoupling them from articles; by making the comment a distinct database entity; and by providing a user interface that makes it easy to write, edit, rearrange, and archive comments, and that makes it impossible to get the formatting wrong for threading. Make the transition to the new system as easy as possible for users and site administrators.

MOTIVATION
==========

The current talk page system, while simple, has some major usability problems. First, people often forget to indent their comments correctly, to sign them, and to add headings for new threads. Second, it is difficult to tell what order comments were posted in, or whether a comment has been edited by someone other than its author. Third, old, inactive threads must be manually cleaned up, and then they must be dug up out of the history if anyone wants them again.

Liquid Threads will solve all of these problems, while retaining Wiki sensibilities. Here's how:

DESCRIPTION OF THE SYSTEM
=========================

This project is based on the ideas described here:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LiquidThreads

A Liquid Threads talk page is called a *channel*. Each article can have any number of channels attached to it, and each channel can be attached to any number of articles. This way, discussion from all over the wiki can be easily accessed from the articles that it is relevant to.

Instead of free-form wikitext, channels are populated with *comments*. Each comment is shown with a 'reply' link. Comments are automatically signed. They can be moved around within a thread, within a channel, or between channels. When a comment is moved, its replies move with it. If a thread is moved to another channel, a notice remains pointing to its new location. When someone other than the original author has edited a comment, it is clearly marked, to avoid vandalism.

Instead of watching an entire channel, users can choose to watch only replies and edits to specific threads, or to automatically watch everything that they write. Comments have individual histories, so it is easy to see the edits that have been made to a specific comment, without wading through the history of the entire channel. Threads can be folded up hierarchically.

After a thread has been inactive for a certain time, users may write a summary for it. Once a summary is written, the thread is archived.

RATIONALE
=========

The proposed system would make MediaWiki more complex. While one of the best parts of wiki is its simplicity and transparency, sometimes a little more complexity results in a lot less headache. After all, Wikipedia doesn't use UserModWiki, and I am not typing this proposal into ed(1). The added complexity of Liquid Threads lowers the barrier to wiki collaboration. For while a new user cannot use talk pages correctly without first reading the documentation, basic usage of Liquid Threads is readily discoverable.

Some have proposed that we improve talk pages by adding 'Reply' links while keeping the flat wikitext implementation. This may seem more conceptually compact than Liquid Threads. Quite the opposite: Hacking an understanding of thread structure into the wikitext parser would be far messier than keeping comments separate in the database. It would be easy for users to accidentally confuse the system while editing talk pages. This idea falls into the same trap of manualarity, ad-hocery, and exposure of implementation that plagues the current system.

I have written a prototype which demonstrates just a few of the features of Liquid Threads. You can see it running here:

http://.../

And the source code is here:

http://.../

DELIVERABLES
============

* An implementation of Liquid Threads in MediaWiki, ready for deployment, featuring channels; nested, foldable threads; comments that can be edited and rearranged with individual histories; watches; summaries; and archiving.

* Internal documentation on par with the existing MediaWiki code.

* An implementation that is as separate and non-invasive as is practical, probably as an extension.

* The ability for site administrators to choose between conventional talk pages and Liquid Threads, and to switch easily from one to the other.

* A usage guide similar to those that exist for current MediaWiki features.

* A test wiki.

* A development blog or summary, if desired.

* Publicity for the project.

SCHEDULE
========

I am in school until June 15th, so progress for the first three weeks will be slower, although by no means trifling. After the 15th, I will have no other obligations, and will be able to work on MediaWiki full-time.

Here's my plan:

* Set up a test wiki.

* Work with my mentor to figure out the best database schema to minimize database queries. Devise caching mechanisms and the semantics of thread and channel history.

* If anyone does the 'IM presence', 'Offline reader', or 'Traffic optimization' projects, contact them to make sure that these can be integrated with Liquid Threads in the future. Also make sure that Liquid Threads will work with the Client API that is under development.

* Add the new tables to the database, and write classes for accessing them. Write a page that displays the new tables for debugging, and that shows up as a tab in the MediaWiki user interface.

* Implement the functions currently present in the prototype. June 18.

* Add the remaining features, such as rearranging threads, adding and removing channels, archival, diffs, and composite history. June 30.

* Test the system under heavy loads and optimize as needed. Also correct any design decisions that turn out to be mistakes. July 15.

* Find users to test the system. Use their feedback to fix bugs and improve the user interface. Write documentation and publicity material for site admins. Prepare for release. August 5.

* If time allows, I will work with a site administrator to deploy Liquid Threads on at least one live wiki.

ABOUT ME
========

I am eighteen years old and a second-year student at Clark College in Vancouver, WA. I have been a self-taught programmer for many years, and have contributed to open-source software, especially with the GNOME project, starting about two years ago. I worked for six months at CGI Pro Inc., where my job was to integrate new features into existing applications whose authors were no longer available. Most of the projects used PHP and SQL, and I often worked from home using AIM, SSH, and a VCS. This experience is highly applicable to the Liquid Threads project. I left the company last year to be a full-time student.

I am a long-time Wikipedia zealot, and talk pages have always seemed awkward to me. Therefore, I am eager to improve Wikipedia and other wikis with this new system. Although it never occurred to me before to hack MediaWiki, I'm already looking forward to getting started. This project may turn out to be the first of many.