Talk:Talk pages project/Replying/2021/07

The team would value any thoughts and/or questions you have about this new tool for Replying to specific comments on talk pages.

Reply to User:力 not handled in ping menu

In https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)&oldid=1033147331, I'm trying to reply to User:力's message, "I doubt it would improve the project to remove Pending Changes today, but the entire system needs to be re-designed from the ground up. I'm not sure there's any path to a Git-like revision history on a per-page level,...". I click the "[reply]" link and get an edit box with "Reply to 力" in grey. If I type "@", I get a "Find user:" pop-up menu, but there's no User:力 in it. There's two unusual things about User:力; one is that it's a japanese character, the other is that the account has been renamed (previously: User:Power~enwiki). I have no clue which of those might be the issue. RoySmith (talk) 22:41, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

The username doesn't appear because it's the last on the list when sorted alphabetically, and the list is apparently limited to 8 entries (maybe it shouldn't be). In the same thread, the username of Phil Bridger also doesn't appear in the ping menu for the same reason. Matma Rex (talk) 14:07, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, that's clearly a bug. I suppose it might make sense to limit the depth of the menu to some maximum, but if so, 8 certainly seems like too low a limit. In any case, the username of the message you're replying to should always be included. In fact, it should be the default menu item, so you can just type "@ <return>". Although, to go back to an earlier thread, that should just be the default without having to type anything. RoySmith (talk) 14:25, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Sometimes 8 is so long that it runs off the end of my screen, and I have to cancel out, re-position the discussion, and try again.

I sometimes wish the list was scrollable. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:30, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

It is scrollable for me. Matma Rex (talk) 11:47, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

It scrolls for me if the first 8 names don't fit in the box. But sometimes, because of the position of the box, I can't see what it's scrolled to, so it's not really helpful. What I want, though, is to see the default 8 names plus be able to scroll to more names. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:17, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Page notices are not displayed

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T269033

This seems like a serious problem. When you reply on a page with page notices you don't see the notices. I first noticed this on :en:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard, where they're critically important. RoySmith (talk) 12:59, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

We've recently added this in T269033, it will be included in this week's deployment (on Thursday on Wikipedias).

The notices will be only shown in the new topic tool, but not in the reply tool, since it seemed to us that they're usually relevant for new topics but not replies (plus they're often unreasonably huge). Matma Rex (talk) 14:22, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

I disagree with this logic. Editnotices are placed when it's important for people editing a page to know something. Hiding them seems inappropriate. RoySmith (talk) 14:44, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree on the importance of edit notices, but we shouldn't show them outright in the reply tool; i.e. I can't imagine how hideous and nearly unusable it would become on pages like w:WP:ANI. However maybe we could instead show a little alert icon ⚠️ or something that when clicked, reveals the edit notice.

Either that, or show them full-size but have a means to dismiss them so I don't have to see it every time I reply. For me, part of the beauty of the reply tool is the minimalist design. — MusikAnimal ^talk 02:51, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Having some sort of visual "Click here for important information" indicator makes a lot of sense. RoySmith (talk) 13:20, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Having a stable way to hide notices through CSS (preferably TemplateStyles, i.e. the selectable DOM node should be the descendant of a node with mw-parser-output class) would help edit notice authors to scope edit notices to only one or the other and thus declutter the interface. Of course, this won’t work everywhere right after the deployment, so making the edit notices collapsible still makes sense. Tacsipacsi (talk) 15:43, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

This is what I used to have to click past every time I left a comment at w:en:WT:MED:

I do not miss it seeing it 10+ times a week. Also, the last two bullet points are irrelevant to people using the Reply tool or New Discussion tool.

Looking at pages with the prefix of "Template:Editnotices/Group/Wikipedia talk:" (which includes this one), nearly all of them are blank pages, created to suppress unwanted default edit notices.

Research on other wikis has indicated that most edit notices on talk pages contain only information about how to format/sign a comment. These shouldn't be displayed in the Reply tool. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:02, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Page notices are now displayed when creating a new section, but not when replying to an existing section's comment. I think this is a very helpful feature for new editors, and it doesn't interfere with normal discussion. ToBeFree (talk) 17:20, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Pinging everybody in a thread?

This enwiki Village Pump thread is about pinging everybody in a discussion. It seems like Reply Tool already has done the hard work that's needed to implement that. You've parsed the thread, and figured out who were all the participants. All that's needed is a button for "ping everybody". I think that would be a killer feature and generate a lot of interest in the tool. RoySmith (talk) 16:09, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

@RoySmith, in case you're interested, I actually finished making that tool. There's a template on enwiki now called wp:Template:rfcping that you can use. MPants at work (talk) 18:37, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Cool, I'll give it a try the next time I need something like that. RoySmith (talk) 18:51, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

If they auto-subscribe everyone to every thread they reply in (see the latter part of this discussion), then everyone would effectively get auto-pinged anyway (assuming that the editor is using these tools and hasn't manually unsubscribed). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Editnotices

I was wondering whether the display of editnotices when starting a new topic via the tool can be individually adjusted in any way. Edit notices on talk pages sometimes contain very specific instructions on how to start a new section (eg, de:Wikipedia:Fragen zur Wikipedia/Editnotice points out Please add at the end of every message your signature by typing [], or clicking on [].), which may be superfluous or even misleading for users of the tool. Being able to suppress individual edit notices (or even parts of them) for the tool (maybe through a class noreplytool or similar) would be helpful. XanonymusX (talk) 19:16, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Edit notices are not currently supported. (They might be in the future, but not today.)

Most – but not all – of the edit notices on talk pages are of the sort you mention, with instructions that don't apply to the Reply tool. We might need a system that encourages w:en:Template:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard but discourages "Please sign your message by typing ~~~~." Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:18, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

But they are now supported, that is why I noticed the issue in the first place. If I start a new topic on de:Fragen zur Wikipedia via the Reply tool, I see the (superfluous) edit notice! XanonymusX (talk) 09:46, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I was thinking of the Reply tool, but you said "when starting a new topic". Yes, that was meant to be an improvement.

I wonder: If the plain wikitext editors included a notice about signing comments, do you think editors would then feel comfortable removing that instruction? Or should we just wait until the New Discussion tool is what most newcomers use, and recommend removing it then? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:28, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Actually, we had briefly discussed a similar problem recently, as the editnotice all talk pages on dewiki show per default also contains the instruction. But there it gets hidden by the mobile talk page overlay, so for now we left it as it is. Working with class nomobile was considered in that case, but that is not ideal, as it does not distinguish based on the editing mode. Therefore I was thinking of a class that could detect tool use in this case … I don’t think removing the instruction altogether would encounter much enthusiasm in the community. :| XanonymusX (talk) 18:38, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Please also note that while hopefully eventually most newcomers (and maybe most “oldcomers” as well) will use the tool, all of them will probably never use it—for example because it’s not available to them in the first place: they use an ancient browser, they deliberately turned off JavaScript (e.g. using NoScript), the necessary scripts just didn’t finish loading by the time the user clicked the new section tab etc. Tacsipacsi (talk) 20:07, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure that we should keep a page, shown to 100% of editors, when <1% of editors need it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:27, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

the automatic signature

The automatic signature needs some changes. Occasionally, editors will make tangential remarks (or minor jokes) using the <small></small> markup, but this tool doesn't recognize the signature if it's in those tags. It also won't recognize a signature if you place a {{Reflist }} or {{Reflist-talk }} tag after your sig. It should looks through the whole comment for a signature, and not add one unless the only signature in the comment is in <nowiki /> tags. MPants at work (talk) 18:33, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

(The minor comments are already tracked in phab:T268558 I suppose.) Matěj Suchánek (talk) 08:49, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

It might be better to have editors control the double-sig question manually. That's phab:T279578. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:08, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

You might also be interested in phab:T268558 about small tags. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:11, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Minor styling changes

Just tried the new tool. Long awaited feature. 2 minor changes in regard to the overall styling of sentences:

1. Can we make it so there are commas and spaces after usernames pinged? This is the typical case. If it can be somehow changeable, it would be nice to also cover edge cases when you just want to ping someone without directly talking to them in which case a comma wouldn't be needed. (Also the tool is supposed to be used to reply, not to just mention people casually, if we want to be pedantic, so that would make those cases seem even more "edgy".) Of course there are moments when you may want to use a colon or a question/exclamation mark but all those cases can be covered by the comma case I believe with insignificantly small changes to the syntax of the sentence that you're writing.
2. Can we add [space hyphen space] between the end of the text and the beginning of the signature? The reason is understandable I believe... So I don't make this text any longer. Klein Muçi (talk) 18:14, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: As for your second point, that should almost definitely be a dash and not a hyphen. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 18:20, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

XD I'm cool with any kind of size personally. I only said hyphen because I'm used to type it like that because this [-] is all I have in my keyboard (and I believe in most keyboards) as a way to type a line and I'm all for following standards. I wouldn't use something that is hard to reproduce in much used places because I know that I wouldn't have the nerves to follow up the standard later so I've settled for that myself. Assuming that the reply tool would add everything automatically and the standard could be easy to be reproduced because of that, whatever that is, I agree on every size, as I said.

I'm thinking that maybe we can make it so there is 1 standard and there is also a place to set up your own standard in regard to details like these but maybe this option isn't really needed... Klein Muçi (talk) 18:30, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Side discussion: How is the tool supposed to interact with reply/ping/mention templates? Should it recognize them automatically? Should it remove them automatically? Should it convert them to its own pinging infrastructure automatically? Klein Muçi (talk) 18:34, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

1. No, we shouldn't do that, because not every language uses commas and spaces like English.
2. The signature "prefix" can be customized by any local wiki. Whatever system is set will apply to all editors at that wiki. Note, just in case it's relevant, that I do not expect the English Wikipedia to agree to this, precisely because it will apply to all editors.
3. From a typography perspective, the correct punctuation preceding a signature in English is an unspaced em dash: —Name. (The English Wikipedia's Manual of Style recommends an em dash followed by a hair space: — Name. The purpose of the hair space is to make it slightly more legible visibly, and to separate the punctuation from the name semantically.) The double hyphen-minus character is common on the wikis; they copied that form from Usenet (i.e., from e-mail). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:58, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Hmm, can it be language dependable then? I'm an admin at the Albanian Wikipedia for example. From our point of view, it looks kinda silly that we need to add commas between every ping. Because that's mandatory in our language (and some others, as you mention). It kinda feels the same as having Content Translation Tool, silly example, translate the content very good but you need to put space manually between each word. :P

I mean, it's not THAT bad because at foremost we'll be pinging 2-3 users simultaneously and that's only 2 manually added commas. But I'd say that these are things to be kept on mind hopefully for a future quality of life kind of update. Klein Muçi (talk) 14:23, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

In Albanian, does a comma always follow a ping? For example, @Tol above used a colon after your name, and in this message, I have pinged Tol but not added any punctuation around the name. Does that happen in Albanian? Or would you have written the sentence "For example, @Tol, above used a colon"? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:40, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

No. That's what I mention in the beginning with the edge cases and other cases which can be transformed into comma cases without much difference. If we mention someone casually, without directly talking to them, that wouldn't require a comma and that's the edge case. Then we have the cases where we use colons or the name is used in the end of the sentence. These cases can be transformed into typical comma cases by just swapping punctuation or the word order. We have the same rules as English to be honest, only the colon rule doesn't "fully apply" to us. (In Albanian you don't usually see that kind of sentence.) Klein Muçi (talk) 06:28, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I suppose it would be possible to insert [[User:Example|Example]], as the wikitext, but then sometimes you'd have to delete the , and if you don't notice it (or if you're in a hurry), then you might end up with a worse sentence. I tend to think that this would save me a quarter-second most of the time, but frustrate me significantly when I have to go back to the page to correct the 'typos'. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:31, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Eh, I know what you mean. A good solution would be an elegant one that deals with both cases but I don't really know what to propose in that direction. Klein Muçi (talk) 22:23, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

It is not reasonable for the Reply tool to interact with/modify/replace templates. If you type a template (into the wikitext source mode, because templates are currently disabled in the visual mode), then it will post what you typed. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:59, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

It's not unthinkable to have an "API" (convention) for functional templates that the reply tool calls on every project, possibly more than one if there are distinct cases. That puts things like commas vs. colon after a ping in the hands of the community without needing MW config changes. Not sure that's needed for anything or that's it's a good solution for any current problem, but just want to flag it as an option to consider. Xover (talk) 08:44, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Not all comments are replyable

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T287818

In the "Miss Grand pageant article" thread at User talk:Black Kite on enwiki, the two comments by Black Kite do not have reply links. Is this because it's on their own talk page? Or is there something odd about their signature which prevents recognition? Either way, it's an issue. RoySmith (talk) 14:08, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

It seems to be the mix of the two: the odd about their signature is that it contains no user page or contribs link, and the fact that it’s their own talk page means that the signature contains no link at all. I’ve created phab:T287818 to track it. Tacsipacsi (talk) 14:49, 31 July 2021 (UTC)