Topic on Talk:Talk pages project

Hello Editing team, I have seen that two of the areas the talk pages project is focussed on are:

• Replying to specific comments
• Starting a new discussion

Based on our experience in the Konkani community, these are important aspects of talk pages where those uncomfortable with Wiki-syntax usually struggle.

I would like to highlight another important area that I have noticed: managing old posts. Eventually, high-use talk pages become very long, and it is desirable to have some kind of archiving system like the bots on the English Wikipedia, or an unlimited scroll with loading-on-demand like Structured Discussions has. For a small community like ours, not having a lot of technical skill to implement bots, it would be ideal if such a system were built into Wikimedia. Have you considered this aspect as part of the task pages project?

pinging @Whatamidoing (WMF)

Hello, and thank you for your note.

Archiving was discussed in the consultation last year (see Talk pages consultation 2019/Phase 1 report#Archiving for a summary). The bot-based approach to archiving is complicated because it makes it hard to find previous discussions. But, of course, keeping everything on the page, especially since most wikis don't follow the modern internet convention of top-posting, leads to very long pages. This is particularly bad for editors using smartphones, who have to load and scroll through the whole page to reach the most recent discussion. Loading on demand works best with top-posting.

I agree with you that some archiving ought to be handled automatically. The Editing team is thinking about the possibility of improving some aspects of this situation. Unfortunately, I do not think that a real solution will be implemented during the next year.

Hello Whatamidong, thanks for your reply. I was a bit disappointed to know that a solution is not on the horizon. It appears that we will have to look at implementing a bot-based system for the newly-launched Konkani Wiktionary.

You mentioned that "most wikis don't follow the modern internet convention of top-posting". Do any Wikimedia wikis use top-posting for discussion pages (apart from Flow boards)? Is this possible or feasible?

In my previous comment, I meant to say "it would be ideal if such a system were built into MediaWiki".

@The Discoverer:, can you elaborate on what the exact problem is with very long Talk pages? Is it that scrolling through the page to find the right discussion is cumbersome or takes a long time, or that the page takes a long time to load in areas of slow internet speed, or something else? If it's a scroll problem, there might be a solution involving rolling up/collapsing the sections by default. Mathglot (talk) 18:38, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

@Mathglot, navigating and handling a long page is the issue felt first, when a page already has around 50 discussions. At this stage, the page size tends to be around 100kB. Loading time would probably come into play at a later stage, or if there are a lot of images, which usually doesn't happen on discussion pages.

I guess if the sections are collapsed by default and you reach around 100 discussions, it would still mean quite a bit of scrolling.

I think it would be great if either an archival system, or a loading-on-demand system (like Flow) were built into MediaWiki.

@User:The Discoverer, as a practical matter, I use w:Template:Skip to bottom on my Wikipedia user talk page. That would work on mobile view as well, I believe. Still not a solution for long-loading pages, but should get you to the most recent discussion quickly. I added gom:सांचो:Skip to bottom but you might need to tweak it for your environment. Mathglot (talk) 19:26, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

@Mathglot, thanks for that. I will add the template to gomwiktionary too. It does not seem to work in mobile view, though.

In an earlier comment you mentioned tere might be a solution involving rolling up/collapsing the sections by default.

User:The Discoverer, are you comfortable altering the gom Template, to add the text "Skip to TOC" and "Skip to bottom" in Konkani? If not, if you paste the words below, I will add them for you. "TOC" is an abbreviation for "Table of Contents" in English. If an analogous abbreviation exists in Konkani, that would be preferable; otherwise, the translation of "Skip to Table of Contents / Skip to bottom" would be best. Mathglot (talk) 20:32, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks @Mathglot. I think I can handle localising the template. Since the Konkani community use the interface in the Latin and Devanagari scripts, I intend to make use of MediaWiki messages so that users can see the text of the template in their preferred script. I'll ask you for help if I get stuck.

Check this out.. the user sees the template contents in his/her own interface language :)

Template:skip_to_bottom?uselang=gom-deva

Template:skip_to_bottom?uselang=gom-latn

Template:skip_to_bottom?uselang=en

I believe it's by design; not sure if it has to do with the "float" properties of that Template, but if I get enough time, I could probably figure it out.

As WaId commented below, they are rolled up on mobile view by default. Rolling them up by default in desktop view would, I believe, be a software change, although possibly it could be done by a bit of javascript that would look for your H2 sections on your talk page, and use the Before property to add a collapse bottom template (for the previous section), a blank line, and a collapse top (for that section) right under the header, and then you could stick that in your w:Special:MyPage/common.js. However, only you would see it that way, everyone else would see it expanded. You could add it to the gom-sitewide common.js, I believe, if there was Community support for that, and then everyone would see it that way.

The w:en:WP:TEAHOUSE originally used top-posting, but has since switched to bottom posting. I believe that conforming to the typical (Wikipedia) style was a significant factor in that decision. In Wikipedia's early days, neither top-posting nor bottom-posting were used. If you're interested in a bit of history, then Talk pages consultation 2019/Discussion tools in the past might be worth reading. I think we have done some of everything over the years.

The mobile platform collapses sections. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Village_pump_(technical) (a talk page) for an idea of what that looks like.

@Whatamidoing (WMF), thanks for your replies. The Discussion tools history page made for interesting reading. I used to be unhappy about the fact that our Konkani Wikimedians community does most of our discussion off-wiki, on WhatsApp. I was surprised to learn that initially, for the big Wikipedias too, most conversations were off-wiki. So this may be a normal path of progress for communities.

The Konkani Wikipedia community adopted Flow as the default discussion system, and we are quite comfortable with it. Sadly, when the Konkani Wiktionary was approved in March this year, our request to have Flow set up was declined.

They're not approving any new Flow installations. The system has many advantages, but it really needs some serious work. Have you tried out Help:DiscussionTools#Reply tool? I've left a link on one of your talk pages with a link that I think will work for you.

Thanks, @Whatamidoing (WMF). Yes, I had tried the reply tool, and I think that it will be useful for us. The link that you left worked for me. I wasn't aware that the Reply tool had already been deployed to projects. This means that we can request for it to be enabled on all discussion pages on our project, doesn't it?

It's still under development. The Konkani Wiktionary is already on their list to wikis to consider for the next round. The approved groups will get the Reply tool as a Beta Feature. I can add the Konkani Wikipedia to the list if you would like.

I am hoping that they will make some decisions in early August about that list. (It has taken longer than I expected.) Right now, I think it mostly depends upon Analytics' needs. They want to do some A/B testing on the next group.

Thanks, @Whatamidoing (WMF). On the Konkani Wikipedia, Flow is the standard content model for discussion pages, and there are very few Wikitext discussion pages, so the utilisation of the Reply Tool on the Konkani Wikipedia will be low. We can still add Konkani Wikipedia to the list so that the editors see the same thing on both projects, especially since I've heard that Flow might eventually get uninstalled.