Talk:Talk pages project/Usability

Test page
This page has been set up as a wikitext talk page. This should make it easier to see and test the visual enhancements, but it might make it harder for people to notice replies, especially if they're editing at a different wiki. Please remember to @-mention or ping me and other people. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:13, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Moving page to Talk pages project/Legibility
@Whatamidoing (WMF): do you have any concerns about us moving this page to Talk pages project/Legibility?

Having articulated the objectives of this work (see #Objectives), I think "legibility" [i] more accurately describes the work we will be doing as part of this project and the impact this work is intended to have than "visual enhancements" does.

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i. Here, I am using "legibility" to refer to what Kevin Lynch in The Image of the City as, "...the ease with which its parts can be recognized and organized into a coherent pattern. Just as this printed page, if it is legible, can be visually grasped as a related pattern of recognizable symbols, so a legible city would be one whose districts or landmarks or pathways are easily identifiable and are easily grouped into an over-all pattern.” PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 22 April 2021 (UTC)


 * @PPelberg (WMF), I like that name, but it might be confusing. It sounds like maybe changing the font size (e.g., so I can read without my glasses on).  It might also get translated in odd ways, to mean something like "Readability".  Maybe Talk pages project/Appearance?  Talk pages project/Organizing?  Talk pages project/Changing appearance?  Talk pages project/Adding information? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I like that name, but it might be confusing. It sounds like maybe changing the font size (e.g., so I can read without my glasses on). It might also get translated in odd ways...
 * Good call, @Whatamidoing (WMF). Are you able to move this page to Talk pages project/Usability?
 * Thinking: "usability" can be translated without much lossiness across a variety of languages and "usability" represents the objectives of this project well: to help people better understand talk pages and use them more effectively. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:24, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
 * @PPelberg (WMF), I've ✅ the page move. I don't think we're going to find a perfect name, but this is a good option, as it should be clearer that the point is to make it easier to use, rather than changing the appearance beyond what's helpful for practical reasons. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:52, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Excellent and agreed. Thank you, @Whatamidoing (WMF) PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 23:34, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
 * THe objectives are obviously locked. Maybe in the future junior contributors would have been "communicate safely and receive responses other volunteers and locate the tools and clear procedures to do so"

Senior Contributors to be "encouraged with tools to behave in a respectful manner" and have "a page that is easy to focus on"  Wakelamp (talk) 11:14, 2 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi, @Wakelamp. The general objectives for this project were decided during the Talk pages consultation 2019.  I think that some of your points:
 * receive responses
 * locate tools and procedures
 * a page that is easy to focus on
 * are within scope of this project. Respect and safety issues sound more like "people" than "software".  I believe there is a broader project for that with the Universal Code of Conduct work. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Added information about discussions
@JKlein (WMF), you might want to look at w:en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Hospitals/Article alerts. This is a bot-generated list of links to (mostly) other discussions, and it is interesting to see what extra detail/context the bot provides about these discussions. For example, the deletion list says how many people have participated in the discussion. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:19, 1 May 2021 (UTC)


 * This is great, @Whatamidoing (WMF). I've also added a link to WikiProject Hospitals/Article alerts within T295392 where we are exploring the idea of enabling people to more easily make/customize discussion lists/feeds. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

A question about reading talk pages
When looking at a talk page, what do you think would make it easier for you to know what conversations are worth reading? PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 02:03, 24 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Probably the ones worth checking are those with many replies, so maybe the TOC could show that number after the title, or add a symbol/icon, something like that.
 * Also, some privileged user might have the power to manually highlight topics. This also could be shown in the TOC. Wedhro (talk) 04:36, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Does it have to be a privileged user? If it's to high, someone else can reduce. Even if a priority is set, it might not change the chance of resolution Wakelamp (talk) 10:59, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
 * @Wedhro, do any communities currently highlight topics? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Some indication of how many replies have been posted within each topic...understood and this makes sense. I've made a note of this in Phabricator where we will be working on this particular aspect of the project.
 * As you are using talk pages, if other kinds of information or visual changes come to mind that you think you could make it easier to understand what people are talking about, we'd be curious to know.
 * Any way, thank you for stopping by to share what you think, @Wedhro. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 30 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Those are the first things that I thought about without really reflecting about the matter, to be honest. The most representative element of a specific discussion is the title of its section, but often people don't know how to write a good one and there's nothing which can be done about it, I guess.
 * Another thing that could help people understand what's going on (but it's unrelated to the matter being discussed in the page) is how comments from different users are only differentiated by the final signature, which doesn't help even if users heavily customize them. Maybe a visual break would help, such as a horizontal line after each comment, or a different background for each comment.
 * I'll let you know if I get more ideas, thanks for working hard to make things better for everyone. Anyway, I have a question: is there any plan about being able to move talk pages (or even single sections) without breaking links or messing with the page history? Is one of the things that makes life hard for moderators because there's a lot of OT comments that need to be moved or long pages that need to be archived, and there's no clean method to do any of that. I know it's OT, I'm just curious because it's a big issue and I've not seen it discussed (if it was, my bad).Wedhro (talk) 19:26, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The most representative element of a specific discussion is the title of its section, but often people don't know how to write a good one and there's nothing which can be done about it, I guess.
 * Can you say a bit more about this...what do you consider to be a "good" title in this context? Is a good tile one that clearly communicates what is being discussed? Is a good title short enough to be consumed while skimming the page? Etc...
 * Another thing that could help people understand what's going on...is how comments from different users are only differentiated by the final signature, which doesn't help even if users heavily customize them.
 * I'm glad you mentioned this. I've added this feedback to the ticket where we are thinking about this issue of how comments can be more clearly related and distinguished: T282269.
 * is there any plan about being able to move talk pages (or even single sections) without breaking links or messing with the page history? Is one of the things that makes life hard for moderators because there's a lot of OT comments that need to be moved or long pages that need to be archived, and there's no clean method to do any of that.
 * We do not currently have plans to try to improve the experience for moving talk pages or individual sections within them as part of this first phase of the Talk pages project (I know the issue around archiving came up in the 2019 Talk Page Consultation).
 * With the above said, I am curious to better understand what your experience is like for archiving pages/moving individual conversations and the undesirable aspects of both processes. If you feel compelled to share this, I think starting a new conversation on Talk:Talk pages project would be a great place to do so :). PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:56, 5 August 2021 (UTC)


 * A good title should be a concise but understandable summary of what the sub-discussion is about. Summarizing is a skill that not everyone has, though, so often people use titles so generic or vague it's impossible to tell what they're about (such as "Help"). It's not an issue with MediaWiki in itself, you see this in all kind of social websites, for example Reddit. I really have no idea how to fix this, except from extreme deviations from regular MediaWiki such as auto-titling with an excerpt from the comment, or not having titles at all.
 * About archiving thanks for the link, I had no idea it was being discussed.Wedhro (talk) 04:59, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Rather than which topic to focus on, Are there too many other distractions on Talk so focus is hard? And many topics are not acted on just archived Wakelamp (talk) 10:28, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
 * @JKlein (WMF), I believe you've been thinking about this question. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:38, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's a concern that I share @Wakelamp
 * We are exploring ways to display the topics alongside relevant metadata (how many responses there have been, how many different people are talking, is this a really popular topic etc). Additionally we are looking into alternative models for surfacing the information that usually appears at the top of many Talk pages. JKlein (WMF) (talk) 00:13, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem is that there are topics that are worth reading based on the topic names, but the cognitive load to read them makes me avoid them. The cognitive load increases with depth, fragmenting of comments, number of replies, identifying the editor, and not having seen the conversation change. For instance, someone in this thread has said " "comments from different users are only differentiated by the final signature", but I don't know who.
 * I am beginning to think that Wiki conflict is in part caused by the fragmentation and loss of authorship/identity. Without a way to refer to fragments and there author then there is no easy way to summarise to gain consensus. My experience is that as the cognitive load increases, most people skim,, conflict increases, the number of conflict seekers increases, the chances of a decision decrease, and the cost benefit of my involvement decreases Wakelamp (talk) 22:35, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree: we may skim a long conversation, or we even skip reading it entirely.   Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:40, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I think there may be a huge difference between the way more experienced editors and others use talk page. More experienced read and refer to each other's comment, and there is less fragmenting. I wrote out some use cases based on the type of Talk page usage. The most important question was is this topic still undone.I see these in computer games []  [] where they also use edit requests and set the flag to YES.  I am not sure how it works in practise, but they seem to be creating a bug and escalation flow like  bugzilla flow, or Jira and I assume phabricator.  Wakelamp (talk) 12:36, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Comparison of internet forum software has a discussion about the difference between threaded and flat. A major difference with flat is the ability to easily quote each other which allows the bringing together of threads The other thing common to both, but used in wikipedia but in media wiki is the ability to flag a post up and down - or maybe in our case just unhelpful Either would help you assess whether it is worth reading. and important Wakelamp (talk) 12:36, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I am more likely to read in depth if there are new editors, and if the conversation is constructive; you can't identify either easily. Wakelamp (talk) 22:35, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

When and who
@JKlein (WMF), I'm posting a quick link here about a conversation on Getting information about a discussion at the Dutch Wikipedia, which had a very concise and useful idea of the information needed: We need to know "who" is in the discussion, and "when" it happened. These are key points. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:14, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Feedback: Topic Containers Design Concepts
The first intervention we are working on as part of the Usability Improvements portion of the Talk Pages Project is Topic Containers.[i]

A are ready for you all to review and share what you think about them.

Below is the information you will need to:


 * 1) Review the design concepts and
 * 2) Share feedback about the design concepts

If any questions come up as you are attempting to try the prototype, please post them here...it is likely someone is wondering something similar to what you are.

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i. Topic Containers are an effort to evolve the way talk page section headings (read ) appear, and introduce new information within them, in order to help:


 * Junior Contributors easily recognize talk pages as containing discussions
 * Senior Contributors assess the level of activity on talk pages

PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:07, 18 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Review the design concepts
 * To see the Topic Container design concepts visit Commons: Topic Containers Design Concepts.
 * Share feedback
 * Once you have reviewed the design concepts and you are ready to share what you think of them, please do the following:
 * "Start a new topic" on this talk page
 * Name this new topic: "Topic Container Design Feedback: YOUR USERNAME"
 * Write answers to these questions
 * What you appreciate about these design explorations?
 * What do you wish were different about these design explorations?
 * What other ideas do you think would be worthwhile exploring in the next iteration of Topic Container design concepts?
 * PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:07, 18 December 2021 (UTC)