Talk:Community Wishlist/Wishes/Automatically showcase talk page open issues on their respective main pages

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thanks

Hey @Klein Muçi thanks for sharing this wish. I can sort of see what you're suggesting, but could you share a few examples of open issues (currently open or resolved) that inspired this wish? JWheeler-WMF (talk) 21:03, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

JWheeler-WMF, yes. This is the example where after having experienced this phenomenon for a while, I thought about the system I'm describing in my wish: Talk:Swedish Sports Confederation (revision 1200523353). Pretty random but still one year later it's still open without any sort of interaction in it or in the article itself about the described issue. Also, my homewiki is the Albanian Wikipedia (SqWiki), a small wiki. In there, talk page messages very, very rarely get any interaction if it's not from an admin actively looking at recent changes and wanting to help (usually just to inform the user that they shouldn't be hoping much for a reply in here, unfortunately). Even big discussion venues can most of the time fail to attract any interaction if some users are not pinged beforehand. "Famous" articles in big wikis aside, because of these situations, I've always felt like the whole "messaging" system in the wiki ecosystem can be improved because many times it can feel like sending messages in bottles in the ocean and just hoping for the best many years later. Wikis lack official staff who we can easily write for help and requests so at least we should try to make it as easy as possible to attract the attention of those (few) volunteering to help. — Klein Muçi (talk) 10:05, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF) (revision 1191531366) This is an old discussion about this which also proposes some possible solutions if that's helpful. — Klein Muçi (talk) 10:13, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Templates

Isn't this what templates like {{More citations needed}} and {{Citation needed}} are for? Nardog (talk) 01:44, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Nardog, I suppose so but I was mostly hoping for a general way to draw attention to all kinds of issues automatically. — Klein Muçi (talk) 21:55, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Not all talk page threads are issues

Would you like to have displayed a count of unsolved threads next to the Talk page link or only threads about issues? Issues would be threads like this or that content is missing or this or that part is problematic because… or a request for media or a request for explanation or a report of a technical/layout problem or a protected page edit request etc. I think it would be more useful if only actual issues are counted. However:

• How would one count these in specific? (natural language processing? users can change the default count that is lastcount+countofnewthreads? sth else?)
• What to do about archived threads? (many threads about issues are archived before they are solved)
• Most Wikipedia articles have open issues but people do not read the talk pages or if they read them they don't know what to do and even if they are solved they are often not marked as solved (via {{Section resolved}}) so adding a count next to them probably won't change much and instead other approaches are needed for facilitating people to look at and solve Talk page threads such as having achievements badges and a count for Talk page threads solved for example.

Prototyperspective (talk) 12:16, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Ideas

I think Prototyperspective mentions it in the section directly above this but one automated solution would be to place the number of threads that have had zero responses in brackets next to the talk page button on article pages. I mean count every thread automatically, no human evaluation. Seems technically feasible. The number stays until at least one response is made to each active thread.

The wider issue seems to be new users not knowing to escalate to the correct venue. In the "Talk:Swedish Sports Confederation" were WikiProject Sweden and WikiProject Sports notified? Sometimes the Help desk needs to be used instead of the talk page, but a new user probably doesn't recognise that.

Is it possible to filter Recent Changes to show only talk pages that have threads with zero responses? This could be another tool to help spot these possible issues. Patrollers could then systematically reply to most threads, escalating or actioning where necessary, clearing the Recent Changes of many of these requests.

Thanks @Klein Muçi for this wish, I think it is an important one. I too, even after many years on projects like Commons suffer from ignored talk page posts. Eg my post at commons:Template talk:RAW is three months old now with no response. Commander Keane (talk) 18:49, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Commander Keane, thank you for the comment! They were not notified. That thought hadn't crossed my mind at all actually in that case, maybe because I wasn't that invested in the subject. But the general idea of incorporating numbers into talk pages is appealing, whether it’s for uncommented or unresolved issues. The archived unresolved issues that @Prototyperspective pointed out also seem like something that needs attention. As I mentioned in my earlier comment, we should work toward changing this “messages in a bottle” atmosphere that dominates many talk pages, tackling it from different perspectives. — Klein Muçi (talk) 22:06, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe every talk page thread could have three states:

1. Zero replies - gets a number next to Talk button
2. At least one reply - automatically considered resolved
3. Has {unresolved} template in the thread - also gets a number next to Talk button.

Using the {unresolved} template would be optional, only added if felt needed.

Then a list of (1) and (3) could be patrolled and messages hopefully come out of the bottle. Commander Keane (talk) 23:00, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

I think you two may be interested in Community Wishlist/Wishes/Do not fully archive unsolved issues on Talk pages. I doubt handling threads with no replies (from users other than the OP) separately would be sufficiently good as lots of unsolved issues get a reply and then get archived and many nonissues get no replies. I don't think people would use such Recent Changes feature as not even people knowledgable/interested in the particular article address the issue. Maybe it needs some change to facilitate more people to read and solve Talk page posts – e.g. something like motivating/engaging badges for solving x numbers of talk page threads or WikiProject statistics of open threads etc. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:04, 20 October 2024 (UTC)