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Disable Flow/Structured Discussions from all namespaces, except for user talk pages, on Catalan Wikipedia
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Description

We would like to disable the Flow/Structured Discussions' extension from all namespaces of the Catalan Wikipedia, except for users who have it enabled on their user talk page (beta feature). It should be noted that we would like to maintain the history of the discussions that have taken place with the Flow extension.

In the past, a similar task has been performed using the following code: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/EFLW/browse/master/maintenance/convertToText.php.

One concern that has been raised during the discussion is what will happen numerically with the contributions of users in the "Topic:" namespace. It would be helpful to investigate this and provide guidance on how to address this issue.

The request for this task comes from the consensus reached in this discussion: https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tema:Xfpbz5563t5n7dvb.

"After 22 days since the proposal was presented, a clear consensus has emerged. There are 7 positions in favour of disabling the Flow/Structured Discussions' extension from all namespaces except one, and one user who has not taken a position but has raised some concerns about the transformation process. The consensus is broad enough to move forward with the initial proposal."

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Event Timeline

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald Transcript

Thank you for your request, @KRLS.

Some initial work is conducted around T332022: [Epic] Undeploying StructuredDiscussions (Flow). We don't know yet when this will start, but it could be considered as a project for the upcoming fiscal year (that starts July 1st).

Regarding how to deal with existing Flow/SD content, we would work on converting boards into wikitext talk pages, especially on keeping History intact, a must-have for your community that is not covered by ConvertToText. These conversions whis would be done for all concerned wikis during a dedicated time during the future sunset.

As the first possible action, your community's admins can manually archive boards, by moving pages and protecting them. They would remain available for consultation, but no new topics would be created there. I know it is not yet what your community asks for, but it would be a first step until we convert everything. What do you think?

On our side, we plan to prevent new activations on talk pages: T248309: StructuredDiscussions (Flow): Prevent users from enabling Flow on their user talk page (beta feature). Your community wished to allow users who have Flow/SD enabled on their user talk page, which is covered by the prevention task. It also means that no new user could use the Beta feature to activate a new board. It is what your community had in mind as well?

Based on your message, I believe we could establish the following roadmap:

  1. Disable the creation of pages with Flow/Structured Discussions in namespaces where it is currently enabled by default. For instance, in the "Viquipèdia Discussió:" (Wikipedia Talk:) namespace, creating a new discussion thread requires the use of Flow/Structured Discussions.
  2. Once the above step is completed, admins will migrate those pages with Flow content to subpages, allowing them to be converted to wikitext content in the future.
  3. Within the context of task T332022, you will provide the mechanism to convert all Flow subpages to Wikitext while preserving their history intact.

T248309 is beyond the scope of the current community consensus, but I will refer it to the community to see if we want to expand it.

I just sent a message to Catalan Wikipedia, in the context of T346108: [EPIC] IP Masking: StructuredDiscussions (Flow)/LiquidThreads Community discussion.

In short, we encourage the community to stop using Flow/Structured Discussions for all conversations, as this extension will be removed from the wikis at some point.