Topic on Talk:Structured Discussions

The discussion at Comparison of thread styles has given me an idea for a middle-ground solution that maybe, just maybe could satisfy the needs of both newbies and veterans. Here's a mockup:

It recovers the idea of separate "reply/comment" actions, but now it allows the editor to control whether to create a subthread.

The text "Add notes" is intended to suggest that the comment will have several replies attached at the margin (I'm not sure about the wording, it would require testing). Pressing it would always create a new indentation level, even at the last post.

The explicit "Reply to..." box at the end of each thread or subthread entices the user to keep replies at the same level, though Wikipedia editors can still create as many levels as they wish at any time if that's what they want. The path of least resistance creates a sane threading, but experts can override it; just as simple yet powerful interfaces should behave.

(There are two options for what happens after pressing "Add notes" at (2) in the example. It may work the same as "Reply to 5", or it might create a new separate block of notes below the first one at the same depth level, to keep the same structure of the Dynamic style which is isomorphic to the convention of Talk pages at Mediawiki).

Now tear the design appart...  :-)

I've seen a lot of models and examples for Flow indentation over the last year, and I'm always happy to keep talking and thinking about this. There's a couple things that make it hard to evaluate a suggested model.

First, you need to show where the reply fields or links are, so we can see what choices the user would be presented with. Second, it needs to be a "real" (made-up) conversation. Every model looks baffling when the messages are "B responds to C" and "C responds to A". We need to see real sentences, and some idea of why 4 is responding to 2, rather than 3.

With all of these, the hardest nut that we have to crack is having two different ways to reply to the same post. Under the last message, if you have a "Reply" link right above a "Reply" entry field and they do different things, it's a confusing interface. Product design is hard.

Yeah, I know all that. That's why I thought of using a completely different metaphor for allowing the user to start a tangent, like "add notes" or "start thread". Attaching notes to an item in a document is a recognizable action.

And I wanted to try how this idea looks like, that was closer to the current design than the Dynamic style but keeps its flexibility. After this time testing the new Flow threads in the wild and watching the reactions to it, I'm certain that the bulk of veteran Wikipedians will never accept this exact model for talk pages.