Talk:Talk pages project/Replying/2021/11

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

Need a way to skip the signature

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T279578

It would be useful to add an option (under "Advanced", maybe?) to skip the signature. The use-case is copying discussions from one page to another. If I try to create a new section (to avoid loading the whole page), my signature will be added at the end no matter what I do. Strainu (talk) 09:59, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Detecting section titles

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T295509

Just like you don't duplicate the signatures, it would be useful to detect if the text begins with a section title and drop the warning about adding a title. Strainu (talk) 09:59, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Are you thinking of the editors who edit an existing ==Section==, and then create a new section (with the old section's name in the edit summary)? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:12, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

No, I don't think your scenario would get you that warning. I am thinking about users using the new section link then either:

• copy-paste a section, including section title
• substitute a warning template which contains a section title, such as ro:Template:au-test1

Both cases will have a warning appear, which urges the user to include a section title. The warning will only go away if something is introduced in the title field. Strainu (talk) 20:28, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Cannot leave a comment in Wikipedia Signpost

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T259824
Open

This might be a known bug, but just in case it isn't: I'm getting an error message ("Could not find the comment you're replying to on the page. It might have been deleted or moved to another page. Please reload the page and try again.") when trying to reply to a comment on w:en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-10-31/News and notes.

This may have something to do with the comment section being transcluded from the corresponding talk page. Leaving a message using the reply tool directly on w:en:Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-10-31/News and notes seems to work.

(Additionally, I can't seem to paste the Signpost page title in this edit box.) Daß Wölf (talk) 19:09, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

It's a known issue, reported in T259824#7182141 (although that task's title and description are not great, I'll improve them).

The problem occurs when you're transcluding comments using some kind of a template – in this case, {{Wikipedia:Signpost/Template:Signpost-article-comments-end||2021-09-26|}}. The reply tool isn't able to figure out that the comments are actually on the page w:Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-10-31/News and notes rather than w:Wikipedia:Signpost/Template:Signpost-article-comments-end.

If that page was transcluded directly, replying would work (see e.g. XFD pages such as w:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2021 October 29), but that's not always practical when you want the template to provide some formatting. Matma Rex (talk) 20:58, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, happy to hear you folks are tracking the issue! Daß Wölf (talk) 22:54, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Reply tool now at German-language Wikipedia

Copied from the project page:

Where can I read about the conversation with German users? The tool is running in the German-language wikipedia already, but does not work and is not really needed on all pages by default. How can I remove that from my site? --Maimaid (talk) 13:11, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Grüß dich, @Maimaid.

The Reply tool ("[antworten]") was enabled for all editors at the German-language Wikipedia on Monday. The Reply tool is one result of the Talk pages consultation 2019. It has been discussed many times at the German-language Wikipedia. Today, the active conversations are at Wikipedia Diskussion:Kurier and Wikipedia:Fragen zur Wikipedia.

If you don't want to use it, you can turn it off. Just go to w:de:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion and turn off "Schnelles Antworten aktivieren". Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't know that it has been discussed at the German-language WP. As to me, it was a complete surprise, which I don't need. There was no "warning" before and there is no explanation about the functions to be found. And on some pages it does not even work properly. Nevertheless, thank you for your kind words and explanation. Best regards, Maimaid Maimaid (talk) 21:54, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

gudn tach! (hi)

this feature is soo great! i instantaneously loved it! whoever wrote it: thanks a lot! :-)

I guess and hope that it will help especially new users and lower the barrier to entry. -- seth (talk) 23:59, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Grüß dich, Lustiger seth. Es freut mich, dass es dir gefällt. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:26, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

nowiki tags

This feature is eating my pasted-in nowiki tags, making me look idiotic, and forcing me to compensate with edits like this. Please stop it from doing so.   — Jeff G. ツ 12:49, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

nowiki is so ugly anyway, you can always change your practice to use c:template:tlx — billinghurst sDrewth 00:14, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Template:Yo Using a template is OK if one never posts at a different wmf-wiki. However, if you ever try to use the same template on a different wiki, it will most likely end with an error. Just a thought. Ottawahitech (talk) 13:03, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: Template:Yo doesn't exist here. Pinging Billinghurst using a template that does exist here.   — Jeff G. ツ 08:12, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi Jeff G., yes I know that the template does not work here (it produces a red-link). I just thought it would be a good illustration of why it is better not to rely on using templates at all. At least until there is a coordinated effort to standardize templates across the wmfverse.

As far as user:Billinghurst being notified of my response, this reply button was supposed to take care of that, I think. Ottawahitech (talk) 14:28, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I was trying to quote exactly.   — Jeff G. ツ 02:30, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Can you provide more detail on how that edit happened, or even better, instructions to reproduce it? (e.g. where you copy-pasted it from, and did you switch editing mode at any point?) It should not be eating anything pasted-in, and especially not in the source mode. Matma Rex (talk) 18:36, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I drafted in my Clipboard app, pasted (like normal in source editing mode in Puffin Browser Pro) into a reply, tapped "Reply", and the nowikis were gone, so I had to replace them in source editing mode.   — Jeff G. ツ 21:08, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Just some feedback to the developers:

I just used nowiki tags on a talkpage at commons, and it seemed to work! The problem for me is moving from wiki to wiki with a totally different framework of talkpage behaviours. i feel like a guinea pig and it slows down my volunteer efforts to add to content.

For example: Here I do not have a Preview whereas the tool I just used on commons allowed me to preview before publishing Ottawahitech (talk) 15:52, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

I just used the reply button at wikivoyage where a preview DOES exist, but I cannot make any changes to my text there unless I go into old-fashioned wikitext mode (I have no preview here so lets hope I will not need to edit this) Ottawahitech (talk) 17:03, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Another problem I have with using this talk tool (does it have a name? is it Pages project?) is that my comments do not show up on my Global contributions. I have noticed this strange behaviour months ago, but could not figure out who or where to provide feedback, and by the time I visit this wmf-wiki again, i'll probably forget about this posting.

I hope someone can make sense of my garbled feedback. Ottawahitech (talk) 16:00, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Where do you see "my Global contributions"? The name is "Structured Discussions", formerly "Flow", and it is not really the thing people are discussing on this board. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 09:47, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Matěj Suchánek: "Global contributions" is a link you can click at the bottom of your contributions page on any wmf-wiki. Is that what you were asking? For example, to see your own global contributions click the link "Příspěvky jinde" on your "Příspěvky uživatele" page Ottawahitech (talk) 01:09, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

@Matěj Suchánek: This is a Topic on Talk:Talk pages project/Replying about the "Replying" feature of the Talk pages project. I see that this edit of mine using this feature is properly reflected at GUC, so I don't know which report of "Global contributions" Ottawahitech means exactly.   — Jeff G. ツ 12:06, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Jeff G: I checked your GUC and I can see your contribution here, but I cannot see mine at https://guc.toolforge.org/?by=date&user=Ottawahitech. I can see them on my contibution though: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ottawahitech Ottawahitech (talk) 17:11, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I believe they mean the tool we are all using right now here for discussion. Which, as I wrote, isn't what should concern us right now here. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 12:29, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

For clarity, this discussion is happening in Flow, aka Structured Discussions, which is widely used on this wiki but which is NOT under active development. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:42, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Tenplate:Outdent breaks Reply tool

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Hi, it seems that putting this template at the start of comments cause Reply tool to malfunction. Please fix it. Thanks in advance. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 20:24, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Reply tool duplicated block indent template used above it

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T289873

I replied to a post which had a block indent template and it duplicated that template. See dif Gonnym (talk) 06:35, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

It sounds like a fix is on the way, but I'm not sure exactly when it will reach the wikis. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:09, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the report. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the fix for T289873, which I'm already working on, should fix this problem as well. (They don't obviously seem alike, but it's actually a similar structure on the page, where a comment is partially generated by a transclusion.) I'll post some details on the task and ensure that we test this case afterwards. Matma Rex (talk) 20:05, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Spanish translation error

Hi, I don't know if this is the place to report the issue, but there's a small problem with the Spanish translation. It shows the following when replying:

Al hacer clic en «Responder» aceptas de manera pura y simple nuestros términos de uso y aceptas, irrevocablemente, liberar tu texto {{PLURALunder the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and GFDL.

Note the {{PLURAL and English text. This appears under the edit summary input box when replying to a comment. This issue is happening right now at the Spanish Wikipedia. Preocupante (talk) 08:56, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

I've fixed it on TranslateWiki Ciencia Al Poder (talk) 10:15, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

We appreciate you reporting this @Preocupante and you promptly fixing this, @Ciencia Al Poder. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 20:18, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

un-indented comments

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T259865

Personally, I find the feature useful to comment in any discussion, not specifically to reply to another users comment.

Discussions in d:Wikidata:Property_proposal/Overview are mostly un-indented (or prefixed by "*") .. would be nice have a way to use it there too. Jura1 (talk) 14:17, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Interestingly, it works on d:Wikidata:Requests_for_deletions, as one can just reply to the original comment. (Maybe we should do away with the section header on property proposals to make it work there). Jura1 (talk) 20:49, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

That might work. phab:T265750 (manual adjustment) would also give you some more options. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:26, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

"reply" added to automated edit summary

"reply" seems a bit odd when one adds to one's own comment.

Just noticed that I could manually override it for a comment, but I might as well never want to fill "reply" (the automated edit summary should do). Jura1 (talk) 14:20, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

If you were using your regular wikitext editor to post a new comment or answer someone's question, would you normally leave the edit summary blank? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:47, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

generally yes, except when the section header isn't filled Jura1 (talk) 20:45, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Replying to an indent below a bullet

I just tried replying to an indent below a bullet, expecting an additional indent. This was the result -- I would have expected an additional indent. Is this the intended behaviour? Mike Christie (talk) 12:07, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Usually an additional indent would be added – I think the tool becomes confused because there's no signature after the previous comment ("More generally…"), and it treats both paragraphs ("More generally…" and "Looking over your question…") as a single comment with incorrect indentation, and guesses wrong how to indent the reply. Matma Rex (talk) 15:44, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

It's quite common to see indented responses without signatures; two of the reviews I've posted on en-wiki recently were with editors who did not sign each indented response. I think it would be worth trying to make the tool handle this situation. The workaround is easy, at least; I can see the indent level and just add a colon. Mike Christie (talk) 16:12, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

The Reply tool used to calculate the indentation according to the last line of the comment. Then editors complained, so they changed it to set the punctuation according to the first line of the comment. What you encountered is the result of those editors' request. If we'd stuck with the original settings, your comment would have worked like you expected. (However, others wouldn't.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:54, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

How about making that a user preference? Mike Christie (talk) 02:23, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Because we want it both ways. We want to indent according to the first when that makes sense, and to the last when that makes sense.

I think the solution is to let us manually override the software's best guess. That's primarily phab:T265750. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:22, 7 January 2022 (UTC)