Differences between revisions 11 and 12
Revision 11 as of 2009-12-25 10:47:46
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Editor: FranklinPiat
Comment: DebianBug
Revision 12 as of 2014-03-18 08:32:55
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Comment:
Deletions are marked like this. Additions are marked like this.
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 * Try not to be to critical  * Try not to be too critical

ThreadMode pages are a great way to get to DocumentMode, and many pages start out in ThreadMode by someone asking a question on one page, creating a wiki link, and then putting a simple description of the question in the new page. You can tell you're in ThreadMode when you see many signed comments in a row, or even in a series of nested paragraphs. Heavy signing is a good indicator of ThreadMode. If you find a page in ThreadMode that appears to have come to a resolution, it may be time to refactor it into DocumentMode.

For more on this, see:

There's a lot of good meta-wiki stuff in WikiWikiWeb that would be pointless to try and reproduce here.


Elements of good WikiStyle for ThreadMode pages

  • Sign your comments. It helps people understand the flow of the thread.
  • For long discussions between 2 or 3 people, use indented lists for replies (see below for an example). This is like a newsgroup thread.
  • For more people, try signing at the beginning, like a script. Don't go back and reply under specific points, but just comment at the end. This is closer to a real-life or chat room/IRC discussion.
  • When the discussion starts to wrap up, strive for synthesis and summarization. ThreadMode should almost always lead to DocumentMode.

  • Try not to be too critical
  • Avoid sarcasm, unless it helps the discussion


Sample Thread with bullets

  • I can't get 'cheese' to compile --DebUser

    • Did you try it with the --foo options to configure? --DebDevel

  • Yes. It still errors out with

      Gah!  Unknown option:
       foo
      What are you, stupid?
  • I don't think that is a very nice thing to say, either. --DebUser

    • Weird. I'll look into it. --DebDevel

      • Try --extra-opts ... it worked for me. --OtherUser

  • That's it! Thanks
    • I'll add that to README.Debian ... Thanks to both of you.

Notice that after a while, indent level served as a signature. If you're always consistent, this can work OK.


Sample thread with pre-signing

DebUserA: I can't get 'cheese' to compile

DebUserB: Me too! What's the deal with --foo ?

DebDevA: Yep. That's completely broken. Did you file a bug?

DebDevB: See 123456

DebUserA: I think I found it. Line 47 of debian/rules has a typo

  ./configure --extra-otps --foo

needs to be

  ./configure --extra-opts --foo

DebDevA: Thanks! I'll make the change and upload.

DebUserA: Excellent! Thanks to all.