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Tool to convert pages to Flow should be friendlier/more forgiving
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Description

There is a handy page on mw.o to convert discussion pages to flow. However, since it was developed purely as an internal tool, it is pretty unfriendly and error prone right now. At a minimum, it should have some clear text instructions on the page, explaining:

  • You need to enter a page title, not a URL
  • You probably want to enter a talk page title, not the page title for which you want its talk page to be flow

An example or two would be awesome. And it would be great to better explain how the "initial description" will be used. For that matter, is "initial" description even an accurate description of what that text does?

For that second case (attempting to flow-ify a non-talk page), some kind of warning would be great. But might not be worth implementing, if the instructions are clear enough that it is unlikely to happen. If someone does make that mistake like I did, at least it is reversible.

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You need to enter a page title, not a URL

Yeah, even I made this mistake. We could either show a warning or maybe auto-convert it to a page name (if it's on the same wiki).

You probably want to enter a talk page title, not the page title for which you want its talk page to be flow

There are exceptions, though, e.g. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Feedback (and there are other similar pages). But we could consider this as long as it's a warning, not an error.

An example or two would be awesome. And it would be great to better explain how the "initial description" will be used. For that matter, is "initial" description even an accurate description of what that text does?

It's the description area (under "About this board" and "Edit description") on a Flow board. "Initial" means you can edit it freely later.

We could just remove "initial" if that's better.

@Mattflaschen: Roan said that converting non-talk pages is something that people do, so I don't think auto-convert would be an option. I suppose there could be a checkbox on the page asking "Auto-convert to talk page if necessary?" which would be checked by default, and power users could uncheck it, but that might be even more confusing.

Removing "initial" would probably help. Matching the wording exactly would be ideal, so maybe something like: "Description to be displayed under 'About this board' (NOTE: This can be edited later)"

@Mattflaschen: Roan said that converting non-talk pages is something that people do, so I don't think auto-convert would be an option.

I'm aware of the exceptions. 'auto-convert' was referring to URL->page name, not non-talk pages.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Feedback -> VisualEditor/Feedback

Yes, the one on the left is technically a valid page name, but it's a completely unrealistic one, and I don't know that we need to support it.

Ah yes, autoconverting URL to pagename would be a great improvement. Sorry for not reading more carefully.