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

One mistake that I frequently see newcomers making is starting the same discussion in multiple places, which goes against w:WP:TALKFORK. This creates a lot of messiness: it uses up editor time because folks type out comments others have already given elsewhere, makes it harder to keep track of things, requires work to reconcile differing outcomes, can be seen as inappropriate canvassing/forum shopping, etc.

It occurs to me that the new discussion tool might be able to help address this issue by identifying possible discussion forks as they happen. The trigger for this would be if a non-extended confirmed editor starts writing a new topic that has the same header as a topic they recently (say, within 31 hours) started at a different page. (A more advanced version could parse the content as well, looking for, say, > 90% similarity.) When that condition is met, it would trigger an editnotice that would say something like Please do not start the same discussion in multiple places. To draw attention to a centralized discussion, use the Please see template to leave an invitation.

Would it be possible to develop this feature, @ESanders (WMF)/@PPelberg (WMF)? (This might also be considered a possible implementation of Edit check.)

Our new comment metadata database would certainly make such a feature possible: being able to generally querying all discussion topics on a wiki. I'm not sure if the team would be able to prioritise such a feature at the moment, but filing a task would be a good place to start.

@ESanders (WMF), done at phab:T337360.

It would be better to have friendly wording, like "There is a similar discussion at <link>. Would you like to join that discussion instead of starting a new one?"

(The "Please see" template only gets used at about a dozen wikis, so you wouldn't want that to be in the MediaWiki message.)

I'm happy to see friendlier wording, but it should still make clear that centralizing discussion is an expectation, not merely an option. With the wording you suggest, I think many editors might think, "nah, that other discussion isn't getting enough response, so I'd prefer to just copy it here and hope for more response."

On the "Please see" template, I think that's an argument for making the MediaWiki message configurable by each community. We want to show people how to do things correctly, not just tell them what not to do, since otherwise they'll just plow ahead with the incorrect thing since they don't know what else to do. "Please see" is the easiest way to do the correct thing on the wikis where it is used, so it's important to have it in the message.