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Flow is a planned improvement to discussion and collaboration in the MediaWiki software. The project is currently in the design phase and the Wikimedia Foundation is actively seeking feedback and suggestions about how to make the best possible product for you, our community of contributors.

There are many reasons for us to revamp our discussion and collaboration system, but for now we’re going to focus on three primary use cases:

• Users expect and deserve a modern and intuitive discussion interface: Talk pages—as a discussion technology—are antiquated and user-hostile. Experienced editors lose a lot of valuable time dealing with people who can’t figure out how to reply to messages or who need assistance with things like signing their posts.
• Users are surprised by the cultural norms of the community: Many things about the culture that has grown up around talk pages (such as “talkback” templates or being able to change other people’s comments) are confusing or inefficient.
• We believe that a modern user-to-user discussion system will improve the projects: Better methods for collaboration will improve collaboration, which will help good editors be more productive.

We have set up three “portals” where people can go to get more information and to leave feedback. At these portals, you will find links to detailed user tests, use cases and other kinds of research, as well as visions about what Flow can become.

The portals are:

• On Meta Wiki
• On the English Wikipedia
• On MediaWiki.org

In order to help you get a feel for how Flow might work, we’ve built an interactive prototype. Please note that this is only a demo and is not reflective of the final product, which may look and behave entirely different. Nothing will be saved on the prototype and you can’t really break it so have fun!

Please read more about the Flow prototype, what it can do, what is planned and known issues with it at one of these locations:

• On Meta Wiki
• On the English Wikipedia
• On MediaWiki.org

How can I help?

I’m glad you asked.

We are actively seeking feedback of all kinds from our user community. This is not restricted to our editors — readers are welcome to comment, too! There are many, many use cases and scenarios that we want to account for and we need to know what those are. We’re interested in hearing about anything that is important to you. Your concerns, your enthusiasm, your ideas for features.

It is very important for us that you be involved in helping to design this bold step, so please go to the portal of your choice and get involved in the conversation.

Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation
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There are a considerable number of icons in the visual language of the Wikipedia interface. These symbols play a key role in helping create a familiar space where volunteer contributors can understand and participate in the corpus of free knowledge. Consistent with the DNA of Wikipedia, it is critical to employ imagery and symbols that are sensitive to many cultures, while conveying complex concepts, some of which might be uncommon to the rest of the web 2.0 world.

This challenge is incredibly exciting for the Wikimedia Foundation Design Team. Like everything else, the icons and the visual language used on the Wikimedia projects need to be open source and freely usable, and they should be co-designed with the community.

With this in mind, we are partnering with The Noun Project to help us facilitate an Iconathon, a collaborative design process for the creation of new icons that will work across devices, addressing areas of navigation, action and expression.

The Noun Project has organized workshops across the country to let the public participate in a co-design process and to further increase their understanding of the civic topics they engage with. Previous Iconathons have created public domain symbols for concepts like “human rights,” “food bank,” “electric car,” and “sustainable energy.”

We’re excited to be working with The Noun Project. They share many of the values that inspire our projects and they have an open process that puts the community of users first.

“The Visual Language of Wikipedia” Iconathon will take place on Saturday, April 6th, at our headquarters in San Francisco. We hope you will come out and participate.

Vibha Bamba, Interaction Designer, Wikimedia Foundation

Event Information:
Title: “The Visual Language of Wikipedia” Iconathon by The Noun Project
When: Saturday, April 6th from 10:30am to 4:00pm
Where: Wikimedia Foundation at 149 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
Tickets: Seating is limited. Free tickets are available at http://wikipediaiconathon.eventbrite.com