where did "supporting reference content" mandate go?

Thanks for the invitation. I have already been offering opinions at Talk:Emerging strategic priorities/ESP 3 key questions#Supporting Reference Content (and elsewhere), where I have suggested answers to some questions, sought clarification of the purport of others. Perhaps the loose coupling between ESP questions and questions in task force mandates is a source of confusion. Anyway:
Given that prior analysis of the encompassing ESP raises the question whether Wikimedia should support this specific type of content, and includes a finding (non-finding?) that there is no data showing the relevance of this specific type of project to Wikimedia's mission, there may be a need for more explicit resolution than simply taking it off the table.

You're right about the loose coupling. It's a constant challenge to try not to let content diverge too much on this wiki. The transition to LiquidThreads has made this kind of thing a bit more difficult, because LiquidThreads does not support importing pre-existing Talk threads. Thoughts on how to improve this?

You make some excellent points about framing. I responded at Talk:Emerging strategic priorities/ESP 3 key questions#Supporting Reference Content, but I'll repeat the point here. Expansion is probably the wrong framing. Moreover, one of the key questions we should think seriously about is reduction.

• Re. Divergence – I posted some thoughts at the Village Pump.
• Re. LiquidThreads – It also does not support structured discussion very well. This has been raised at LiquidThreads Feedback a couple times (e.g. [1]) but I don't think the development team sees the value in it yet.
• Re. Framing – The questions in the task force mandate are better framed than the ESP questions (some of which look like leading questions with ulterior purpose) but could probably be better still. I have some opinions on this that I will add to the ESP questions, but it may make an even greater muddle of what is already there.

I followed up to your thread on Village Pump about Divergence. I'm very concerned about this, and I want to move to a solution quickly.

Regarding LiquidThreads: You can still edit Talk pages, and so structuring can happen that way. In other words, people can create subheaders and point to specific threads. I do get your overall point, though. The great potential for LiquidThreads (different from traditional forums) is the integration between wiki and forum capabilities. The ability to refactor a conversation is one of those.