Talk pages consultation 2019/Phase 1 report/en

The 2019 Talk pages consultation (TPC) has reached the end of Phase 1: a global consultation on how contributors use wiki talk pages, and the problems that people experience. This report summarizes what people have said and what we've learned, proposes a direction for the project, and proposes specific questions to explore in Phase 2. (August 2019: The Phase 2 report is out.)


 * by the Talk Pages Consultation team: Danny Horn, Benoît Evellin, Sherry Snyder, Thomas Meadows and Marshall Miller.

Introduction
A wikitext talk page isn't made out of software; it's a collection of cultural conventions that are baffling to newcomers and annoying for experienced editors. Counting colons to indent a reply properly, using tildes to sign your name, having to watch an entire talk page instead of the section you're participating in, not having an easy reply link – these are headaches for everyone.

At the same time, there are many things that wikitext talk pages do well. The empty edit window has given people the freedom to invent templates and techniques that are extremely flexible and adaptable. Conversations can be reorganized by anyone, at any time. Links to diffs and old revisions show what's been done on a page, when, and by whom. The functionality that helped people collaborate on millions of encyclopedia articles for 17 years shouldn't be dismissed casually.

Wikimedia Foundation product teams have worked on on-wiki communication tools before, including LiquidThreads (started in 2006) and Flow/Structured Discussions (started in 2012). Both of these projects have been used successfully on many wikis, although they've also both been heavily criticized, and neither has gained wide acceptance on many of the largest wikis.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis: to ask questions, to resolve differences, to organize projects, and to make decisions. Communication is vital for the depth and quality of our content, and the health of our communities. We believe that this project is essential for us to reach our goal of freely sharing the sum of all knowledge.

The global Talk pages consultation began in March 2019 with Phase 1 discussions hosted on 20 wikis and usergroup spaces. This included Wikipedias in 15 languages, as well as Commons, Wikidata, two Wiktionaries, and an in-person user meeting. These discussions were summarized by a member of each community, and the TPC team read all of the on-wiki discussions. The team also conducted two rounds of user tests on UserTesting.com, with people who read Wikipedia a lot, but who haven't contributed because they don't know how.

Phase 1 ended at the end of April, with this report being published in May. Below is a brief summary of our findings, a proposal for the project direction, and a list of questions for Phase 2 discussions. This is followed by a longer and more detailed review of the discussions and user tests.

The basics
There's universal agreement that three basic elements of wikitext talk pages need to be improved: replying, indentation and signatures. For new users, these basic mechanics are confusing and off-putting. Even very experienced users sometimes make mistakes with indentation and signatures. To improve talk pages, we need to add an easy tool for replying, and make indentation and signatures automatic. (See #Indentation, #Replying and #Signatures below.)

Experienced contributors
Very active contributors who participate in complex discussions and workflows favor the flexibility of an open, unstructured wikitext talk page. For those users, an open wikitext page is liberating. It allows them to change the structure of a discussion or page to respond to the needs of the moment. They have a strong desire to keep continuity with the existing wikitext system. Editors agreed with this view at many wikis, including at wikis that have been using Flow. (See #Stability and #Wikitext below.)

There are many other features that experienced contributors would like to see added to talk pages, including:
 * The ability to watch specific discussions, so that users can follow one conversation instead of seeing notifications for every change made to an article or the rest of the talk page. (#Watchlist)
 * A more consistent archiving and search function, to help users find previous conversations on a specific topic. (See #Archiving and #Searching below.)
 * A more consistent notification (ping) function, to make it easy to alert specific people about a discussion, and easy to receive clear notifications both on- and off-wiki. (#Notifications)
 * A way to view the history of a specific conversation, especially if that conversation has moved to an archive. (#History)
 * The ability to use talk pages fluently on a mobile device. (#Mobile users)

At the English Wikipedia, some editors mentioned metadata templates. These are used on article talk pages to display instructions, warnings, quality ratings, WikiProject affiliations, and other information about the article. Other wikis use similar tools. This topic is important, but it didn't get specific attention in Phase 1. We'll ask for further information about it in Phase 2. (#Metadata)

New contributors
New contributors find unstructured wikitext talk pages confusing and difficult to use. The conversation tools that they've learned to use on the internet are very different from the tools that we provide. This difference discourages people from participating and becoming active community members.

In addition to the on-wiki discussions, we ran new user tests with ten potential newcomers. All of them are very familiar with reading Wikipedia and expressed interest in learning how to edit. In these tests, we observed the following:


 * All of the users struggled to find talk pages. Most thought that clicking "" in an article section heading would lead them to a discussion forum about that section. When we asked them where they would go to ask a question about editing the article, only one out of ten noticed the "" tab at the top left of the page (in English, a left-to-right wiki). They generally searched in the upper right of the page, thinking that the "" link (for their own user talk pages) was the right place to ask a question.
 * When the test directed them to the "" tab, all of the users expected to see a typical message board or a discussion forum. Many were confused by the structure of the talk page. The similarity between the visual design of the article and the talk page led them to assume that each section in the article corresponded to a section on the talk page.
 * The users struggled with "the basics" described above: replying, indentation and signatures. Some users thought that the "" link in a user's signature was the reply button. Only three of ten could figure out how to add a signature. Most of the users could figure out how to use colons for indentation from looking at previous posts.
 * This test was done with copies of talk pages from the English Wikipedia. Article talk pages there often contain templates about the article (example). For most users, the templates at the top of the talk page seemed out of place. Several users became so focused on the template boxes that they didn't scroll down to the discussion without being prompted; they seemed to believe that the templates themselves were the full extent of the talk page. (See New user tests for more.)

These findings were echoed by comments in the on-wiki discussions. New users reported that responding on a talk page was confusing, and that confusion leads many users to give up. Many experienced users said that newcomers struggle with the current design and functionality, and that it can be a barrier to participation. (#Newcomers)

Major themes
During this process, two major themes have emerged.


 * Clear design and appropriate tools: Right now, article pages and talk pages are very similar in their appearance and functionality. That appearance is misleading and makes it more difficult for people to learn how to use talk pages correctly. People are meant to use a talk page in a different way than an article; it's a different form of content. A core principle of product design is that the tool should help the user understand what they're supposed to do. It should be easy to use a product correctly. A good product design minimizes the opportunities for users to make mistakes. While experienced wiki contributors have learned to live with limited product design – and are justifiably proud of the workarounds they've developed to compensate – it's not fair to allow badly designed tools to be a barrier to participation for knowledgeable and passionate people who want to join the communities and contribute knowledge.
 * Features vs Flexibility: The desire for talk page improvements is not limited to newbies. In fact, experienced contributors are the ones who know best how inadequate the existing tools really are. Experienced users want to participate in a single discussion on an active talk page, without wasting time looking at irrelevant edits in other sections on the page. Experienced users want to be able to find discussions easily and quickly, even if the discussions have been moved to an archive. In order to provide these features, the system needs to be able to tell what "a discussion" is – that this specific part of the page is a single discussion, and separate from other edits on the same page. That may require making some changes that limit the endless flexibility of an open wikitext page. Those changes need to be carefully considered and agreed upon, and changes that limit flexibility need to connect to a visible, positive improvement in functionality. That's what we want to discuss in Phase 2 of this consultation: How should we approach finding that balance between long-requested features and flexibility?

Proposed product direction
Based on these findings, we propose that wikitext talk pages should be improved, and not replaced.

Experienced contributors in the larger communities have built a very large number of important workflows based on the ability to manipulate wikitext, and the list of use cases is long and intimidating. LiquidThreads and Flow both involved replacing talk pages with a new system, which then had to handle all of those use cases before they were fully adopted. In complex ecosystems like this, it's better to start with a product that works (called a "minimum viable product"), and then make improvements that can be built and released over time, learning more with each release. As flawed as wikitext talk pages are, they've powered wiki discussions for more than 15 years, and that's a minimum viable product.

Our idea is to build a new design on top of wikitext talk pages that changes the page's default appearance and offers key tools – the "clear design and appropriate tools" described above. This new design should communicate to the user that this is not a content page, and help the user interact appropriately with the tools. This should include clear signals for how to start a new discussion, and to respond to an existing discussion or to a specific message within that discussion. It should add the signature automatically, and place the message in the correct nesting order.

In order to keep consistency with the existing tools, this new design will be a default experience that existing users can opt out of. With some caveats discussed below, it should be possible for users to keep the view that they currently have, and work in wikitext instead of using the new tools.

The caveats: as we said above in "Features vs Flexibility", improving talk pages may require small-to-medium changes in wikitext conventions and practices.

For example:


 * To build the ability to watchlist a single discussion, the system will have to be able to tell the difference between one discussion and the next. The page can't just be a pile of unconnected edits. That might mean changing the wikitext convention for a discussion header. Maybe editors would type  instead of , or  . (These examples are purely for illustration, not actual suggestions.) Experienced people would still be able to use wikitext, but they'd have to learn a new convention.
 * To make the new features work, and not interfere with non-discussion pages, it may be necessary to specify where they are enabled. We could have them work only on pages in the "talk" namespaces (such as,  ,  , etc.). If so, then some existing project-wide discussion pages (such as the deletion discussions at some wikis) would have to relocate from   to   pages, to be able to use these tools. Another possibility is that the features work automatically in the talk namespaces, and that people could turn them on for other individual pages with a wikitext magic word. Or maybe they'll work anywhere, as long as you use the   prefix. (Again, purely for illustration.)
 * To build the ability to move a discussion to an archive without breaking links to it, it may be necessary to create a unique ID for each discussion. This could mean that you need to use one of the new tools to create a new thread, merge two threads, or archive an old thread.
 * To improve page history, we may have to make some decisions. Some experienced contributors talked about the need for a complete history for the whole page. Others emphasized the need for a thread history, for individual discussions. (Right now, wikitext talk pages have a page history but not a thread history; in Flow, it's the other way around.) It would be ideal to provide both page history and thread history. We'll have to think and talk about how to make that possible.

The intention is to only make changes that are necessary, in order to enable functionality that's worth making the change. Ideally, the result should be approximately the same amount of work or less for contributors. For example, if you want to move a discussion from one page to another without breaking people's watchlist, you might need to click a new "move discussion" link and enter the name of the target page, so the system can keep the permalink active. That would be a new habit to learn, but moving a thread by cutting and pasting wikitext takes just as long.

The inspiration for this approach was the eager adoption of the ping feature, which was created around six years ago and is now widely used by experienced users. To send someone a notification that you'd like them to look at a discussion, you have to post their user name in brackets, or use a specific template, such as  or. But the ping only works if you sign that edit with. If you misspell the person's name, then you have to fix the error, and sign the message again, on a new line. That's a new set of wikitext habits to learn and remember, but lots of people have happily switched their habits, because it enables a feature that's incredibly helpful.

The adoption of the ping feature demonstrates that it's possible to make widely accepted small-to-medium changes in wikitext conventions, as long as we can find that balance between the trouble it takes to learn and use the new convention, and the value that users get from a new feature. It will take serious thought and discussion to find this balance for each stage of the project. We're willing to think and talk and try new things, in order to make talk pages easier to learn and use. We hope that many of you are willing to join us as we figure out how to make this work.

Questions for Phase 2
August 2019: The Phase 2 report is out.

Posting this report marks the end of Phase 1 for the Talk pages consultation, and kicks off Phase 2, which will be a new round of discussions.

An important part of Phase 2 is to hear your responses to the proposed product direction. That can begin right now on the talk page of this report, for people who would like to share their thoughts, ideas, and questions there. We will also ask groups that participated in Phase 1 to tell us what they think.

In the Phase 2 discussions, we're asking the following questions:
 * 1) What do you think of the proposed product direction?
 * Context: The Wikimedia Foundation proposes building a new, clearer design on top of existing wikitext talk pages. It will offer simpler tools for replying, indentation and signatures. You could continue to use wikitext on talk pages, if you prefer that. It should also be possible to participate in a discussion without using wikitext.
 * Question: What do you think of this product direction?
 * 1) Marking separate discussions
 * Context: People want to watch individual sections on the talk page. They want better notifications, archiving, and search. To do any of this, we may need to create a more structured definition of what counts as a single discussion. This may mean making changes to the wikitext conventions on a talk page. For example, we may create a new way that discussion headings look in wikitext, or a new link that you need to use to create, rename or split a thread.
 * Question: What are the advantages and disadvantages of that approach?
 * 1) Helping newcomers find the talk pages
 * Context: Newcomers have difficulty finding talk pages. During user tests, only one person out of ten found the  tab. Most testers looked for a  tab on the opposite side of the page, where all of the other tabs and links are. Many people also expected to see links to discussions about specific sections in the article. We may want to move the link to the talk page to the opposite side of the article page. We might add discussion functionality connected to individual sections.
 * Question: What are the advantages and disadvantages of making the connection between article content and discussions more visible?
 * 1) Where to show discussion tools
 * Context: Currently, many wikis have community discussion spaces in the project namespace (  or  ), rather than in a talk namespace (  or  ). The project namespace is often used for village pumps/cafés, noticeboards, and some workflows, such as Articles for deletion. The system will need to know where discussions happen, so that it can display the new tools in those discussions, and not display them on other pages. There are several potential ways to do this. One of them is to move all discussions to a talk namespace.
 * Question: What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing that?
 * 1) History tradeoffs
 * Context: Sometimes, you need to see the history of the entire page. Other times, it would be more helpful to see the history of only a single discussion thread. It would be ideal if we could provide both, but we're not sure how to do that.
 * Question: What are the advantages and disadvantages of having a complete page history or a specific thread history?
 * 1) Metadata location
 * Context: Some wikis place templates at the top of article talk pages. These may show instructions, warnings, or FAQs. They may hold page quality information, link to relevant WikiProjects, or identify past activities. Many new users are confused by finding non-discussion material at the top of an article talk page. It would be helpful to move some or all of that content somewhere else on the page, or under a different tab.
 * Question: What are the advantages and disadvantages of that approach? Which templates are crucial for the proper use of a discussion page, and which could be moved somewhere else?

The rest of the report continues below with detailed findings, but first, here's how you can participate in Phase 2 as part of your local community, or as an individual.

Communities can sign up to host a discussion about the Phase 2 questions at .

Here are the current consultations:



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Check to see if your community is hosting a discussion -- and if not, please sign up and create one on your wiki! We'll ask the hosts to write a summary for the local discussions by 15 June 2019.

To participate as an individual, please think about the six questions above; you can post your answers at Talk pages consultation 2019/Individual feedback#Phase 2 questions.

Phase 1: Process
''Note on translations: The discussion quotes below have been machine-translated into English, and posted in both the original language and English translation. This is a long report, and we don't expect that volunteer translators will have time to translate the English text. We're very grateful to the translators who are working on translating the sections above. Thank you!''

The goal for Phase 1 of the Talk pages consultation was to collect information about how people in the movement communicate with each other. Below is a description of the process, followed by a close look at the discussion results.

On-wiki discussions
Overall, approximately 450 editors, contributors, program organizers, and other people in the movement shared information with the team.

New user testing
In addition to reaching out to existing contributors, we also wanted to incorporate the perspectives of newcomers. These people represent the future Wikimedians who aren't yet part of a community, but whom we hope will start contributing. They may come from different cultures and have different expectations of technology than existing Wikimedians. We don't want our communication tools to keep them away.

In order to try to understand how new users feel about the current state of communication on wiki, we used UserTesting.com. UserTesting.com hires people who record their experiences, reactions, and thoughts while they test software. For these tests, we recruited ten people who have never participated in wiki discussions. They recorded themselves trying out Wikipedia article talk pages for the first time.

We wanted our testers to reflect the sort of people who would be likely to encounter talk pages. That would mean a certain amount of technical literacy, familiarity with Wikipedia, and to be someone who might want to edit. To narrow to those people, we asked a series of screening questions, such as "How often do you look something up on Wikipedia?", "Have you ever engaged in a discussion with other users on Wikipedia?", and "If you have not edited Wikipedia in the past, what would you say is the main reason why you have not edited?" We included only people who were familiar with Wikipedia and who seemed likely to become Wikipedia editors in the future.

A summary of these results, plus information from the on-wiki discussions about newcomers, is on this page at #New contributors. For a detailed description of these tests and what we observed, see the page on New user tests.

Results of on-wiki discussions
The purpose of Phase 1 of this consultation was to collect information on how people use talk pages, and the problems they run into. To start the conversations, we asked:


 * 1) When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you? Why?
 * 2) How do newcomers use talk pages, and what blocks them from using it?
 * 3) What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
 * 4) What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to technical limitations?
 * 5) What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?

Approximately 450 users participated in discussions hosted on 20 wikis and usergroup spaces. This included Wikipedias in 15 languages, as well as Commons, Wikidata and two Wiktionaries. People also participated on the central Talk pages consultation page, and another page set up for individual feedback. The consultation team read all of the discussions (using machine translation where necessary), and sorted responses into themes.

There were strong themes that came up often, which are summarized in the following table. The frequency of comments is estimated on a seven-point scale, going from ✎ (some people mentioned it) to ✎✎✎✎✎✎✎ (a very popular topic). It is based on the number of terms used, how often, in which context and also on the overall feeling from community summaries. This isn't a scientific classification, but it helps to summarize the feedback.

All comments have been translated into English, mostly using machine translation. The original text is included. There may be errors in the translations; please feel free to correct a translation if you find errors.

Indentation
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎✎✎✎✎✎

There were dozens of complaints about counting colons to create the appearance of indentation. This was the most frequent complaint. Experienced editors find it clunky and difficult, and it is even harder for new editors.

All other communication systems on the internet manage to represent the messages posted by different users as individual messages, without needing the users to set a visual indentation level by hand. Editors of all levels of experience and ability would like to see this simplified and standardized.

Some solutions were proposed, including offering Flow or a similar system, scripts that automatically count and insert the correct number of colons. Some editors talked about replacing colons with some other wikitext code (perhaps typing  to indicate indentation instead of , or perhaps creating a method for clearly marking both the start and stop of a comment) as a way to solve the wikitext discussion system's accessibility problems.

Below are some representative quotations from participants in the Phase 1 consultation. They discuss the desire for automatic formatting, the need to focus on the content of the comment, and the confusion and annoyance the current system causes, as well as HTML semantics and accessibility.

Many individual comments related to more than one theme. Comments about indentation often addressed #Replying, #Design, and the use of #Wikitext as well.

Replying
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎✎✎✎✎✎

A common challenge for new users is figuring out where and how to reply to messages. Modern internet users are used to typing into a text box to reply, since this is the model used on other websites. Typing directly under someone else's message, in the same way that a Wikipedia editor might add a new paragraph at the end of an article, is a very unusual model for communication.

Experienced users also have trouble with this on long, complex discussions. Editors sometimes want to be able to reply directly to a comment that's in the middle of a thread, but this requires scanning a window full of wikitext, finding the right spot to add the comment, and using the correct indentation. People also use varying ways to respond to a particularly long or multi-point comment.

These quotations from Wikipedia editors represent the common themes related to replying to an existing discussion: although a precisely formatted large discussion can be followed logically when you're reading, when you are replying to a free-form discussion on an unstructured wikitext page, it can hard to find the right place to add your comment and to quote or otherwise indicate which comment or sentence you're replying to. Editors want a tool that allows them to reply in the correct place, with the normal formatting.

Comments about replying often overlapped with concerns about #Indentation and #Newcomers.

Signatures
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎✎✎✎✎✎

Many users reported that manually "signing" pages by typing  at the end of a typed message is unusual and off-putting. No participants defended the current signature process as an ideal approach. New user testing also identified this system as a stumbling block.

Other related problems include people using signatures that don't correspond to their usernames. Some editors object to distracting decorative elements, such as colored backgrounds or images included in signatures.

These typical comments from participants discuss the unfamiliarity, the non-trivial efforts needed to correct for it, the confusion, the special difficulties for people typing on mobile devices, and the advantages that Flow has in being designed to automatically sign every message.

Stability
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎✎✎✎✎

Many established, highly active editors expressed a desire to minimize apparent changes. They did not exclude having some improvements made, but they wanted any new approaches to be fully compatible with what they're already used to. People who favored stability often commented on the flexibility offered by using blank, unstructured pages.

Archiving
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎✎✎✎

Most of the current archiving systems involve copying and pasting older discussions to another page ("archive") for long-term storage. On the largest wikis, this is usually done by bots on some pages, and by hand on others. In smaller communities, it's usually done by hand on all pages. This breaks page histories (for example, the comment is in, but the page history is left in  )  and links to the original discussion, which still point to the original location.

To reduce some of these problems, some wikis use alternative structures, such as creating a new discussion sub-page for each day/week/month. This usually requires a bot to maintain it, and it makes it hard for people to watch new discussions. Others manually archive central discussions by topic, in the hope that people will be able to find relevant discussions more easily.

The quotations here highlight some of the problems that users have encountered: broken archiving bots, different systems on different pages and different wikis, and finding discussions that previously happened on that page.

This point is related to #History and to #Visibility.

Notifications
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎✎✎✎

The Echo Notifications system has become one of the most popular new software features the Wikimedia Foundation has designed, because it helps experienced contributors communicate more smoothly. Some editors have suggested more extensive notifications, such as the ability to get a message on your phone when someone posts a note on your user talk page, a way to triage notifications, a way to know if a message has been read, and a way to invite someone to a conversation.

The sample quotations here describe making it easier to "ping" (notify) a user during a discussion, the difficulty of following discussions, the inability to find out about messages without first visiting a wiki page, having routine notices mixed up with active discussions, not knowing whether your message was read, a clearer way of requesting an answer, and the need to contact and coordinate work by multiple people, such as members of a user group, WikiProject, or other team.

Newcomers
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎✎✎

Most of the participants in the on-wiki consultation were highly active, highly experienced editors, leading one of them to comment on the irony of "a discussion about talk pages, on a talk page, advertised on talk pages", since that format would bring in comments from people who are able to use this format. Indeed, comments from new and occasional contributors expressed somewhat different concerns, and experienced editors expressed their concerns about how newer editors were struggling with the current system.

Most newcomers to Wikipedia are already regular users of other websites and/or social media apps. The conversation tools that they have already learned to use are very different from the tools we provide. Our software is perceived as difficult and overly technical to use (even for users with technical experience), obsolete, or counter-intuitive. Current practices, like manual indentation and signing, do not feel like natural behaviors to newcomers.

The quotations here express feelings of exclusion, confusion, and frustration, a desire for a more modern approach (for example, automatic indentation or a quick way to reply without opening the full editing environment), the use of Flow or alternative forum-style discussion systems, and the strangeness of the system compared to user expectations.

Other factors that may block newcomers may be the design of the pages, the lack of replies, the behavior of some experienced users towards newcomers, and their lack of confidence.

History
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎✎✎

Editors and other contributors want to be able to see what was written, when, and by whom. Monitoring discussions history should be done the same way as it is for other pages.

Both wikitext talk pages and Flow threads have a problem with page history. On Flow pages, it's easy to see the complete history of a single thread, but you can't see a diff for the entire page. With wikitext pages, you can see a diff for the page, but the history of a specific discussion is spread across the page history, especially if the discussion is copy-pasted to an archive page.

These quotations show experienced contributors' desire to always be able to see pages as they were in the past, to move discussions between pages without losing the history, and to consider some new features, such as the ability to link an edit in the page history to a specific discussion on the talk page.

This problem area is closely related to archiving discussions.

Searching
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎✎✎

Searching could be improved by adding new features that would help to search on current discussions, filter the results, or to handle meta elements around the conversation (e.g., the status of a question). People noted that the normal search tool doesn't, by default, include discussions in search results.

These sample quotations include easily searching for prior discussions, being able to tag discussions by topic, and the need to fix search in Flow.

Being able to search and find previous discussions is somewhat related to #History and #Archiving.

Visibility
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎✎✎

Even when someone figures out how to post a message on the talk page, it's possible that nobody will notice the message and reply. Established editors, like those participating in subject-area WikiProjects, need to be able to find unanswered new comments from their field of expertise. Not replying to comments or questions from newcomers and occasional editors may discourage them from trying to contribute further.

On unstructured wikitext talk pages, it is difficult to visually see which topics or comments have been added since your last visit (Flow supports this workflow). There is no signal on the article's page that there are new or unanswered questions on the talk page.

The quotations here cover questions going unanswered, the difficulty of noticing activity on an article talk page, the need to reach people with relevant expertise or interests, and newcomers' problems with finding the article talk page.

Visual editor
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎✎✎

Both newcomers and established editors requested a non-wikitext editing model for discussions. Some participants preferred updating the visual editor so that it could process discussions; others preferred using Flow, which offers a visual mode with a small toolbar.

These quotations show editors preferring visual editing because it is easier to learn and easier to use.

This theme is related to #Wikitext.

Watchlist
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎✎✎

Editors supported improvements to the watchlist system, especially a way to watch a single section on a busy wikitext-based talk page. This has been a long-requested feature, and it is popular with both newcomers and established contributors alike.

These quotations support being able to follow a single conversation on a busy page, without having to see the other discussions, or a way for groups to find out about new discussions without all of the members putting every page on their regular watchlists.

This theme is related to #Notifications.

Confusion
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎✎

In addition to software design issues, contributors have to figure out many cultural conventions, such as whether a given discussion is a vote, and how the discussion is structured. For example, just at the English Wikipedia, replies are "correctly" placed in the same section as the previous person's comment in most article talk pages, on either person's user talk page if the discussion started on a user talk page, and in your own section for an Arbitration Committee case. As a result of the software limitations and social complexities, the methods for communicating on wiki can generate confusion to both new users and some long-time users, to the point that some even prefer social media to communicating on wiki. (See the section on social media use below.)

These quotations identify several problems: excess difficulty compared to alternatives, unclear social expectations, understanding the discussion format, seeing other people's comments but no obvious place to add your own, and unfamiliarity for people who are accustomed to current web conventions.

Mobile users
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎✎

At the moment, communication through a mobile device is very difficult. Contributions from the apps and the mobile website are increasing in nearly all languages. Accessibility on mobile devices is needed to make contribution easier for all users, to respond to the particular needs of some users with disabilities, and to increase the number of people who can contribute to discussions. As one user said, it shouldn't be noticeably easier to edit an article than to talk about that edit on the article's talk page.

These quotations include confusion, inaccessibility, the changes needed to make a system work on a mobile device, and the location of the main link to the talk page.

This theme is related to #Confusion, #Signatures, #Indentation and #Visibility.

Wikitext
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎✎

There was an interesting divide among editors about the need to use wikitext in discussions. An insistence that wikitext be the key format was largely found among highly active, long-time editors on Wikipedia. This generally took two forms:


 * 1) that the page itself be unstructured (for example, so that editors could choose to start a new discussion anywhere on the page instead of only at the top or the bottom), and
 * 2) that the canonical representation of the discussions be wikitext (for example, so that different formatting codes could be tested and discussed on the talk page, and then be copied and pasted into an article, where it would produce the same result).

For beginners, contributors to other projects, and among people who primarily make non-wikitext contributions (e.g., using the visual editor, adding information to Wikidata, uploading photos), the necessity for using wikitext in discussions was less obvious.

Among the insights from this theme: Long-time Wikipedia editors assume that newcomers will learn wikitext by editing articles, and that the newcomers will only later attempt to communicate with other editors on wiki. As a result, they assume that newcomers will have already developed some level of skill with wikitext before encountering the talk page, and that it therefore makes more sense for discussions to happen in that recently learned format, rather than using conventions and tools that are widely used across the internet for communication.

These quotations reflect Wikipedians' desire to use unstructured pages, the need for improvements, the importance of being able to talk about and test article formatting in discussions. They also reflect the views of others, who question the need for every contributor to learn wikitext, who want more accessible and user-friendly ways to participate in discussions, and who describe communication problems they have encountered.

This point is related to #Visual editor, #Workflows, and how discussions are structured (#Design, #Indentation, #Replying).

Edit conflicts
Popularity of the theme: ✎✎

An edit conflict happens when two editors try to change the same part of a wikitext page at the same time. Edit conflicts are common in busy discussions in free-form wikitext discussions, and very rare in any type of fully structured discussion. The difficulty of resolving the conflict sometimes causes people to give up without participating.

Some work has been done to reduce edit conflicts in the past. Edit conflicts are resolved at the level of a single "line" of wikitext (not a section), but if two people try to reply to the same comment at the same time, or if someone changes the immediately adjacent line while you are typing a new comment, an edit conflict will still be triggered. Wikimedia Deutschland has produced a tool that allows editors to resolve conflicts through a more visual process. However, in the end, edit conflicts are painful and need to be minimized.

These comments reflect the universal dislike that editors have for edit conflicts.

This theme is related to #Wikitext, because edit conflicts are part of the price for using free-form, unstructured discussion pages, and to #Newcomers, because newcomers are unlikely to be able to resolve an edit conflict.

Design
Popularity of the theme: ✎

Overall the design of talk pages is outdated, and discussions are structured in a confusing way.

It's generally accepted that when you want different behaviors in different places – for example, writing articles in the mainspace, discussing improvements to them on a talk page, or reporting spam at a noticeboard – then you want the design of those different pages to reflect and encourage their different purposes.

These Wikipedia editors say that the design is visually awkward and outdated, and that it does not help editors collaborate with others effectively.

Design is related to #Confusion.

Metadata
Popularity of the theme: ✎

Some wikis use large templates at the top of article talk pages to display instructions and warnings, quality ratings, WikiProject affiliations and other information about the page. This came up several times in the English Wikipedia discussion.

Vandalism
Popularity of the theme: ✎

Editors at all experience levels worried about vandalism, harassment, and other destructive behaviors. They want tools to deal with vandalism and related unacceptable behaviors. Identifying and addressing blatant vandalism (e.g., having your vote changed from 'support' to 'oppose') costs time, energy, and goodwill.

These quotations mention people deliberately changing other people's contributions, the way Flow rearranges pages, the need for better anti-harassment systems, and the importance of being able to delete or suppress ("oversight") page histories.

This theme is related to #History and #Newcomers.

Workflows
Popularity of the theme: ✎

Additional software tools could improve the handling ways of the complicated workflows that are used on larger wikis, such as the creation and maintenance of Articles for Deletion discussions or counting up votes in a Meinungsbilder on the German Wikipedia or in an Arbitration Committee case at the English Wikipedia. Improving communication tools and systems used by the Stewards, the Global sysops, and the Small Wiki Monitoring Team would also fall into this category. This type of improvement was largely requested by highly active editors at the largest Wikipedias.

Given how important these processes are, and how much effort is required to maintain them, it is somewhat surprising that more editors did not suggest improvements to these complex systems.

These quotations show an awareness that complex systems could be greatly simplified through new tools, and the importance of building tools that scale to the needs of highly active editors.

This theme is related to #Confusion.

Conclusion
Thank you to all of the people who participated in these discussions so far! We hope that this report is a fair summation of the ideas and opinions that were expressed in Phase 1. We're looking forward to continuing the discussion in Phase 2 of the consultation, and hearing your reactions to the proposed product direction. Talk to you soon!