Talk:Community Wishlist/W162

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Oppose

This is, again, something that should be handled by the community itself. Otherwise we have https://xkcd.com/927/. And there are plenty of existing help venues where they are needed. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 17:21, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

For example there are IRC channels – see Wikipedia:IRC. Maybe adding Matrix would be a good idea. But for both I think it would be better if people posted on Help desks so that if other people have the same problem they can find the solution by searching. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:42, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

It does seem that communities have often gone for IRC channels to fill this need. I personally find IRC to be a poor medium for this purpose: the inability to see previous messages means new users are presented with an intimidating blank box - no context for how they should format messages, how long they might have to wait for a response, or any other social rules that the experienced users may understand. But I agree that it should be up to the communities to decide the best way to go about this for themselves. Eiim (talk) 15:04, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Agree and also IRC doesn't protect people's privacy by revealing their IPs. Maybe you could mention what you said in the wish. However, this doesn't seem much like something that could be implemented at the global or WMF or technical level but is up to volunteers and communities/chapters to just go ahead and set up. If not, some explanation is needed in the wish. Currently, it seems like outside the scope of the Wishlist. And again, having people use fleeting chats instead of help pages and forum-like discussions means the info can't be found well by other users having the same problem and by Wikimedians. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:41, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks @Nataraj for your wish. Regarding an instant chat platform (you call it Matrix) I think it could be an interesting addition to MediaWiki, but needs some careful consideration. Note that every project has a type of Help desk and many use IRC chat rooms. Scroll down to the bottom of wikidata:Help:Contents for examples.

As for mentorship I know it is already implemented on English Wikipedia, see w:Wikipedia:Growth_Team_features#Mentorship. I think smaller wikis may struggle to attract enough mentors though. Commander Keane (talk) 19:44, 20 October 2024 (UTC)