Talk pages consultation 2019/Current feedback

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

What works
Taken from the Flow satisfaction survey report.
 * Finding specific discussions can be done with MediaWiki's search feature.
 * Watching changes and patrolling vandalism can be done with MediaWiki's features to watch article content
 * Compact view
 * Flexibility

Issues and suggestions

 * Archive bots
 * Potential conflict: Korean Wikipedia for instance, prefers archiving to be done by hand
 * Archiving is done unevenly by bots, which are maintained by users and therefore of very uneven quality. Archives are something of a black hole — they aren’t searchable, easily maintainable, or easily accessible. You can’t resurrect an archived discussion easily...


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


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


 * Create topic
 * Make it clear how and where


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


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


 * Quoting
 * There’s no encouragement, mechanism or incentive for quoted, point by point inline replies like we’re all used to with e-mail.


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


 * Signatures automatic


 * Thread moving
 * You can’t move a thread to a different discussion page and preserve its history.


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


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


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


 * Visual Editor option

What works
Taken from the |Flow satisfaction survey report.
 * Structured-by-software discussion system which allows watching topics
 * Dedicated notifications when a reply is received or a topic is appreciated
 * Clear design for adding new topics and editing messages
 * Better integration and use on mobile
 * Mentioning (pinging), thanking, and replying to other users is easier

Issues and suggestions

 * Bugs
 * Adding in the phabricator link to all open bugs/tickets, sorted from highest to lowest priority.


 * Compact view
 * More white space than original system. Leads to much more scrolling.


 * Editing
 * Users, barring admins etc., should not be able to edit other users' comments.
 * StructuredDiscussions message editing should support some shortcuts to switch between editors.


 * Edit summary
 * Make the edit summary a mini-VE surface so users can put in links etc.


 * Filter open/closed topics


 * Flexibility
 * Allow for flexibility that is close to or on par with wikitext editing.


 * Internal search
 * Rather than just having an infinite scroll, which can make pages very long and cumbersome to use and search, try adding a calendar feature. All threads created on a day will be confined to that date. This also keeps the "Browse Topics" list shorter per page.
 * While searching for thread posts might never be possible, it would be at least useful to be able to search prior discussions by title. This only works with structureddiscussions boards but not threads, e.g. it is possible to find this board "Extension_talk:StructuredDiscussions" but not a thread like Topic:Ukzjwfa58ewp4zm6 without knowing the whole strange id. ]
 * Have a Special page that lists all unresolved topics


 * Mentions
 * Mentioning someone in a footnote does not work.


 * Move topics
 * Ways to split, merge, move, or relocate topics or parts of topics.


 * Notifications
 * Notifications have a primary, secondary, and a menu of tertiary options. However, the tertiary option is so long you sometimes can't read it completely. The box should be expanded or at least there should be a mouseover in place, so users can tell what action they are actually triggering, as it is a guessing game otherwise.


 * Quoting
 * Flow should provide an easy way to quote other user comments.


 * Topic summary improvement
 * ...it is difficult to see the nature of the discussions at a glance.


 * Vandalism
 * Counter-vandalism is more complicated. Needs to be improved.
 * Feature-parity with non-Flow talk pages for moderation and protection.

What worked
Taken from Wikipedia.
 * A simplified post/reply workflow so new users can jump into the discussion.
 * Simple management of threads, including automation of archival, refactoring, and other tasks currently undertaken by bots and humans.
 * A flexible notification system, allowing users to keep abreast of developments in areas in which they are interested, ranging from entire discussion pages to discussion fragments.
 * Support for following discussion pages with RSS feeds.
 * Flexible post ordering, allowing users to keep track of which threads on a talk page are dead, and which threads are active.
 * An AJAX-based interface that allows users to quickly post and reply to other posts, without clumsy page loading.
 * Automatic signatures and indentation.

Issues

 * More scrolling required by more whitespace on talkpages.
 * LiquidThreads limits what you can do to a talk page, for example, it is not possible to collapse a thread using Collapse.
 * Issues raised during the proposed LQT 3.0 examination
 * Lack of consistent and reliable support to fix problems.