Topic on Talk:Talk pages project/New topic/Flow

Trying to turn this useless feature off just took me far too long - and I'm sorry, but it is useless. Aside from the markup / special characters toolbox being gone, restricting the input box to rich text with like 4 formatting buttons means I can't add things like noinclude and nowiki tags which are commonly used by experienced editors on talk pages.

At the top of the new topic box, I see a link telling me I can switch back to "the legacy experience". Hallelujah, normal service is temporarily restored. At the top of this screen I see an invitation to "visit preferences to set the legacy experience as your default". I followed the link and saw no reference to the "legacy experience" anywhere. Eventually I guessed that the relevant option was "quick topic adding". Why not just tell us that, rather than using vague marketingspeak in one text and the actual name of the feature in the other?

I'm glad that you were able to find the right item in preferences.

@PPelberg (WMF) will probably be interested in your idea about changing the wording on that message. It will take some time to get translations through, though, so even if the Editing team implemented the change today, it would likely be weeks or even a couple of months before it would be seen in practice.

The New Discussion tool is not limited to rich text. You can switch to the source mode.

The special characters tool is in the toolbar. Look for the Ω icon. It's the same special characters palette that is used in the visual editor, which (depending on the wiki) is usually either the same or slightly bigger than the one in the 2010 wikitext editor's toolbar. If, on the other hand, you are looking for Extension:CharInsert (underneath the old wiktext editing window; it contains a limited number of special characters, but is mostly used for wikitext markup codes like <code><nowiki>Insert text here</code></nowiki>), then that is not included in these tools.

I generally find that nowiki'ing works automatically in the visual mode, but noinclude tags would send me to source mode. Can you give an example of a time when you wanted to post a comment that included a functional noinclude tag? Visible ones (e.g., to tell someone else what to type) are rare, amounting to just 9K out of 15.5M talk pages at enwiki. Functional ones, e.g., for the GA process, aren't normally added as part of a comment.

First of all, Filelakeshoe is correct, this is a useless feature. Wikipedia already has a plethora of editors and it doesn't need another. Look what a mess you have made.

Example 1. A user who never edited before clicks on the "+" icon and creates a comment on a talk page. Someone replies, and now the user wants to respond to the reply. This time they click on "edit" and now they have a very different interface from the previous one. Special character insert is different. The three buttons "Save edit", "Show preview" and "Show changes" are different. User signature is not automatic. The user's experience should be "this is just like last time."

Example 2. A user has edited before and already knows what the editor looks like. They click on the "+" icon and it's a big "WTF?!" Where is the special character insert? Where are the three buttons? This user's experience should be "this is just like last time."

This editor should be expunged forthwith. I am sure that this advice will go nowhere, but it needs to be stated, for the record. It is a major violation of sound interface design for a user to be presented with two different interfaces for trying to do basically the same thing.

Related discussion to Anomalocaris' comments: en:WP:VPT#Editing through the "+" link.