Talk pages consultation 2019/Current feedback

This page seeks to document in a precise manner the feedback, both past and current, about talk pages, Flow, and LiquidThreads. Ideally it will eventually contain what about each feature works, what doesn't work, what could be added, how widely each is used, and references. This page will not be used for communication, but rather for organizing points raised via other communication avenues.

What works

 * Finding specific discussions can be done with MediaWiki's search feature.
 * Watching changes and patrolling vandalism can be done with MediaWiki's features to watch article content
 * Compact view
 * Flexibility

Suggestions

 * Archive bots
 * Potential conflict: Korean Wikipedia for instance, prefers archiving to be done by hand


 * Archive prompt
 * Easy prompt to assist in archiving talk pages (eg duration, number of remaining posts, and desired archive box)


 * Avatars
 * Avatars and/or profile photos included in replies can make things less sterile.


 * Create topic
 * Make it clear how and where


 * Link permanence
 * Especially when archived, links to specific discussions break, forcing users to locate the archive and then perform CTRL+F in order to find their desired subject(s)
 * One solution might be when clicking on a link to a section that no longer exists, it no longer redirects to the page but to the search page which includes both the original page as well as the title of the subheading. Of course this would exclude links to articles in the main namespace.


 * Mentions
 * No way to know if you are mentioned in a conversation.
 * Using "@" can help and is intuitive especially when paired with autosuggest.
 * This could also make "where do I post a reply" a moot point


 * Quoting


 * Reply to comment
 * Made difficult for newcomers especially with repeated usage of ":".
 * There is no apparent "reply" feature, as is present on modern platforms.


 * Signatures automatic


 * Thread post notification
 * Make individual threads watchable, rather than the entire page.


 * Time stamps adaptive
 * Shorten the length of time stamps as time goes on to inhibit page bloat.
 * Perhaps dynamically: for instance, anything more than 3 hours old suppresses the minutes and seconds, anything more than two days old suppresses the time of day.


 * Upvoting
 * Or some obvious way to rank or otherwise note how useful (or not) comments and posts are
 * Pairing this with a "sort by votes" can help distill thread contents and make it a quicker read


 * Visual Editor option

Flow

 * Filter open/closed topics


 * Internal search


 * Move topics


 * Topic summary improvement