Talk pages consultation 2019/Phase 1 community discussion summaries

On this page are the summaries from the different communities that have participated to the talk pages consultation. Please don't edit other participants' summaries (except to fix typos).

Some comments? Please use the talk page.

FAQ
What is a community summary?

The goal of a community summary is to wrap up the discussions and provide a summary of what your participants said. That way, other communities can learn about your community's needs, concerns, and ideas. We have seen very different feedback on different wikis, and it is time to discover what everyone thinks!

Please include in that summary:


 * every perspective or idea your community had, and
 * how frequent each idea was; for example,
 * how many users shared a given opinion
 * whether an idea was more common among different types of contributors (newcomers, beginners, experienced editors...)

You can add as much detail as you want in that summary.

Can't the Wikimedia Foundation read all the feedback?

We are trying, but we really need your help. For most conversations, we have to use machine translation, which has limitations. This can help us find the most common needs or global ideas. Machine translation is useful, but it does not tell us how people are feeling or what makes your community unique.

Your community summary should be built from your community's perspective, experience and culture. You might also know of relevant discussions in other places, which we did not find (for example, perhaps someone left a note on your user talk page – it is okay to include that!). Your summary is extremely important to us.

What are the next steps?

Phase 2 will happen in April. We will analyze the individual feedback, your community summary, and some user testing. We hope to have a clear view of everyone's ideas and needs at the end of April.

Some ideas generated during phase 1 may be mutually exclusive. Some ideas might work better for some purposes or some kinds of users. During Phase 2, we'll all talk about which problems are more urgent, which projects are most closely aligned with the overall needs and goals of the movement, and which ideas we should focus on first.

Discussions about these ideas may be shaped and be moderated by the Wikimedia Foundation, guided by our decision criteria, listed on the project page.

Wikimedia Commons
I (Jc86035) was the only participant, although I did advertise the discussion on the village pump and on the centralized discussions template. I don't think it's necessary to summarize my own views, since I also commented extensively in the English Wikipedia and Wikidata discussions.

Although I was asked to inform new users of the discussion, I was unable to do so. I don't know whether this had any significant effect on the amount and variety of participants. Jc86035 (talk) 10:13, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata
I (Jc86035) will be summarizing the discussion section-by-section. It is difficult to summarize some sections due to the small number of participants; in many cases I have only stated what individual users have said.

A total of 15 registered users (including myself) and two unregistered users (including one vandal) participated. By almost all measures, this is less than 1% of active Wikidata editors; there are about 1,800 editors who make more than 100 edits per month. Most participants appear to be experienced editors.

Although I was asked to inform new users of the discussion, I was unable to do so. I don't know whether this had any significant effect on the amount and variety of participants.

When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
Several editors like Flow and think it works fine but could be improved, and several editors say the same about the wikitext discussion system. (Whether one system objectively works better is out of scope; however, considering the comments made in the English Wikipedia discussion, restarting the implementation of Flow would be controversial at best.) Almost all community processes on Wikidata are conducted without Flow, with the only(?) major exception being the French-language project chat, and most participants say that those processes function satisfactorily (although the unregistered user complains that WikiProjects are typically abandoned; I think this issue is valid but out of the scope of the consultation).

One editor (Jmabel) suggests section watchlisting as an improvement to wikitext discussions. Two editors (PKM and Sabas88) indicate that they prefer real-time discussion fora such as Telegram groups; both mention mobile notifications as a factor, and Sabas88 also mentions "[a] usable mobile interface" and threading as factors.

The criticisms of Flow are a subset of those mentioned in the English Wikipedia discussion.
 * "Bugs need to be fixed" (VIGNERON)
 * Lack of diffs (Ymblanter)
 * Infinite scrolling (Ymblanter)
 * Unnecessary notifications when watchlisting a Talk-namespace page, as opposed to a Topic-namespace page (Ymblanter)

VIGNERON also notes that "Flow is quite a good tool (no need to know the painfully unuseful wikisyntax, automatic signing and pinging, etc.)". ChristianKl suggests that the use of Flow in the French-language project chat could have increased participation, although he notes that "causation is always difficult to establish". On the other hand, Ymblanter notes his avoidance of Flow and thinks he will stop contributing if it is forced upon his talk page.

What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
Only three participants commented in this section. Jmabel is a software developer, and (as he implies) this experience probably made it easier for him to use wikitext and signatures. Masumrezarock100's comment is unrelated to the software/interface (it's about user conduct), so it's out of scope. The unregistered user criticizes indentation and advocates for Flow.

What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
Only two participants (including myself) commented in this section. The other person (ChristianKl) complained that Flow doesn't have rollback, which caused issues with his talk page (I think he might have been referring specifically to handling vandalism in the form of new topics). I didn't say anything concrete, only noting that Wikidata might have an unusually high number of users who don't know how to use wikitext discussions (since most of Wikidata is Wikibase and a lot of user talk pages use Flow).

What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
Only three participants commented in this section. phab:T106687 was specifically mentioned by VIGNERON, although only as an example of many unresolved Flow issues (I think this is only tangentially related, though). I don't totally understand the exact meaning of ChristianKl's comments, but I haven't asked for clarification.
 * Automatic notifications from comments in a particular section (Jmabel)
 * The same discussion appearing on multiple talk pages (ChristianKl)
 * Some sort of WhatLinksHere visibility/function improvement to show links and/or template values used on talk pages? (ChristianKl)
 * Improved links between comments and page history (ChristianKl)

What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
Only three participants commented in this section. I have omitted most of Ymblanter's Flow complaints since their comment is duplicated in a previous section.
 * Allowing for varied types of discussions, including both goal-oriented and "purely social" (PKM)
 * Suggestion that talk pages should be more helpful to newcomers by improving navigation and giving explicit instructions (Donald Trung)
 * [User-oriented] structuring "to see who replies whom" (Ymblanter)

Orphaned talk pages
Only Donald Trung made a comment in this section, suggesting that the talk pages of deleted pages be moved to a centralized archive instead of being deleted at the same time.

A discussion about talk pages, on a talk page, advertised on talk pages
Only three participants (including myself) commented in this section. The discussion concerns the effects of holding the discussion as a normal Wikidata RFC, and alternate ways of collecting feedback. As noted in the status updates, Whatamidoing (Sherry) did continue discussion of a Qualtrics survey with other staff members, so the relevant WMF staff are presumably already aware of relevant information mentioned in this section.

Conclusion
As noted above, few conclusions can be drawn due to the small sample size. In general, this phase of the consultation may have suffered from being organized primarily around wikitext discussion pages; this may have resulted in only dedicated experienced users (with some level of interest in WMF internal affairs) having any inclination to participate.

A possible issue with the feedback is that later commenters may have tried (intentionally or not) to avoid duplicating what has already been said. This would probably make triage more difficult.

None of the participants who mentioned Wikidata's community processes suggested that they were not functioning satisfactorily, although this may have been due to the inherent survivorship bias stemming from most of the participants being experienced editors to begin with. (Another factor may be that genuine new users are rarer due to many contributors coming from other Wikimedia projects; 82.3% of the last 10,000 new Wikidata user accounts were created automatically, compared to 32.8% for the English Wikipedia. In many ways, Wikidata is unique among WMF wikis.)

I think the results of the larger discussions, such as that of the English Wikipedia, would be more useful for identifying issues, since only a few specific issues were mentioned in this discussion. Jc86035 (talk) 10:13, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Dutch Wikipedia
Summary of the talk page consultation on the Dutch Wikipedia (nl.wikipedia.org), see w:nl:Wikipedia:Overlegpagina's_raadpleging_2019/Summary.


 * 16 registered users participated in the consultation: Bdijkstra, Ciell, Encycloon, Lidewij C J., Lotje, Mar(c), OSeveno,  Oxygene7-13, Richardkiwi, Robotje, Schilbanaan, TaalBarbaar, Thieu1972, Vinvlugt, Wikidrinker, and Woudloper.

general remarks

 * Although the number of participants is small, this is an important issue on the Dutch Wikipedia. A recent survey (over 300 respondents) showed half of them not satisfied with working atmosphere. Those people are not satisfied with how people interact with each other, which has to do with edit summaries, talk pages, and user talk pages. Only 8 percent of respondents visits the Village pump, a place notorious for unfriendly interactions.
 * Almost all participants on this talk page consultation comment on behavior of people, the way they respond to each other, or do not respond to each other. These behavioral aspects of talk pages dominates the technical aspects. People tend not to believe in technical solutions to behavioral issues. Nonetheless some ideas have been floated which might help a little bit in some areas.
 * Some commented on general distrust in the Wikimedia Foundation and their developers. Some believe the approach is biased, or negative, or that already decisions about changes have been made.

summary per question

 * 1) When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
 * 2) * How to attract more people into a conversation and increase diversity in participation and points of view?
 * 3) * Veterans notice the echo system, and newcomers do not notice the bell with a number on top of the page. Long ago a screen wide orange bar did notify you got a message on your talk page. That was intrusive, and effective to induce a response.
 * 4) What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
 * 5) * Newcomers face a hostile frontier of veterans (not all veterans). Some newcomers regret an AfD after they have been pushing NE/POV.
 * 6) * Newcomers don't engage on talk pages. Email notifications of messages on talk pages result in OTRS tickets rather than replies on talk pages.
 * 7) * Design of talk pages is too different from current other social media websites
 * 8) * Newcomers prefer top posting on talk pages
 * 9) * Idea: post human and not bot messages op (IP) talk pages
 * 10) * Idea: post friendly feedback (don't bite the newcomers)
 * 11) * Idea: six tildes signing to show functionary status
 * 12) * For newcomers to sign and indent is too complicated, the current design is non-intuitive. [user story: (opt out functionality) as a new user I want to post a reply on a topic that automagically is indented and signed]
 * 13) What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
 * 14) * Sign (three times)
 * 15) * Adopt Flow (three times, although some veterans don't like it)
 * 16) * Enforce edit summary
 * 17) What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
 * 18) * Refer to a specific position on the article page (two times). On the article page itself can be added, to pinpoint a comment to a specific position.
 * 19) * Flagging inappropriate comments (with something like a small button, so a functionary can follow up)
 * 20) * Delete or suppress inappropriate comments
 * 21) What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
 * 22) * Some discussion on Dutch wiki tend to escalate to quickly, like a flame war.
 * 23) * Idea: technically slow down number of comments on such a page
 * 24) * Idea: New "Add reply" button, just like "Add topic" tab, to prevent edit conflicts.
 * 25) * Tools to prevent gridlock
 * 26) * Too much ad hominem arguments on the Dutch wiki
 * 27) * Idea: forum lay out

Russian Wikipedia
In the flow "Best" practices analysis, the developers showed an overview of some sites. There were social networks. It was the impression that they were summing up - hey, look at them so let's do the same. This is suitable for "cute" unimportant conversations.

But we solve problems on the wiki. Each topic is about a problem. We need problem solving tools. Probably worth a look in the direction of bug tracking systems. We did not chat, we solved problems, for us the logic and sequence of the entire conversation is important. We solved problems and developed some ways to solve them, using only the wiki layout available to us. All our discussions are examples of solutions to problems and we want to see the equivalent of how the same solution to a problem will be presented in a new system (and not screenshots "for dummies: how to talk and click on the buttons in a new system like YouTube"). This is not equivalent to just leaving comments.

If you make a system for the discussion pages of articles - then just tell us that the system will only be restrictedly used in the discussion of articles or how you see its widespread use. Because we immediately try to imagine the application of the system to the situation when a hot topic quickly gathers a lot of comments and when the system can potentially go to requests. For discussions in Wikipedia namespace, we need a strong tool.

This time I would like to have a separate test wiki site (possibly separated by languages en.testwiki de.testwiki, without articles). To be able to log in with an existing account (just come and log in), and not necessarily create a new login. And so that you can create your own additional accounts (for answers to yourself) that are not created in sul. And so there was a simple way to get admin rights. For a big change - a big sandbox.

often used: the division of the discussion by the subtitles h2,3,4 really affecting the structure and there are links from table of contents.

often used: view all new messages as diff in the topic/on the page.

would be interesting: to receive notification of new messages not from the whole topic, but only those that are after / deeper than a specific comment (for example, all replies to your comment and further down the tread)

Often used: toolbar for working with wikitext, gadgets for the toolbar. For example, there is a gadget that converts non-Latin links http://.../wiki/%A%A%A%:A%A%A%A% to human readable link Википедия:Форум (Wikipedia:Forum). Desirable simple guide for gadgets.

often used: quick rollback of last edits of one user. Single rollback action of different places. Undo changes one by one would be uncomfortable.

important: it is customary to see relevant topics as on a whiteboard - a limited number in a limited space, a working space. endless scrolling was like endless requests for deletion, we just drown in it. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/wp:КУ archiving topics on a separate page is the same division and support of the whiteboard as relevant.

flow problem: the big indents between posts, the big font broke a principle of a whiteboard and after long scrolling the thought of discussion is already lost. Compactness gives the possibility of viewing "as a whole".

flow problem: logical parallel lines are mixed and it is difficult to understand who is responding to whom. It's not about the number of levels of indents. The point is the breaks of logical chains of reasoning about one thought. If you need to make a result and consensus for the discussion/request, then you need to be a medium to realize all the broken chains. ( Topic:Sjh61at6k8mz21oy see the sequence/chain of red arrows in the screenshots )

Statements in discussions are valuable. Collected and discussed information should be achievable through search. Including filtering from other types of discussions (eg, articles, participants, wikipedia/forum, wikipedia/different types of requests).

List of needs (collected during the consultation): --Sunpriat (talk) 09:13, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
 * switch between wikitext and tree view (2)
 * (in other words, do not take away from us the opportunity to gain access to the structure and the opportunity to re-arrange the discussion design at a lower level) (3)
 * allow the user to start a new topic or section in a topic, add a message to an existing topic, reply to an existing message, and also edit (but not delete/wipe) their own previous messages (2)
 * Automatically sign posts (2)
 * Automatically resolve edit conflicts (warn before saving if new messages appear in the chain/topic) (2)
 * The visual editor should not be displayed smoothly. Instead, it should run quickly and work stably on weak devices. (2)
 * move topic to another place (1)
 * change other people's messages by other users (not only administrators) (1)
 * should be answered how this system is supposed to be used for pages with requests (1)
 * Fast work at a speed of 64 Kbps (current connection speed of one of the users) (1)
 * for simple commenting, the author needs a quick way with a minimum of clicks on the buttons and movements (1)
 * Some participants use the user script that edits comments individually without opening the wikitext and wikitexteditor page (8)
 * see in the watchlist individual topics on the forum (1)
 * if there is a whole forum on the watchlist, then the ability to ignore certain topics from it (1)
 * in the table of contents of the forum topics with new posts (less than a day) highlight in color (1)

Who joined?
I appear new users are many.

See w:ja:Wikipedia:2019年ノートページに関する協議/summary about their opinions.

General remarks
Participants are small and most of them are new users.

I infer their hard usage of smart phones when they edit Wikipedia by them.

Summary per question
1. When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you? 2. What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them? 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 the technical limitations?
 * Because explanations in English are basically many in the time of edits, articles and talks in Japanese do not increase.
 * Wikipedia app in iPhone does not work stably.
 * At the time of deleting characters, inputs are cancelled or 3Dtouch is unstable.
 * Are newcomers worried about ways to use and manner to other users?
 * Ways to use comments are hard to understand at the time of getting opinions and impressions from other users on a talk page learning ways to edit. Easier expressions on talk pages are necessary for easy response to other users.
 * Newcomers are worried about their signatures to forget and ways to do them.
 * A participant who did not know a tacit rule, “we consider silence as agreement”, as a newcomer asked many users’ opinions on their talk pages because no one responded proposal on a talk page. Tacit rules are hard to participate in the community as a newcomer.
 * Expressions such as ‘’help’’ for beginners that arrange most necessary basic rules concisely are good idea excluding traditional ‘’help’’. There are a little articles that arrange information totally on the Internet. Newcomers will spread and their reusages will be promoted. Articles that have been arranged about usage help me to join on the Internet.
 * Are ”Edit tools” not to see on talk pages under specifications?　Are a little rough writings of some people like ancient writings on talk page their tacit rules?
 * Harder to understand incompletely translated edit tools.
 * Hard to sign by a smartphone.
 * Easy mobile signature, please.
 * Hard to understand mobile edit very much and hard to do it as other users say. There is not any expression about mobile edit on talk pages about our signatures. Easier to understand by concrete mention of our writings at areas to write the text.
 * Proposing promotion of activity. In spite of objective that SNS ‘’itself’’ is not our goal as an assumed solution in, easy browses and writings to SNS are adopted to meet the needs of the times. You should think about it because they involve promotion of activity and self-realization people concerned by covered activities but not amendments to wiki system itself. Decrease of entry barrier to discussions by provision of system of involvement of personal talk pages and SNS including Twitter. Talk pages of articles are similar.
 * Protection is cause of parallel activities of users which are closed and hard to know. Covered nature of SNS above will make up for such a wiki’s limits. Improper utilization of sock puppetry also influence very much to this situation. Unreasonable operation of multi-direction will protect spread and progress in computer literacy in the true sense of the word on the contrary. In spite of some problems at expression of individual data for privacy issues, you should count including multi-accounts for statistical records.
 * Talk pages are to use to ask meanings of texts, to propose polished texts and to do other actions.

Other opinions
--Bletilla (talk) 00:42, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
 * 1) While I browsed, I do not understand why you are discussing like this or what problems make you to discuss like this. Unfinished translation of the page in MediaWiki into Japanese and little writings in this page mean little users are interested in this discussion at least in Japanese Wikipedia. I appear you are trying to solve local problems in English Wikipedia as global discussions including other languages’ Wikipedia.
 * 2) It is good because I can get acknowledge about many things in discussions with many types of users. While I am unaccustomed at edits about everything including edits of talks, I am editing hard.
 * 3) I want to write my sense to the present situation and response, variety of sense of incongruity and my knowledge but I am checking because of my little energy and times. While this is necessary and hasty comment, your invitation has given me mu own new knowledge and certainty. Good luck to Wikipedia’s more development.
 * 4) Other users pointed out my wrong edits and taught convenient functions in my talk page.
 * 5) When bot invited me at my talk page, because I did know the place, thing and your will, I apologize my late comment. While I am unaccustomed to Wikipedia totally, I am going to act as usefully as possible. I’ll express my opinions for you as a few mobile user.

Chinese Wikipedia
Our summary about this consultation has been published on Chinese Wikipedia with Chinese version. The followings are the English version of this summary.

General information
The community consultation started on February 26, 2019, and finished on March 31. 24 participants joined this consultation. In addition, we consulted the female community in Taiwan on March 18 to collect the opinions of the female newcomers.

Currently, the discussion tools on Chinese Wikipedia include Wiki Markup talk pages, Structured Discussion (Flow), instant messengers (Telegram, Discord, QQ, IRC) and social network service (Facebook). Structured Discussion is available on the Reference Desk and user talk pages (optional). Most discussions on Chinese Wikipedia are on the Village Pump (Compared with VP in English Wikipedia, VP in Chinese Wikipedia fulfills the functions of both VP and Teahouse. Most article-related discussions are also done on the VP.).

In addition, instant messengers are another popular and featured discussion tools on Chinese Wikipedia. We have a bot that can synchronize the talks on four messengers (Telegram, Discord, QQ, IRC).

Summary of the suggested questions
The followings are the summary of the feedback about the suggested questions from Wikimedia Foundation.


 * When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
 * Chinese Wikipedia is one of few Wikimedia projects to import Structured Discussion mode. Most of the editors are familiar with the Wiki Markup talk page, so the opinions are focus on the Structured Discussion. Only one comment is about the instant messengers. The followings are the feedback about this question:
 * The page title of a topic in the Structured Discussion uses randomly-generated strings. This design causes that we cannot understand the content when we cite the related topics, although there is a topic title in the topic page.
 * The table of content in the Structured Discussion is not designed intuitive, and the Structured Discussion uses the lazy loading. These design causes that we cannot find out the historical discussion.
 * Chinese Wikipedia uses the traditional/simplified writing system and regional terms conversion system, but the Structured Discussion cannot support it.
 * Some Wiki Markup codes and templates is not supported in the Structured Discussion.
 * In the instant messengers, we established a help channel for the newcomers, but the usage of the newcomers is very low, and few expert editors stationed in the help channel.


 * What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
 * The followings are the feedback about this question:
 * Some unfriendly comments can be done on the talk pages by the users with the personal position (e.g. political position) which make newcomers uncomfortable.
 * Most of the talk pages uses the Wiki Markup, and decrease the newcomers' interest of participating discussion because of being unfamiliar with the Wiki Markup.
 * Most of the discussions about the articles are occurred on the Village Pump/Articles, and the talk pages of the articles become the archives from the Village Pump/Articles. If the newcomers leave the questions on the talk pages of articles, these questions cannot call attention of the expert editors.
 * The popular talk pages (e.g. Village Pump) are arranged in chronological order. The new comments are below the old comments, so that the newcomers' questions may not call the attention.


 * What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
 * The followings are the feedback about this question:
 * In the comments of the user talk pages (Wiki Markup mode), editors have two mode about the same topic:
 * Centralizing the sender's and receiver's comments to one user talk page;
 * Receiver go the the sender's talk page and open new topic to reply the sender's comments. Every editors' preferences are different, so the struggle about the preferred discussion process of user talk pages often occurred.
 * In Chinese Wikipedia, some editors have strong personal position (e.g. political position), and the struggle about the position are often occurred.


 * What do you wish you could do, but can't due to the technical limitations?
 * The followings are the feedback about this question:
 * Set an independent watchlist for recent changes on article talk pages to help newcomers.
 * Every topic can be mobile to any other topic and do not loss the edit history. In addition, every cited discussions can trace back to the original discussions.
 * Every topic can be deleted independently.
 * Hide or fold the longer or older discussions on the popular talk pages (like the function of Phabricator).
 * Offer the Structured Discussion and traditional Wiki Markup mode on the same talk page for the editors who have different editing preference.
 * Open the Visual Editor (VE) on the talk page.
 * Disable the VE and Structured Discussion for the talk pages which handle the crucial affairs (e.g. Administrator candidate) to promote the quality of discussions.


 * What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
 * The followings are the feedback about this question:
 * The wiki discussion must be anonymous, open and free.
 * The wiki discussion can be connected with the old discussions, and can search the old discussions easily.
 * The wiki discussion can be readable with visualization instead of the text-featured mode.

Opinions about the female newcomers
The followings are the feedback about the talk page of the female newcomers.
 * 1) Female newcomers don't know whether the talk page is.
 * 2) Female newcomers are not used to do the comments on the public discussion mechanism, and usually want to weigh their words repeatedly when they do the comments.
 * 3) Female newcomers would want to know how to edit Wikipedia rather than use the talk page to communicate with the editors on the Internet.
 * 4) Female newcomers are not used to edit the talk page with Wiki Markup in comparison with the social network service (e.g. Facebook, Line). In addition, female newcomers that are not familiar with coding can feel fear for the Wiki Markup interface.
 * 5) The title of the talk page has the same style as the main space (articles), and the female newcomers often confuse both of them easily.
 * 6) The popular talk pages are too long to read, and the standard style of the username cannot be distinguished from other texts.
 * 7) Some customized styles of the signature on talk pages are too fancy to let the screen of the talk pages be readable.

Procedure
The consultation was organized from the 23 February to the 31 March 2019. No banners have been manually added by an interface administrator of the community. Messages were written on the talk pages of new contributors, while making sure not to influence them. 57 contributors participated. The summary is long, simply because the opinions are varied. All contributors have different points of view, even if some ideas reappear several times.

Classic talk page
The classic tool is appropriate for a large majority of the contributors who have expressed themselves.

Pros

 * Easy to use for regular contributors (Wikicode-related habits) ;
 * Available immediately, without any visible additional loading time ;
 * As flexible as an article ;
 * Complete toolbar ;
 * Several gadgets complete the tool with additional features ;
 * Easily accessible special characters ;
 * History identical ;
 * A revision can be easily found ;
 * A discussion can be found quickly (CTRL + F...) ;
 * Oversight users have no difficulty to hide what needs to be hidden, simple ;
 * Considered mature and stable ;
 * Mainly used, so there is no reason to learn a new tool.

Cons

 * Maybe too flexible: each contributor uses a talk page as he or she wishes ;
 * No clear distinction between each message ;
 * No organized structure ;
 * Indentation quickly complicated ;
 * Too complicated for new contributors ;
 * It's impossible to easily thank a contributor: sometimes you have to go back through the whole history ;
 * Contributors may not notice new messages of interest by having a watchlist polluted by other sections ;
 * Unable to sort by date/last messages ;
 * Easily vandalized: a message, a date or an author can be modified by another user without warning anyone ;
 * Impossible to differentiate an original message from an edited message without checking ;
 * Missing automatic signature: many new contributors forget to sign ;
 * Impossible to easily quote a message, or a part of a message ;
 * Too compact, especially on a small screen ;
 * Indentation that doesn't respect HTML principles ;
 * The recent notification tool is appreciated, but not everyone is aware of its existence: not explained, not intuitive ;
 * Sometimes, the custom username displayed doesn't match the real contributor's username. It's complicated to notify them :
 * Summary of revisions used to convey messages: another cultural convention that new contributors don't know about ;
 * New contributors write on their talk page thinking that someone will answer them, and no one answers. "Leave a message at X's talk page or notify X on my talk page?" ;
 * Used everywhere, so nothing can easily evolve ;

Structured Discussions / Flow
The Structured Discussions tool is not very appreciated by a majority, but participants recognize that it facilitates discussion for newcomers, to the detriment of regular contributors. Some participants find that, even with its flaws, Flow is more modern and adapted for discussion. However, they remain a minority.

Pros

 * Easy ;
 * A topic is opened more quickly ;
 * Easy to answer ;
 * Structured ;
 * No need to sign ;
 * Messages automatically dated ;
 * Changes are reported ;
 * Allows a more fluid discussion

Cons

 * Unable to archive ;
 * Impossible to manually move a topic ;
 * Interface too large, considered unsuitable for mobile use ;
 * Too many notifications, flood ;
 * Doesn't display the number of new messages ;
 * Name of discussions unreadable by humans (Topic:AbCdEfgH4j... ) ;
 * Complicated history that breaks habits ;
 * Impression of a waste of time when you know wikicode ;
 * Too slow for some people ;
 * Impression of having been added on top of everything else: all Wikipedia is based on a single system, but Flow has a different history, masking (Oversight) is complicated, etc. ;
 * Everything is different ;
 * Infinite scroll ;
 * No flexibility at all ;
 * It is difficult to add an image, a wikitable, etc ;
 * Impossible to look for a discussion, worse if they are closed ;
 * A significant number of technical limits and problems still unresolved (Phabricator), because it was designed without the community and ignoring its habits ;
 * A certain lack of courage or communication from the Fondation: some contributors know Flow by name without ever having tested it ;
 * Not much more specific criticism: some contributors simply say they don't like the tool: more problems than functionalities.

What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
The Newcomers' Forum has been using Flow for several months and seems to be much easier for them. They forget less to write a title and they no longer need to sign their message. They tend to open a new section less often when they want to answer in an existing section.

Some new contributors don't understand why they have to press "Edit source" to discuss. Sometimes, by wanting to thank someone, they break the whole page. Far too many people state that it takes time to find out how to contact someone. Some contributors remain silent for long periods of time. Internet is becoming easier to use, while Wikipedia maintains a barrier of difficulty. The talk pages lack of visibility. The discussion pages are so simple that contributors add instructions on their talk pages to avoid mistakes. Flow avoids a large part of this maintenance.

It's difficult for a newcomer to distinguish the authors of differents messages. They are asked to use the visual editor, then forced to see the source code. It would be interesting to separate the editorial aspect from the social aspect. The community appreciates the mentoring approach implemented. It remains the best way to save contributors from drowning. Several people point out that some regular contributors are blocking the new ones by not wanting to change anything. Generally, they are not the ones who review the personalized help requests that are written... on Flow.

What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
In 2019, it's still impossible to customize the toolbar without gadgets. However, they are sometimes permanently broken due to changes made over the versions of MediaWiki. Gadgets and their functionalities are broken, even though they are sometimes implemented in the new tools proposed by the Foundation, which does not promote them. Cyclical and disappointing confusion for a large part of the community reluctant to change.

Contributors active in wiki-projects believe that it would be necessary to add an automatic transclusion of messages left on articles for more visibility. To facilitate discussion, templates specific to each community are used... But you have to remember their names, parameters, etc. Archiving is possible, unlike Flow, but it is still catastrophic and insufficient. Without bots, users would probably archive much less.

One participant wrote that "only a core group of veterans knows how to navigate through these mazes, and therefore decides on the evolution of the project, which this consultation shows enough". Other contributors indicate that navigation is generally catastrophic or time-consuming. Sometimes you have to go to a talk page, hidden under two other pages and sometimes it's not enough, so you have to find the talk page of the project and the one of the portal. The talk pages are drowned in the mass and the whole tool seems outdated. Perhaps the very definition of a talk page should be reviewed, or that there should be an effective centralization.

What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
The substance of the question has already been covered by the previous questions, but some relevant points have been mentioned:
 * Quote an extract from a previous message ;
 * Customize the toolbar ;
 * Be able to benefit from the functionalities of Flow, while not neglecting those of the classic tool used for more than 18 years ;
 * Make the discussion tool less dependent on the user (date, signature, indentation...) ;
 * Makes automated processing easier (e. g. bots) ;
 * Make discussions readable on all screens ;
 * Establish or use one standard, but not two ;
 * Search on a Flow page ;
 * Filter open/closed topics, move topics ;
 * Simplify notifications with a lighter syntax ;
 * Watch only one section, not the whole page ;
 * Make the content of a message on Flow dynamic (never updated again after posted) ;
 * Use real voting systems, debates, etc.

What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
This question is not very specific and the answers are often out of scope or not relevant for the consultation (quality of discussions, more pedagogy...). These are problems specific to the community itself. The same answers reappear, because the questions are too similar. Nevertheless, some aspects were mentioned:
 * Accessible to anyone ;
 * Easily readable ;
 * Simplicity ;
 * User-friendly interface ;
 * Archiving ;
 * Organized ;
 * Visibility, so that more contributors can debate.

Any other comments to share with the Foundation?
This question was added to allow participants to add a more specific context to their answers. Here are the relevant elements for the consultation. It should be noted that several answers deviate from the consultation theme to highlight deeper issues.

This cohabitation of tools is not viable and a decision must be made to avoid further confusion. The situation is problematic for those who are against to Flow and for new contributors. They don't understand the differences between the two tools.

Again, one participant pointed out that there is no such thing as a real community. Today, the tools don't develop a sense of community, explaining why so few contributors took part in the consultation (and everything else). Without the necessary tools, this lack of cohesion will continue to affect the community, both old and new contributors.

The Foundation must avoid developing resource-intensive and slow tools. Some contributors think that there are too many features in the new tools, affecting their ability to understand them. The Foundation should support communities by explaining how the tools work. A link not translated to MediaWiki/MetaWiki for 30 contributors it's anything but useful.

There's discomfort between the Foundation and communities. One participant in the consultation felt that the intensive users of Flow had been forgotten. They have waited for more than a year for improvements, without seeing any real progress. Today, they are discovering that a surprise consultation could consider removing this tool.

Conclusion
It's complicated to write a conclusion. This is a personal analysis: the contributors are exasperated, whether they are for or against Flow. Today, both tools have problems and are far from perfect. More problematic, some contributors admit that this image of "Community" doesn't exist because the tools are not enough. The classic tool has not evolved while the uses are no longer the same. If abrupt migration is not desirable, or a migration is not a possibility for some, neither is a status quo for others. Some propose to add as a start "an overlay to help new members without losing regular contributors". Like a big gadget, but maintained by the Foundation.

It would be necessary to set up a tool that allows discussions to be placed at the center of the community, without ignoring a group of users in any way. It's impossible today to make simple announcements: 57 participants for 20,180 active contributors. It's.... 0.28% of the active frwiki community.

The situation will remain static if the Foundation does not communicate with the regular contributors. But, not providing anything to help discussion with new contributors would be absurd. The Foundation should not repeat what has already happened. Some contributors, for example, still do not understand Wikidata, or simply do not like the project, because of the way it has been implemented.

While participants find different flaws for each tool, some agree on one thing: there is no discussion tool for THE community. It is a discussion tool for those who managed to break through the technical barrier of wikicode. Lofhi (talk) 22:48, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Catalan Wikipedia
We have been using Flow for a while for discussions, so opinions of the community pivot around it. We've had few users taking part in the discussions, mainly Vriullop and Barcelona.

Summary of the discussion
For short discussions, it has been said that Flow works perfectly with its system of watching, automatic pings, and not having to write signatures. Following a long discussion page where only some of the topics are of your interest is not resolved with wiki but it is with Flow. Having a blank textarea to start writing encourages to take part in the discussion.

For long discussions, they have always been complicated, both with wiki and Flow. There is always one who deviates from the main topic. The debate should be redirected, maybe separating some messages in new sections or collapsing some part that enables the user to re-read without non-important parts of the debate. This is still possible with wiki pages, but it's impossible with Flow. It is necessary to create some summaries of the state of the discussion in order to move forward, which it is not usually done, because no one assumes a moderator role, among other reasons. Theoretically, the user who starts the debate should be the moderator, but someone often starts a topic just to see the answer and not to end up in some place.

It has also been said that whatever tool we end up using, there has to be a minimum of continuity, not like flow or dashboards and edu experiments, and also that from flow it is too complex to look for an old thread.

English Wikipedia
English Wikipedia Talk pages consultation 2019

I didn't intend to write the summary, but I did so on short notice because no one else had done so in time for the deadline. I regret not putting deeper preparation into it. The unusually open ended nature of the questions resulted in a largely scattered discussion. The same idea was often raised across various sections, so I drew together a list the topics mentioned by more than two people. I skipped topics not relevant to the consultation.


 * Numerically there is one point that clearly stands out as the largest presence in the discussion, a clear and overwhelming consensus. One section asked whether we wanted to: Revive work on Flow, design a new Talk replacement from scratch, or consider improvements to existing pages? One individual endorsed Flow, there was no support whatsoever for a new project to replace Talk pages, and there was over 95% agreement for incremental improvement to existing Talk pages. (There were also 3 ambiguous "none of the above" responses.) The clear consensus in this section is reinforced by multiple comments elsewhere asserting the high value and importance of functionality in and around wikipages. Any new project which proposes to eliminate Talk wikipages as a "tradeoff" for other features is almost certain to receive a hostile reception as an unacceptably destructive Flow-clone.
 * Approximately 16 people cite Mobile Frontend. The mobile interface is considered an important and serious issue. There is an impression that Mobile Frontend was designed without concern for editing, and that it is particularly problematic for Talk. It is not unusual for editors to switch to the desktop view while on mobile.
 * Approximately 11 editors discuss the inconvenience of searching for the right spot to reply in the wikitext, particularly on long pages, as well as manually handling the indentation. About three of them discuss userscripts which essentially automate this process. People who have used these scripts appear to be impressed and satisfied with the results. One of these scripts can be found at en:User:Enterprisey/reply-link. These scripts are surely worth investigating.
 * Approximately 11 users express the view that the real barrier for new users are social issues and the vast array of policies and processes / that any initial lack of indenting or signature isn't significant / that talk pages are pretty easy with benefits of being identical to article pages. Dispute or question of this position was significantly in the minority.
 * Approximately 10 people requested the ability to watchlist page sections (Phabricator Task 2738). This request has been a contender in multiple Community Tech Wishlist surveys.
 * Approximately 10 people cite the power and flexibility of wikipage editing as important or essential.
 * Approximately 10 people cite the importance of complete and accurate wikitext support for our work.
 * Approximately 10 people are concerned about users posting on "forgotten" talk pages, which may go unanswered for months or years. They would like some way to make these posts more visible, so they can get a timely response.
 * Approximately 8 people cite the importance of wikipage history and diffs, specifically in contrast to the inadequate history available for Flow. Proper history allows a view of the entire page at any point in time, as well as arbitrary multi-edit diffs spanning the entire page.
 * Approximately 7 people object to infinite-scroll, as seen on Flow.
 * Approximately 6 people cite a desire for auto-signature for comments.
 * Approximately 6 people propose enabling the VisualEditor on Talk pages, by which they surely mean "enable VE everywhere".
 * Approximately 5 people oppose introducing any new page type creating a "third way to edit". The wikitext editor and VisualEditor are considered to already introduce plenty of confusion and complexity into the system by creating two ways of editing.
 * Approximately 5 people request better archiving support.
 * Approximately 5 people cite the issue of edit conflicts.
 * Approximately 3 people cites confusion caused by users who have signatures that do not match their username. One mentions color-highlighted signatures as distracting. This could be addressed by local policy discussion.
 * Approximately 3 people mention Phabricator T22307, wanting edit summaries to automatically mention /* SectionName */ when a new section is manually added during an edit.

It's worth noting that a member of the Wikimedia Board of Trustees participated in the consultation, and they were part of the near-unanimous support for keeping and improving the existing wikipages for Talk.

French Wiktionary
French Wiktionary Talk pages consultation 2019

Six contributors gave their opinions.
 * All use wikicode. However, contributors acknowledge that its use requires a learning time of wikicode that they consider reasonable for contributors. On the other hand, for occasional readers who want to ask a question, this learning is not effective.
 * It was noted that the talk pages are located in different places and that it is therefore easy to miss a discussion that may be of interest to us. The French Wiktionary has a few pages where readers can ask questions. Apart from the problem of learning Wikicode which is not done, the repliers have no way of knowing wether the person who asked the question will read the answer (it is mainly IPs who ask questions), especially because they may not find where they asked the question.
 * In addition, a discussion may stop if a user has not been pinged.
 * When a discussion is potentially of interest to many people, there is no tool to automatically alert them (pinging is limited to a few users and pinging too regularly can be considered an abuse). See this discussion for a real case.
 * The wikicode problems that have been identified are
 * forgetting to sign by the new (and sometimes the old) contributors
 * indentation can be a problem for new contributors
 * In general, tabs other than the "Read" tab are not sufficiently "hilighted"; some users miss talk pages or the possibility of modifying them.
 * In terms of improvements, the following can be noted
 * in multilingual discussions (Wikidata, Commons,...) a user proposed that each user can write in his own language and that Mediawiki translates on the fly into the reader's language. In general, an effort must be made to reduce the hegemony of English within the Wikimedia movement.
 * one user noted that the notification system does not systematically notify of a change. He would like the watchlist to be dynamic anbd to be cross-project so that he can monitor all the discussions he wants to track on a single page (currently he opens several tabs).
 * a user suggested that a list of pseudonyms of people who have already taken part in the discussion could be displayed above the summary area so that users can pick those to notify easilly.
 * Flow seems to solve some of the problems identified above but no contributor has really used it and it has a bad reputation. A user thinks that Flow is not actively maintained which does not allow to fix the multiple bugs that have been reported.
 * One user thinks that no system will satisfy everyone and suggests that the choice of the talk "technology" (wikicode, Flow, other) should be adapted to each user's choice. Pamputt (talk) 17:15, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Hungarian Wikipedia
We planned to switch on Flow / Structured discussions for testing purposes, but our request is blocked by this consultation now. I felt the CentralNotice campaign strongly contra-productive, because it was started before the local page was created, and did not link to the local page after it was created. Editors were redirected to an English language page on Meta without any useful information, and could not find the local page. I tried to get attention for the consultation, but most of the editors do not give a second chance for these kind of global consultations. Therefore we received very few answers, mainly because I asked editors personally who commented something on the village pump on this topic independently from the consultation, that copy their comment to this page. Or I just summarized here now, without copying these comments to the local page.

Summary of the discussion
Samat (talk) 19:45, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
 * One topic was about signatures: the software should sign comments automatically, because it is a common problem, that (beginner or even experienced editors) don't sign their contributions on community pages or discussion pages, and it is not easy to find and copy out from the page history who and when made the edit.
 * Beside that the system should handle indentation, and help to follow who answered to whom, and when.
 * Talk pages and community pages should be easy to use if we would like to insert/edit a table/formula/graph/map etc. Now, if somebody would like to edit a table in the Wikipedia namespace, the easiest way to copy on a user subpage, edit there, then copy back. This is not how it should work.
 * New feature request: it should be possible to show the view of a page on a discussion page / community page without copying the whole page code there, or alternatively create a screenshot, save it, upload it, insert the file into the page (and in most of the case this temporary file does not need long, however cannot be deleted because of the page history and to be able to follow the discussion later). It could be a card-like view of a page for explanation/illustration purposes only.
 * We should provide ONE unified surface and user experience on all (Wikipedia) pages (beside the unified wikicode surface for experienced contributors). This is especially important for beginner editors, who can easier learn the new VisualEditor surface now, but when they should communicate on the community pages or on the discussion pages, it requires a completely different knowledge (different surface, tools, wikicode, signatures etc). We loose many editors at that point. (The engine, software, background can be different or will be probably different, but the users should not realize anything from this.)
 * We have some hybrid namespaces, for example Wikipedia namespace, where we have both guidelines/help pages/essays and discussion/community pages. The first type would need the same VisualEditor surface than the main namespace, while the second type needs the tools for communication. The system should be able to handle this and make the difference.
 * We should think on completely renew the communication system/tools in the Wikimedia projects, and create something closer what the social media offers and most of the newcomers (especially the younger generation) familiar with.
 * Earlier, we had the experience, that beginner editors tend to ask questions in emails, because the surfaces and tools on Wikipedia were too complicated for that. Recently, we receive more and more questions on the Facebook pages (like private messages). These are signs that our tools are not user friendly/up-to-date any more.
 * There could be a way to channel questions and comments to the right contributors, or change the communication flow completely. If an editor ask a question on the discussion page of an article, likely won't receive any answer in reasonable time (because nobody realize it). If the editor ask the question on a WikiProject page (which is already unlikely, because not easy to find them), probably won't receive any answer because the WikiProject is inactive for years. Therefore the best place to ask a question is a village pump now, because most of the editors follow them. But that means a lot of messages addressed to contributors not interested in the specific question, and not easy to follow these pages. Meanwhile, there are many dissatisfactions because of the not answered questions on the other pages.
 * We should consider to require a valid email address for each editors. There are many cases when somebody asks for a new password and it is not possible because they did not add an email during the registration process. Or we are not able to communicate with the editors, because they have no email addresses and they don't realize the messages on their talk page.
 * Is there a way to get rid of the pop-up notices of VisualEditor after years of usage and thousands of appearance? We should avoid these kind of aggressive "helps" for the new, interactive communication tools.
 * Request: real-time preview of the page (comment, question etc.) before saving it.
 * Public likes of pages/images etc. would help the acknowledgement/pride of the editors/creators and therefore would increase their motivation. (This idea strictly does not fit into the topic of the talk page consultation, but maybe worth to consider for discussions as well.)
 * Keep the possibility for unique messages in the future, for example barnstars or personal thanks, which have important roles in the user happiness and communication. (With other words: do not make the communication sterile, and limit it only for pure text.)

Iberocoop
I organized the consultation in five main questions:


 * How the users communicate?
 * Almost all users use Telegram or another Internet messaging system (WhatsApp). IRC is mentioned sometimes in the discussion as support (for ToolForge/Cloud Services) and confidential way to ask help or something related with Wikipedia project.
 * Mailing-list are just for announcements.
 * Talk pages in main namespaces are used to discuss about articles and User talks are to leave messages to other volunteers about some ideas to share in the articles.
 * Café (aka Village Pump) is used to official communication in the volunteer activities.
 * Some opinions are "the taks pages are just fine for our communication".
 * Someone has disabled the email function in Wikimedia projects due "privacy concerns".
 * The newcomers (and anon users) doesn't use the sign icon, so, it could be ideal to automate the sign if there is no present in talk namespace.


 * Are the talks pages useful for newcomers?
 * Someuser said that IRC is most useful than Talk pages.
 * The wikicode could be problematic for newcomers. So, they don't have enough skills (and idea) about sign their message in talk pages.
 * The talk pages are not visible in mobile devices and app.
 * Sometimes new users doesn't know that they have new messages in their discussion.
 * There are local issues about leave message to new users, because the Counter Vandalism volunteers leave an automated message everytime, without see the importance of human communication.
 * It's a huge concern about the bad faith in the communication from veteran users.
 * Newcomers doesn't know about how Wikipedia works, so they can't have enough knowledge about the internal process and they leave messages about its preferences and not about the article. The community don't have the empathy to newcomers in this kind of communication.
 * It seems a chaotic place to contribute, but you can find the important messages.
 * It's not friendly, but it's easy to adapt them.


 * What kind of problem do you have to use the actual talk pages?
 * Some issues about how do the multilevel discussion (":")
 * Differentiate a topic and a sub-topic
 * Usage of templates (qs)
 * Manual signature
 * No intermediate answer to a message
 * There is no way to leave a message with Visual Editor
 * Huge amount of automatic messages due templates of Counter Vandalism Patrolling users.
 * Edit Conflict (conflicto de edición) when two users edit the same section in any page in Wikipedia.
 * There is no centralized discussion place for small wikis (such as Spanish Wikisource)
 * Problems to answer in own page and mention the user. Some users uses their talk pages to answer comments from other users. They may mention the other users to receive a notification.


 * What do you want in your talk pages but we can't provide you due technical limitation?
 * A clean user interface, an automated way to archive the older discussions and create "groups of discussions" to avoid travel around all Wikipedia users pages leaves messages.
 * Automated sign, in web and mobile versions, and realtime comments to avoid the edition conflicts.
 * Implement flow.
 * A modern way to write the comments, search by them. This could works as a forum.
 * A way to calm-down users if there is bad faith in the discussions (not block them, just leave the conversation). This could be auto-invoked or imposed by other user (sysop).
 * Limite the user messages in the same discussion, to allow other users participate in the discussion.
 * Use the "at" sign ("@") to mention someone in the discussion (like as social networking)
 * A hub or Special Page to follow my discussions.
 * A button to report a bad faith comment or bullying or harassment from other users in the discussion.
 * A way to search in the discussion to avoid repeat the same discussion.


 * What are the key aspects in a wiki discussion?
 * Exchange opinions with other wikipedians.
 * Notifications and anti-abuse filters
 * Some users said about the importance of the communication and how to talk with other about articles and Wikipedia. This kind of communication could help to newcomers to contact veteran users to help them to be better Wikipedians.
 * Organize the discussions in the talk pages, because is hard to follow the arguments and messages from other users.
 * The public discussions could help to be transparent and accountability form all decisions. We can recommend, in light of Stategy 2030, to study the tone about the automated templates, if they could help to newcomers.