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The Bizarre and Complex Story of a Failed Wikipedia Software Extension

Posted by timothy on from the mythical-man-month dept.

metasonix writes Originally developed by Wikia coders, "Liquid Threads" was intended to be a better comment system for use on MediaWiki talkpages. When applied to Wikipedia, then each Wikipedia talkpage or noticeboard would become something resembling a more modernized bulletin board, hopefully easier to use. Unfortunately, the project was renamed "Flow" and taken over by the Wikimedia Foundation's developers. And as documented in this very long Wikipediocracy post, the result was "less than optimal." After seven years and millions of dollars spent, even WMF Director Lila Tretikov admits "As such it is not ready for 'prime time' for us."

7 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. I assume the Wikimedia developers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    >...taken over by the Wikimedia Foundation's developers. ... After seven years and millions of dollars spent, ... "As such it is not ready for 'prime time' for us."

    I assume the Wikimedia developers kept reverting each other's checkins for various reasons such as "Commenting needed", "Not codeworthy", and so forth. </tongue-in-cheek>

    1. Re:I assume the Wikimedia developers... by AuMatar · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, they just didn't allow any checkins at all as they were "original research".

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    2. Re:I assume the Wikimedia developers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, the real joke is that someone actually thought "one of the greatest collaborative efforts in history" would somehow NOT to be riddled with politics at every level.

  2. "Millions of dollars spent" / state of Flow by Eloquence · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The article summary speaks of "millions of dollars spent" on a new discussion system for Wikipedia. The article actually tells a very different story -- the LiquidThreads extension started out as a Google Summer of Code project, was funded for a while by an interested third party, and then received a little attention from the Wikimedia Foundation (one designer, one developer) before development was put into maintenance mode. I would ballpark the total money spent around $100-$150K max. Elapsed time does not equate money spent. LQT continues to be in use on a number of projects, but its architecture and UX needed to be fundamentally overhauled.

    Flow, the designated successor to LQT, continues to be in development by a small team, and is gradually being deployed to appropriate use cases. It is now running on designated pages in a couple of Wikipedia languages, and old LiquidThreads pages are being converted over using a conversion script developed by the Flow team. Contrary to the article's claim, WikiEducator upgraded to a recent version of LQT, and will be able to migrate to Flow in future using the conversion script.

    You can give Flow a try in the sandbox on mediawiki.org and see for yourself whether the article's claims are hyperbole or not. Disclaimer: I am the person referenced in the headline of the Wikipediocracy article, so take my view with a grain of salt, as well. ;-)

    1. Re:"Millions of dollars spent" / state of Flow by Eloquence · · Score: 4, Informative

      Hello metasonix! First, congratulations on the successful article submission. In answer to your question, I was referring to LQT development. LQT was put into maintenance mode in early 2011, so of your "10 plus year project", about 7 years elapsed with a little bit of paid effort dedicated to the development of LQT. $150K max spent (not all of it by WMF) on LQT is really a high estimate -- Andrew Garrett, the only dedicated developer, also worked on other projects during that time, including the widely used AbuseFilter extension.

      Flow development kicked off in summer 2013, about 18-19 months of development effort so far by a team that's fluctuated in size but currently comprises three full-time engineers, about half a person's time for UX design and research, a product manager and a community liaison. During that entire timeframe, I would estimate money spent on the project so far at less than $1M. Even if you combine both efforts, "millions of dollars spent" is pure hyperbole, and adding up elapsed time to exaggerate scale and scope of these efforts is equally misleading.

    2. Re:"Millions of dollars spent" / state of Flow by Eloquence · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Hey gl4ss, these are fair points, but I stand by my original estimate, including overhead & travel. A couple of things to keep in mind: 1) Although WMF is based in the SF Bay Area, it is a non-profit, there are no bonuses or stock options, and base comp is good but not as high as you can get elsewhere. We also hire internationally and our teams often include remote folks in regions with different pay scales. For positions like community liaisons, we often hire younger folks who don't get quite as high an hourly rate as an experienced engineer would. 2) Yes, managers need to get involved, there are meeeetings, etc., but our engineering managers tend to be responsible for pretty large groups (20+ folks) since teams working on user-facing features have their own dedicated Product Managers and most of the day-to-day decision making exists at the team level. This reduces the risk of micromanagement and keeps managers focused on supporting teams rather than getting in their way. 3) The delta in compensation between engineering managers and engineers is not as high as you might think.

  3. Can't solve this social problem with an extension by Sarusa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wikipedia editors are highly territorial, infighting, nitpicking, hairtrigger frothing mad. You can't solve that with an extension, as much as you'd like to think that everything is app-able. Software just makes people even more polarized.