Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Archive/Modernize talk page format

Random proposal ►◄ Archive The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

Modernize talk page format

N Outside the scope of Community Tech; currently being working on as part of the Talk pages project

Problem: Talk page discussions are often fragmented with unsigned comments, over-indenting and format problems, especially on mobile.
Who would benefit: Everyone.
Proposed solution: Change the talk page format to a thread format (like Reddit) so no indentation is needed and restrict the use of Wiki Markup in talk pages so it would not be burdened by problematic formatting.
More comments:
Phabricator tickets:
Proposer: WikiAviator (talk) 06:19, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

This is probably too big a problem to be tackled by the team. Structured Discussions (ex-Flow) is trying to achieve this, but meets resistance in certain communities. NMaia (talk) 10:36, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for letting me know. After reading WP:FLOW, I can forsee great hurdles of introducing Flow Wiki-wide since en-wiki even uninstalled Flow back in 2016. However, I think that it would serve as a more efficient tool in the future and Wikimedia should provide more features in flow and facilitate a smoother transition (archiving old discussions etc.) to Flow for different wikis. This topic is worth discussing but we'll have to observe longer to see what the consensus in Meta is. WikiAviator (talk) 13:29, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, a quick fix would just be to add a link that generates at the end of each signature/edit that generates a reply button. This then brings the person wishing to reply into the editor with a comment indented one more than the previous user and an auto generated tilde signature. Shouldn't be too hard, but I'm not familiar at all with the Wikipedia Backend Regicide1 (talk) 00:21, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm gonna phrase this as a proposal actually Regicide1 (talk) 15:52, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: install the Discussion Tools or MediaWiki's Support Desk. Scarecroe (talk) 21:27, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Neither allow full use of all wikitext editing functions. This is too great of a sacrifice just to get indentation and signatures. Talk pages are used to illustrate exactly what people would like to see in articles. Tables for example. Templates. All wikitext functions. Crippling functionality of talk pages also cripples articles. Adding a reply link to all signatures by default would be a lot simpler solution.

A warning (before a talk page post can be saved) about a missing signature would solve that problem. It wouldn't automatically add a signature since many edits do not require a signature on talk pages. Formatting, minor typos, etc..

It would be nice if the Visual Editor could edit sections by themselves. Then the Visual Editor could be allowed on talk pages. As long as the Visual Editor is restricted to section editing only then I would support it as an addition to the wikitext editor on talk pages. Otherwise the Visual Editor tries to change stuff in other talk sections without asking. Tables for example. Newbs wouldn't notice it. Experienced editors may not catch it either since we don't regularly use "show changes". --Timeshifter (talk) 01:22, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As well as disagreeing with this specific proposal for the reasons above, it's also going to be running directly counter to a current major project. There's no way that's in scope. I'd also note that the Wishlist could not be viewed as consultation equivalent to the Talk Page Discussions consultation that is viewed as the gold standard of WMF consultations (would that they always did it that way!) Nosebagbear (talk) 14:55, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
mw:Talk pages project (mentioned here as Discussion Tools) is a direct result of last year's global consultation. The community did not want to resurrect Flow, they wanted to keep talk pages with wikitext and all the magic stuff. --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 15:24, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Add a functionality that allows for automatic formatting of response, with autosigning and indentation. This would add a response link to all signatures, that when clicked takes the user into the editor and both indents them one more than the comment to which they are replying and adds their signature. This should help at least address the messiness of talk pages, but other than that I actually like the current talk page.

I think a solution that both improves the talk page flow and supports Wikitext is to let editors use Wikitext in their own comments, while comments from other users are only allowed to be altered by administrators. That would let people who want the talk page to be simple to use normal text while preserving Wikitext elements (tables, templates etc). It may be a good idea to introduce the ability for admins to lock old topics instead of archiving them (like those technical support forums). WikiAviator (talk) 08:06, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Whoa! Isn't this page getting off-track or messy or something? We're having two or three proposals in one page. Furthermore, the term "modernize" looks too broad to me. George Ho (talk) 21:28, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────────────┘

It's nice to see this lively discussion! Issues with talk pages are well-known. Repeating what others have said: That's why the Talk pages project was started. They spent roughly a year consulting with the community. Some of the ideas pointed out here are already in development, such as DiscussionTools (which adds a [reply] link, auto-indents and auto-signs). When this is all completed, I think you will see something much closer to modern chat systems such as seen on Reddit. So hang tight :)

As written, this proposal is too broad and not actionable by our team so I am going to archive it. We might be able to accept some ideas for the Talk pages project, but we'll have to make sure it doesn't conflict with any of their existing plans. Thanks for participating in the survey, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 00:22, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]