Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Mid-April status note

Quick update: This is available as an opt-in Beta Feature at the Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias. I looked at every single diff during the first ~10 days (hundreds and hundreds of diffs), and while it generated a few questions (if you reply to a comment inside a table, does your reply belong inside it or outside it?), there were no significant problems. It seems to be working well overall. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #1 – Discussion tools

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This early version of the Reply tool automatically signs and indents comments.

The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. The goal of the talk pages project is to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. This project is the result of the Talk pages consultation 2019.

In a future update, the team plans to test a tool for easily linking to another user's name, a rich-text editing option, and other tools.

The team is building a new tool for replying to comments now. This early version can sign and indent comments automatically. Please test the new Reply tool.

• On 31 March 2020, the new reply tool was offered as a Beta Feature editors at four Wikipedias: Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian. If your community also wants early access to the new tool, contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF).
• The team is planning some upcoming changes. Please review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page. The team will test features such as:
  • an easy way to mention another editor ("pinging"),
  • a rich-text visual editing option, and
  • other features identified through user testing or recommended by editors.

To hear more about Editing Team updates, please add your name to the "Get involved" section of the project page. You can also watch these pages: the main project page, Updates, Replying, and User testing.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Try it out

If you want to try out the Reply tool (still early days), click on http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisatrice:Whatamidoing_(WMF)/Brouillon?dtenable=1&uselang=en and leave a note in my sandbox. Ping me if you have questions or comments. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:35, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Now you can try it out here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Talk_pages_project?dtenable=1 Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:45, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

The edit you made above (Special:Diff/960099739) has thee different discussion tool tags - is there public documentation about the meaning of each? DannyS712 (talk) 09:13, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

User:DannyS712, I'm surprised you would even ask such a question. Of course it's not documented anywhere handy. (There's likely to be something in the code repository.) What do you want to know? (Please ping me.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:39, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): For one thing, why is the plain discussiontools tag set to not be shown? DannyS712 (talk) 05:42, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Mostly because I complained at them about cluttering up the RecentChanges feed. DiscussionTools includes Reply + NewDiscussion + maybe something else. I can imagine that anyone except Analytics is going to want to see those edits as a group. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:22, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Spammin the WAID. Timeless on a small screen is not as pretty as it should be. Izno (talk) 11:25, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Is there any way to integrate Notifications into this? Right now, the reply box starts by saying Reply to Whatamidoing (WMF) before I type anything, which (based on how other platforms work) seems to imply that Whatamidoing (WMF) will be tagged in the reply. I'm thinking of a "Notify Whatamidoing (WMF)" (or whatever the username is) checkbox next to the "Watch this page" one that would add {{Reply to|Whatamidoing (WMF)}} to the start of the reply. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:19, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello, User:Ahecht, they are still talking about that question, and your advice is welcome. The way I think of that question is: Do I want volunteer-me to be pinged every time someone comments after me in a discussion thread? (Work-me loves being pinged to everything, all the time. Volunteer-me is going to read all the comments at WT:MED every day whether I get pinged or not, so it's kind of a waste of effort.)

The next version will have an optional visual mode, with a quick search tool for usernames. I am pushing for them to turn the source mode (which is what we've got today) into something that looks plain but still has the keyboard shortcut for finding usernames. (Also for code formatting and link searching in general.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:37, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I was thinking of a box that wouldn't be enabled by default, so it is presented as an option for each reply. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 11:15, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Maybe something like "Tick this box to ping User:Example"? (The actual ping could be added to the edit summary in that case, or inserted into the text of the comment.) I don't know whether that was already on User:JKlein (WMF)'s list of ideas, but if it wasn't, I bet it will be soon. :-D Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Version 2.0 ready for testing

Try the fancier version here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Talk_pages_project?dtvisual=1

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:33, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Nothing showed up for me with visual (writing this with dtenable=1) DannyS712 (talk) 09:33, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, it turns out that it doesn't work unless you already have the basic version enabled in your account. If you check my global.js, the first line is the magic one. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:39, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF) Yeah, that did the trick DannyS712 (talk) 05:35, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Partner wiki update

We're supposed to get numbers soon on the Reply tool's use at the four partner wikis (French, Arabic, Hungarian, and Dutch). All I know at this point is that a couple hundred editors have used it, and that once they have it, most people keep using it (assuming they keep replying to comments on talk pages at all). Overall, people seem happy with it.

I'm trying to talk the team into offering it here, but I don't know if I'll succeed this round. They're going to want to run an A/B test at some point, though, and I'm encouraging them to think about the English Wikipedia as the fastest place to do that, just because of its size. The first step would just be getting it into Beta Features. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:55, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #4

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Reply tool

The number of comments posted with the Reply Tool from March through June 2020. People used the Reply Tool to post over 7,400 comments with the tool.

The Reply tool has been available as a Beta Feature at the Arabic, Dutch, French and Hungarian Wikipedias since 31 March 2020. The first analysis showed positive results.

• More than 300 editors used the Reply tool at these four Wikipedias. They posted more than 7,400 replies during the study period.
• Of the people who posted a comment with the Reply tool, about 70% of them used the tool multiple times. About 60% of them used it on multiple days.
• Comments from Wikipedia editors are positive. One said, أعتقد أن الأداة تقدم فائدة ملحوظة؛ فهي تختصر الوقت لتقديم رد بدلًا من التنقل بالفأرة إلى وصلة تعديل القسم أو الصفحة، التي تكون بعيدة عن التعليق الأخير في الغالب، ويصل المساهم لصندوق التعديل بسرعة باستخدام الأداة. ("I think the tool has a significant impact; it saves time to reply while the classic way is to move with a mouse to the Edit link to edit the section or the page which is generally far away from the comment. And the user reaches to the edit box so quickly to use the Reply tool.")[1]

The Editing team released the Reply tool as a Beta Feature at eight other Wikipedias in early August. Those Wikipedias are in the Chinese, Czech, Georgian, Serbian, Sorani Kurdish, Swedish, Catalan, and Korean languages. If you would like to use the Reply tool at your wiki, please tell User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF).

The Reply tool is still in active development. Per request from the Dutch Wikipedia and other editors, you will be able to customize the edit summary. (The default edit summary is "Reply".) A "ping" feature is available in the Reply tool's visual editing mode. This feature searches for usernames. Per request from the Arabic Wikipedia, each wiki will be able to set its own preferred symbol for pinging editors. Per request from editors at the Japanese and Hungarian Wikipedias, each wiki can define a preferred signature prefix in the page MediaWiki:Discussiontools-signature-prefix. For example, some languages omit spaces before signatures. Other communities want to add a dash or a non-breaking space.

New requirements for user signatures

• The new requirements for custom user signatures began on 6 July 2020. If you try to create a custom signature that does not meet the requirements, you will get an error message.
• Existing custom signatures that do not meet the new requirements will be unaffected temporarily. Eventually, all custom signatures will need to meet the new requirements. You can check your signature and see lists of active editors whose custom signatures need to be corrected. Volunteers have been contacting editors who need to change their custom signatures. If you need to change your custom signature, then please read the help page.

Next: New discussion tool

Next, the team will be working on a tool for quickly and easily starting a new discussion section to a talk page. To follow the development of this new tool, please put the New Discussion Tool project page on your watchlist.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

I'll add that deployments are currently blocked on a new API being deployed. So if anyone's interested in seeing this as a Beta Feature, it will be possible, but not immediately. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:49, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2021 #1

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Reply tool

Completion rates for comments made with the Reply tool and full-page wikitext editing. Details and limitations are in this report.

The Reply tool is available at most other Wikipedias.

• The Reply tool has been deployed as an opt-out preference to all editors at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
• It is also available as a Beta Feature at almost all Wikipedias except for the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias. If it is not available at your wiki, you can request it by following these simple instructions.

Research notes:

• As of January 2021, more than 3,500 editors have used the Reply tool to post about 70,000 comments.
• There is preliminary data from the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedia on the Reply tool. Junior Contributors who use the Reply tool are more likely to publish the comments that they start writing than those who use full-page wikitext editing.[2]
• The Editing and Parsing teams have significantly reduced the number of edits that affect other parts of the page. About 0.3% of edits did this during the last month.[3] Some of the remaining changes are automatic corrections for Special:LintErrors.
• A large A/B test will start soon.[4] This is part of the process to offer the Reply tool to everyone. During this test, half of all editors at 24 Wikipedias (not including the English Wikipedia) will have the Reply tool automatically enabled, and half will not. Editors at those Wikipeedias can still turn it on or off for their own accounts in Special:Preferences.

New discussion tool

Screenshot of version 1.0 of the New Discussion Tool prototype.

The new tool for starting new discussions (new sections) will join the Discussion tools in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures at the end of January. You can try the tool for yourself.[5] You can leave feedback in this thread or on the talk page.

Next: Notifications

During Talk pages consultation 2019, editors said that it should be easier to know about new activity in conversations they are interested in. The Notifications project is just beginning. What would help you become aware of new comments? What's working with the current system? Which pages at your wiki should the team look at? Please post your advice at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Notifications.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

New sections

Since we don't have the Beta Feature turned on here yet, most of you are using this via a user script, which means you've been using the mw:Talk pages project/New discussion tool to start new sections. Almost all of the comments above are about replying, rather than starting new discussions. The designer asked me earlier this week if anyone had comments on the New Discussion tool, and I had to tell her that I'd heard very little about it. So now I'm asking: What do you think?

For myself, I like having it show the new section at the end of the page. I hope that will help newcomers figure out our bottom-posting system. What do you think? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:44, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I didn't know new sections was a thing with the tool? I don't see a link on this page and don't recall seeing one elsewhere. Thryduulf (talk) 23:10, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

@Thryduulf, I think this will work:

1. Click on https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Talk_pages_project&dtenable=1
2. At the top of this page, click the 'New section' tab (next to the history tab).

If it works, then it'll scroll to the end of this page and give you a space to start a new discussion.

You can play in my sandbox if you want: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Whatamidoing_(WMF)/sandbox?dtenable=1 Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:13, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Ah right, the new section link is at the top of the page. I was looking for a link at the bottom, sorry. I haven't used it much but I don't recall any issues when I have. Thryduulf (talk) 17:42, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

I think there will be demand for a bottom-of-page link after this is turned on and more people are typing their replies directly at the bottom of the page. Currently, you scroll to the top, hit [ New Section / + ] which then scrolls you back to the bottom. French Wikipedia has "Ajouter un sujet" in the bottom right. Are there plans to include something as part of DT, or should we consider emulating the French example? — Pelagic ( messages ) – (06:58 Mon 01, AEDT) 19:58, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

@Pelagic making it easier for people to identify where/how to add a new topic to a talk page and access the link/button for doing so, regardless of where they are on the page, is something we have plans to work on.

In fact, in December, you shared an example of how Meta works to deliver easier access to the new topic link (thank you). If you come across any other projects that implement like what you described, we'd value hearing. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 04:16, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi Peter, glad to hear that’s still in your plans. Much as I would love to have a French-style link now (with or without New Discussion tool, but especially with), it'd be wasted effort trying to get w:en to add one sitewide if it's going to be made obsolete by something that's on the DT roadmap.

What’s your thinking about release timing? If you get to the point where New Discussion tool is ready for wider use, but the best approach to invoke it from other places on the page is still under design/discussion, would you consider a simple link/button at page bottom as an interim measure or first iteration? (I do prefer the location of the French link over the Meta one.)

Also, a general question for anyone reading who knows about modding MediaWiki: where would I look if I wanted to emulate the French link via my personal js?

— Pelagic ( messages ) – (06:53 Thu 04, AEDT) 19:53, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

@Pelagic, look in w:fr:MediaWiki:Common.js and search down the page until you find the section called "Ajout d'un lien « ajouter une section » en bas de page" (currently lines 516 to 530). I think if you copy that over to User:Pelagic/common.js or m:User:Pelagic/global.js, then it will work for you. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:19, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

@Pelagic, responses to the points you raised below...

What’s your thinking about release timing?

I anticipate us focusing on making it easier for people to identify where/how to add a new topic to a talk page this summer. Reason being: we will first focus on: 1) getting topic subscriptions in y'alls hands and then, 2) introducing a series of small visual enhancements to make it easier for people to identify and understand new activity on a talk page. Note: while the scope of these "visual enhancements" is still coming togther, you can find some information on the project page and in phabricator here (T249579).

If you get to the point where New Discussion tool is ready for wider use, but the best approach to invoke it from other places on the page is still under design/discussion, would you consider a simple link/button at page bottom as an interim measure or first iteration?

I think what you are proposing here could be a wise first step...good thought! Although, I need to stop short of committing to any definitive plan in order to make sure: A) we (read: all of us) have the space to learn new things about the tool as we use it more and B) JKlein (WMF) (design lead) has room to think more about this issue of discoverability.

Please let me know if anything above prompts new thoughts/questions or leaves anything you were wondering about unanswered. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 04:11, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the insights into your plans, Peter. To counter-argue against my own suggestion, I guess a reason for not putting out an interim button or link too widely may be: if you wanted to do some A/B testing of candidate designs later on, you might not want to skew those by creating a pre-conception or getting people used to a certain way of working beforehand? Pelagic ( messages ) – (14:49 Sun 14, AEDT) 03:49, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

It's great, I've had no problems with it, and I like it a lot more than starting new sections in VE. (Particularly having the new section edit window be at the bottom of the page instead of on its own page.) Levivich ^harass/_hound 23:19, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I've been using it, and I like it. SQL^{Query me!} 17:19, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

If, for some reason, I want to override it and use the old-style new-section experience (just for a single edit, not as a permanent preference), is there a way to do that? ... answering myself here: open in new tab achieves that. (Why would I want to? Maybe I’m typing something that would benefit from CharInsert, syntax highlighting, ref tool, etc. Not common on a talk page, but possible.) — Pelagic ( messages ) – (06:33 Mon 01, AEDT) 19:33, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

I'd say that would be quite useful when drafting something intended for the main article, which is not an uncommon use of talk pages. Thryduulf (talk) 21:39, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

@Pelagic, I can't say that this quirk is intended or guaranteed to stay around, but at the moment, it appears that if you click the "New section" button while you're on the "View history" page, then you get the old wikitext editor. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:04, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

If you click the link to start a new section on a talk page on a wiki that (a) you have not edited before and (b) has a welcome message for new contributors then clicking "start editing" on that message takes you briefly to the old new section interface and then to the top of the page you were going to leave a comment on with the new tool loaded at the bottom. At least I think that is what happened to me at the Outreach wiki. I've tried testing with my alt account (Awkward42) and not managed to reproduce it (on outreach, dk.wikipedia, hr.wikipedia and en.Wikiversity), but it's not an easy thing to test given that I don't know how to force seeing the welcome message more than once on any given wiki. Thryduulf (talk) 16:25, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Doing this

Hello, all:

My overall impression from this page and from WP:VPT is that nobody has any significant concerns about the Beta Feature being offered. Unless I hear otherwise, I'll ask the devs to please put enwiki on the list for whenever they're making a config change. This could be as early as next week, but I can't promise a particular date.

The Beta Feature will (definitely) be default-off, opt-in only. It might include the New Discussion feature as well as the Reply tool; if not, then it'll get added later. (This depends on how long we have to wait.) Either way, the user scripts should continue to work.

There's work on a toolbar for the wikitext source mode (pinging and searching for links, because who's wants to type out Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by hand when you could just type travels into and have the search box do the rest?). However, my current impression is that won't be ready very soon. In that case, you can expect that to be added later, too. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Thank you for your work on this. I'm looking forward to seeing it activated for enwiki. SQL^{Query me!} 21:54, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks from me too, Whatamidoing (WMF). Once it's officially in beta, are you happy for us to recommend it to new users at the Teahouse and Helpdesk, if they mention that they're having trouble with replying? Pelagic ( messages ) – (15:20 Sun 14, AEDT) 04:20, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

@Pelagic, yes, once it's out as a Beta Feature, you can recommend it to anyone you want. It's pretty stable, and anyone who finds out where to turn it on will (obviously) automatically discover where to turn it off, too.

This should happen approximately this time tomorrow (Tuesday). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:51, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Pasting templates

I've done a bit of experimentation with pasting templates into the reply tool and new discussions tool, and these are the results:

• Copying from source editor to source mode: Always works as expected
• Copying inline templates (e.g. {{cite book}}, {{convert}}) from visual editor to source mode, the behaviour varies (I haven't established a pattern)
  • Sometimes generates a would you like to paste plain text or wikitext dialog
    • If "convert to wikitext" is selected it works as expected.
    • If "use plain text" is selected then nothing is pasted. The plain text of the template should be pasted
  • Sometimes pastes the text from the template. The dialog should be shown as above
    • In the case of {{convert|35|mm|in|abbr=on|frac=8}} (which should generate: 35 mm (1+3⁄8 in)), two newlines are inserted before the fraction. Conversions that output only a fraction, e.g. {{convert|5|mm|abbr=on|frac=16}} (5 mm (3⁄16 in)), and conversions without fractions include no newlines.
• Copying block templates (e.g. {{Wikiquote}}, {{More citations needed section}}) from VE to source mode:
  • On wikis where the template exists: Pastes the text from the template. The wikitext or plain text dialog should be shown
  • On wikis where the template does not exist: Pastes the text from the template (reply tool), pastes nothing (new discussions). The wikitext or plain text dialog should be shown
• Copying from visual editor to visual mode:
  • On wikis where the template exists: Always pastes the template as expected
  • On wikis where the template does not exist: Always pastes a redlink, as expected. Thryduulf (talk) 21:13, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

@Thryduulf, are these the same results that you see in the visual editor (e.g., in your sandbox)? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:41, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

I didn't think to test that, and don't have time right now. I'll get back to you. Thryduulf (talk) 17:44, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I found a few minutes, the results are the same on both en.wp and the patchdemo wiki

• Inline: Visual → Source: pastes text

  • Inclues blank lines wuth "1 3/8" fraction, no blank lines with "3/16" fraction)

• Inline: Visual → visual: pastes template or redlink
• Block: Visual → Source: pastes text
• Block: Visual → Visual: pastes template or redlink. Thryduulf (talk) 21:06, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): fixing ping. Thryduulf (talk) 21:07, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

There are some restrictions on what can be pasted into the visual editor. We obviously can't have people using copy and paste to add images from other websites, but it's a little more extensive than that; it will prevent colorful text and other things that aren't generally expected in a Wikipedia article. In some cases, it can guess which parts to paste, and in others, nothing happens. It struggles with some "overloaded" templates, and I believe that category includes both convert and coord, but not (e.g.,) any infoboxes or maintenance templates.

Your computer/browser should be able to force a plain-text paste, if you need that. Sometimes I find that something won't paste with ⌘V on my Mac, then it will paste with ⇧⌘V ("Paste and Match Style"). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Add support for watchlist expiry

Are there plans to add support for mw:Help:Watchlist expiry? I find this feature especially useful for discussions. — MusikAnimal ^talk 03:40, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal, they were talking about it, but I can't find a Phab task for it. Probably it'll come up again during the mw:Talk pages project/Notifications work, because you might want to subscribe to a single thread at ANI, but you probably don't want to stay subscribed to that thread forever/after it's archived. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:25, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Box width

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T278476

If possible, the box should respect floating elements and only be as wide as the comment that will be posted. Currently if there are long floating elements (see e.g. my talk page) then the reply box is below them, divorcing the reply from the comment being replied to. Thryduulf (talk) 16:52, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

I poked around at your talk page a bit, and didn't come up with any good solutions. On my screen/font/zoom combination, I can't get the width of the table to be less than ~30% in practice, so the Admins' Newsletter, with a width of 70%, always displays after the long table. When I shrink the newsletter width to 65%, it displayed as expected in "Read" mode, but the Reply tool still skips several miles down the page. I think this is going to be a "file a bug and hope for magic" situation. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:58, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Automatic signatures

It looks like MarioGom and I independently uncovered a small issue with the automatic signature detection today - if a manual signature is not the last non-whitespace in the comment then a duplicate signature is added.[6][7] I have reported it at phab:T278355, but noting it here as well now that I see someone else has experienced it.

I've also reported phab:T278357 requesting that three and five tilde signatures are dealt with more gracefully than at present. I know this has been brought up before (so the phab might be a duplicate) but I can't remember where and couldn't find anything when searching. Thryduulf (talk) 21:37, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for bolding filing the bug reports. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:58, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Disappeared?

I have if ( $( '#ca-addsection' ).length ) mw.loader.using( 'ext.discussionTools.init' ); in my common.js. This has been working till today, but the reply button has now disappeared. My other scripts are working fine. Is something changing / does this method no longer work, or? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:36, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

... use the beta prefs version instead? Izno (talk) 17:57, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Didn't realise it was there now. Enabled. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:33, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

@ESanders (WMF), my happy script stopped working. Do I need to add that extra line back in again? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:09, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

No, that extra line was to work around a bug we fixed a month ago. ESanders (WMF) (talk) 09:52, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Experiences

@ProcrastinatingReader, Levivich, Barkeep49, Valereee, GeneralNotability, Pelagic, DannyS712, Ed6767, and SQL: @Blablubbs, Majavah, Awesome Aasim, The Earwig, L235, Thryduulf, Nthep, Silikonz, Berrely, and Ahecht: @CAPTAIN MEDUSA, Mr Ernie, Ltw2021, 1997kB, Sir Joseph, Joseywales1961, Amorymeltzer, 2d37, Mehmetcaputcu, and TheImaCow:

Hello, all. You have all used the Reply tool at least 5 times on this wiki, and I'd like to check in and see whether you have found any serious problems that you think should be addressed before it's made available more widely. I know the user script isn't working in Firefox right now (the fix is on the way, but the deployment train got derailed). Is anything else on your mind? Pages where it screws things up? Problems you're having? Anything? I'd like to talk to the devs about offering it as a proper Beta Feature here, but I'd like to make sure that you're all satisfied first.

You can use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Talk_pages_project?dtenable=1 if you want to try it out on this page. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:34, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

All fine for me, other than the minor things I mention at User_talk:ProcrastinatingReader#DiscussionTools. Still meaning to follow up on the most recent comment, but currently I'm not sure I agree on If someone doesn't get value from it, then why should they change the page's appearance (especially on a User_talk: page)?. Say Iridescent decided he doesn't get value from it and doesn't want to remove his box, that doesn't mean people commenting on his user talk page don't get value from it. Similarly, if the maintainers of Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations don't get value from it, that doesn't mean I (as an editor posting there, possibly just irregularly) doesn't get value from it. The people maintaining the page may not get value from it, but people posting on it might. So I still think that's a bug this extension should aim to fix. I'm not entirely sure why it's getting confused on the pages either; the wikitext is still normal, though I believe this extension works on the generated HTML. It might still be possible to account for it, though. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:40, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: When I filed a task that would work around the box problem for TemplateStyles, the DT team let me know that that issue can be worked around by moving the div at issue out of the 'header template' and into the page itself. See phab:T271588#6733745. --Izno (talk) 01:32, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Can't reply on customized talk pages (like my own talk page). Maybe that can be fixed? Also, clicking on "reply" inside of a template should make the reply outside of the template, not inside. Aasim (talk) 20:43, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

The problem is the box/background color. The Phabricator comment that @Izno linked is about this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:13, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

All good here. Thanks! Levivich ^harass/_hound 20:44, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I just stumbled upon an instance of it messing up a colon-to-colon reply (: should have been ::: in Special:Diff/1006327064), but it was on an arbcom workshop page so it might have been the unusual section formatting. Probably not worth holding up beta over. Levivich ^harass/_hound 08:12, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

@Levivich, you are correct. It's the fake ::"Comment by" sections that cause this. This is a special case of the question about whether, if my comment contains starts with : and ends with :*, should your reply begin with :: or :**? (It was one way, and people complained, so they switched it, and now people complain about that, too. There is no single correct answer that works for everyone and every discussion.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:32, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

I noticed it did it here, too, on a Signpost talk page (also unusual formatting). I guess it saw the ** at the beginning of the previous comment (which ended with :::), and so it did lvl3 ::: instead of lvl4 ::::.

The :/* system is, IMHO, a top example of wiki-insanity. I still can't believe we're not wrapping comments in XML tags to differentiate one comment from another and specify which comment is in reply to which previous comment. As I understand it, it's because some sizeable portion of the community wants the source code to be human-readable, which, to me, sounds insane. But I digress.

If you want my two cents, if a comment ends in :*, regardless of whether it started with : or :* or anything else, the next comment should begin with :** or :*:, with the third indent level indicating this is a new comment and not a continuation of the previous. But, you know, any sane system would simply not use indentation as a method of visually separating one comment from another, because indentation is used within comments, for lists and various other purposes. If we use indentation to separate comments, we will have problems like... this exact problem. Something tells me that someone said this 20 years ago and nobody listened.

Anyway I hope none of this holds up the rollout on enwiki because overall this tool is a big step forward, even if it doesn't magically solve all of our problems. Levivich ^harass/_hound 21:20, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure that association list formatting was possible on wiki twenty years ago. (Twenty years ago, talk pages hadn't even been invented yet.)

I can reproduce the error (here). The preceding comment begins with ** and the switches to :::, which is always wrong. I'm not sure what it should reply with, but I'm convinced that ::: is wrong. The Reply tool places the box to show where the 'indentation' will appear, and it is obvious that it's going to be in the wrong place. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:31, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

A reply to ** should be **: or ***, I believe. Enterprisey (talk!) 08:34, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

I've been noticing this more as I use the tool more: normally I would always reply to a * with a ** and never with a *:, but I don't have that choice with this tool. I guess I'm OK with giving up the choice in exchange for the benefits of the tool, but some months in, it has me doing the McKayla face. Levivich ^harass/_hound 05:46, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I've never liked having replies start with a bullet point; it makes more sense to me to reserve bulleted lists for use within individual replies. I know some people try to use bulleted list items to start a new topic, and unbulleted list items to continue a topic; I think the distinction is too arbitrary to be useful. isaacl (talk) 18:58, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

@Levivich: Hopefully phab:T276510: "Enable people to choose asterisk or colon for indentation on a per-comment basis" will resolve most of this. Thryduulf (talk) 04:49, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

The other popular request on this subject is phab:T265750, which will let you "outdent" back to the starting point. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:07, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Using > as a visual indent for replies is an old tradition dating back to Usenet and plain text email. (Today's fancier email clients will automatically render it as indented text with a change bar.) There's a reason why bulletin boards favour a single stream style of replies (well, beyond "that's what phpBB does"): it's easy to catch up on a discussion by finding the first unread reply and reading to the end. For better or worse, there is a vocal segment of the community that wants talk pages to remain entirely in wiki text, and that will hinder moving towards solutions using metadata to associate replies with each other. isaacl (talk) 18:55, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I have a few stray thoughts. An option to ping in source mode is my most desired feature, since I primarily edit in source mode, and is the main thing missing compared to Enterprisey's reply-link. There is also no clear way to leave a comment that is not indented without starting a new section; this is commonly needed when leaving a general comment or when outdenting explicitly with {{od}}/{{od2}}. Lastly, editors can be inconsistent about whether they indent with : or *, but DiscussionTools enforces :. I don't like this inconsistency, but has it been conclusively decided to only support : going forward? This aside, I've been very happy with it. I don't think these are blocking issues and would love to see it more widely available. — The Earwig ⟨talk⟩ 20:54, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

The option to ping the editor you're replying to would be super helpful. I don't like / use visual mode either. SQL^{Query me!} 23:01, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

@The Earwig, the "correct" thing to do with ** vs *: has not been conclusively decided. It originally used **, but then a few people said that it was the wrong thing, so they changed it, and now other people say that it was better the other way around. You can see some comments at phab:T263902. I think that no matter what the default is, some people will think it's the wrong thing. (I originally thought I was firmly in the ** camp, but it turns out that I sometimes want it one way and other times the other way.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:19, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Until phab:T264520 is fixed the interface is fairly annoying since I need to switch back and force from visual (for pings) and source (for everything else I type) - it was closed as a duplicate of phab:T251633, but the latter task does not cover everything in the former. DannyS712 (talk) 20:56, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

@DannyS712, as a workaround, if you type the template syntax (elsewhere, e.g., in the URL bar of your web browser), and then paste it into the visual mode, the template works:  Done! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:21, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): yeah, its easier to just switch the mode to source editing at that point DannyS712 (talk) 21:58, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Earwig and Danny that the ability to ping in Visual only is the biggest hiccup. I also have encountered the issues PR highlights which isn't a dealbreaker for me but might be for a more novice user. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:05, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I have used it solely with Firefox, I don't use visual editor. I have encountered very few problems, occasionally hangs and I abandon, ping and answer manually, doesn't happen too often so I think it is fine for my (limited) needs. JW 1961 Talk 21:18, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

The only problem I've had with its use is that once I encountered a bug where left and right arrows would switch between Visual and Source mode, rather than move the cursor. It was a comment that required careful wording, so I was going backwards and forwards quite a lot, sometimes with ctrl and sometimes with shift also, but despite testing it a few times since I've not been able to reproduce the issue (so haven't reported it).
Sometimes, It results in WP:LISTGAP issues but I've not looked into this in any detail so don't know if it's tool error or user error.
Finally, for feature requests:

• integration with popups would be useful (in the source editing preview at least)
• If three tildes are typed then it should append just the timestamp (rather than the whole signature) Thryduulf (talk) 22:29, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Ah, yeah, I can break the arrow keys if I shift-tab to the visual/source selector and use an arrow key while editing. — The Earwig ⟨talk⟩ 23:38, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

@The Earwig and @Thryduulf: What's your web browser and OS? We should get a bug filed for that. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:23, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Reproduced in latest Chrome and Firefox on macOS. — The Earwig ⟨talk⟩ 21:27, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Firefox on Xubuntu, I'm currently on version 85 but it might have been 84 when I experienced it. Thryduulf (talk) 23:04, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

This is now phab:T274423. Please feel free to edit. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:55, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

My major complaint is still that the text box starts with the default text "Reply to Whatamidoing (WMF)", which seems to imply that {{Reply to}} is going to be used to ping the named editor. In source mode, there's nothing that can be done but re-type the name manually, and while the Visual tab does have a way to mention a username, when I click on that button, the user I am replying to (in this case, Whatamidoing (WMF)) doesn't even show up in the list of suggestions! My recommendation would be that in source mode, there be a checkbox that says "Notify Whatamidoing (WMF)" (or whatever the username is that appeared in the default text), and that in Visual mode, the username in the default text is shown at the top of the list when the mention user button is clicked. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:55, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Works for me. I would like an option for ping though Sir Joseph ^(talk) 23:18, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

@Sir Joseph, the ping feature is available in the visual mode. There's a plan to offer it in the source mode, but I haven't seen any movement on that. Maybe "someday" rather than "soon"? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:24, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm enjoying the tool, though I will say I only use Source mode and never Visual (the preview is good enough). I'll echo everything everyone else has said, and also emphasize the WP:LISTGAP problem that Thryduulf brings up: the tool handles bulleted comments (created using *) quite poorly. There are some discussions where every comment is expected to be a bullet point, and reply tools are useless either for offering an opinion or for responding to others' comments. On the whole, I'm very impressed by the tool and grateful that this is something you've been working on. I appreciate that the way you're going about development is iterations of careful testing rather than setting it to be on by default from the get-go. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 23:28, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Oh, and yes, an option to ping the person I'm replying to by default would be very helpful. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 23:29, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

@L235 and @Ahecht: Do you really want everyone to ping you, every time they reply after your comment?

I've been wondering about a system that pings you if a newbie replies to you, but not if an experienced editor does. Or maybe it should be the other way around: Every time we reply to a newbie, they get auto-pinged (because how else will they notice the reply?), but the rest of us are left to our watchlists. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:26, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Do you really want everyone to ping you, every time they reply after your comment? IMO: yes, otherwise I need to add everything to my watchlist or remember to check back, and even then it's harder to notice replies to my comment in particular. When I reply to someone, more often than not, I want them to see it. (Edit: though doing this through the edit summary instead of {{reply}} would be fine.) — The Earwig ⟨talk⟩ 21:32, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

I want it by default – oftentimes I may turn it off, but less than half the time. For example, here, I wouldn't ping you because I know you're going to see this at some point and it's not urgent. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 21:49, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind being pinged every time. It should be optional, but I agree with KevinL that it should be the default. I have enough pages on my watchlist that I don't usually see a reply unless I'm pinged. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 03:11, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that the preference should be settable on the receiver's side, not the sender's. You don't mind being pinged every time, so you should be able to set a preference saying you want to be pinged every time. I don't want to be pinged if I'm already involved in a conversation and thus following it. I'm not sure how this can be managed, though. isaacl (talk) 22:13, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I mean, the current mechanism (writing in wikitext) is that the writer's preference is generally followed – I almost pinged you just now until I realized you probably wouldn't want one! Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 03:18, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

If you mean I can disable receiving all notifications, yes, but I don't want to do that. I appreciate you're thinking more of what would reduce clicks when you're replying. I'm thinking of Whatamidoing's question regarding if someone really wants to be pinged every time. Some people like The Earwig may, and others like me just want to be notified once, on first mention, if I'm not already participating. isaacl (talk) 23:19, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

+1. The indenting and pinging are the only issues I see with the tool. Enterprisey's reply-link automatically adapts to the indenting style that's already in use in a discussion, which is probably the best way to go about it – maybe you could steal some code there? Blablubbs|talk 13:43, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Jumping in here with some indenting/LISTGAP bug numbers, in case anyone wants to join the "phun" on Phabricator: phab:T252708 is the one that is about handling multi-level comments, which includes all the problems on the ArbCom case pages. (If you're the first person to reply in the fake sections, then it thinks that the lines about "Comments by parties" are part of your comment.)

If you want to be able to change the indentation level (e.g., to correct its incorrect guess about the ArbCom case pages), see phab:T265750. If you want to be able to set the reply style (e.g., for voting at RFA), then see phab:T263902.

If you have a favorite approach, feel free to post your recommendations here or at mw:Talk:Talk pages project. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:39, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I've been using the tool on Firefox 86 without any problems (likely as I've been loading the extension in my global.js). I personally like writing replies in source mode, as I often add a lot of links, templates, etc, but noticed that, unlike visual mode, which has the nice ping option and other formatting tools, source mode lacks it. Also a few very minor things, such as it not being able to reply on custom talk pages, indenting confusingly with bullet points, and lacking a small "outdent" feature, incase discussions get too long. However, overall, quite a nice tool! — Yours, Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 08:07, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

I've enjoyed using the tool. Perhaps there would be a way to bold or italicize text directly in the tool, if you don't know the apostraphe markups off the top of your head. Mr Ernie (talk) 12:30, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

There is in the Visual mode - just click the B icon for bold or the I icon for italic (the Ctrl+B and Ctrl+I shortcuts also work). I don't know whether it would be possible to add the edit toolbar (or a version of it) to the source editor. Thryduulf (talk) 13:55, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Adding a toolbar is both possible and planned. I'm not sure how soon it might happen. There are also discussions about whether the toolbar should have more/other items in it. I keep telling @PPelberg (WMF) that it would be more useful to have a special character inserter than the Bold and Italic buttons, but he keeps telling me that they're useful to other people. The main problem is that the toolbar needs to stay small, because if you're on a narrow screen, and replying to a heavily indented comment, then you might only have a narrow space for the whole box. If any of you have ideas about what should be in the toolbar, then I'm sure he'd be interested. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

I've just seen this edit by JohnFromPinckney. I'm not sure what they were attempting (maybe inserting a template?) but most of their comment got <nowiki>-ed. Thryduulf (talk) 02:23, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

I am quite used to typing my contributions (such as they are) directly into the Talk page, and I've tripped over a few specialties when trying to use the Reply tool instead. What Thryduulf mentions isn't the only time this has happened to me, and I have a theory about how it occurred: I copy-pasted some text from elsewhere which had a wikilink in it. The tool silently accepts my text, showing me a nice, functional bluelink (precluding the necessity of me using the "Link" button), but when I publish my entry, there's a whole bunch of <nowiki> tagging in my comment, usually disabling the tqq template into which I pasted the text. (My pasted wikilinks are live, but the rest of the comment's code is, er, broken.) I then have to go and manually clean my comment anyway. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 15:48, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@JohnFromPinckney, you were using the visual mode, where templates are disabled. Did you type the {{tqq| part manually? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes. I hadn't realized there's a way to actually enter wikicode. Thanks for the hint. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 14:33, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

You're welcome. And thank you for posting this, because the devs are working on refining a bit of 'warning' code as a direct result. It's at phab:T274923. I think we missed the cutoff for this week's deployment train, so it may take another ~10 days before it has a visible effect here, but it should be on its way. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:27, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Found a bug I think. I click "New section" somewhere and fill it out, decide not to submit and go to another article. Suddenly, the new section dialog pops up (without me clicking anything) at the bottom of the page with my unsaved content from another article's talk pre-filled out. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:29, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I've experienced this too (although I don't remember whether it was a new section or a reply), you have to explicitly cancel your comment. Thryduulf (talk) 12:20, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T274949

I can reproduce it (only) in the "New Discussion" tool. I've filed a bug report. I don't think that the wikitext mode recovers unsaved changes, so I assume this only happens in the visual mode right now. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:39, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

• Hey, WAID, I've got a new complaint: using the tool on EEng's talk page gave me a timeout error ("Error contacting the Parsoid/RESTBase server (HTTP 504)") and I think also made the lights flicker in the San Fran office. It went through on another attempt, but just to be safe, when the beta is rolled out, User talk:EEng should probably be deleted and salted :-D Levivich ^harass/_hound 20:32, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

  I'll have you deleted and salted, and served on bagels with a little shmeer. This gives another justification for keeping my talk page as it is: stress test for new tools. If it can digest my talk, it can handle anything. EEng 22:42, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

  That error is not this tool specifically; it's the backend. However, @Levivich, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but your guess about the cause is probably wrong. When the page is too large, you'll get HTTP 413 instead. I triggered it on @DGG's talk page earlier this month. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:21, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

  Oh, I see. I guess I'll go post some more warning templates and DS notices on EEng's talk page; we'll see how quick we can get that 504 down to a 413. Levivich ^harass/_hound 08:31, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

• Cursor in Source mode: Well, it's invisible. I see a nice blinky vertical bar in Visual mode, but in Source mode I just have to know where I last typed or clicked. There's nothing to see. Using (*gulp*) Firefox 52.9.0 on (*sorry!*) Vista. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 02:17, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks for the note, @JohnFromPinckney. You win a bug number: phab:T275814. If you see this behavior in any other tool, please add that to the Phab ticket (your Wikipedia account works there via OAuth) or post here and ask me to add it for you. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:43, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

• I tapped [Reply] on WAID's top post here, and the box popped in between Thryduulf's comment and the {tracked} template. It's not Reply Tool's fault if the list formatting has gone wonky partway through a long discussion, but it's one of the most common reasons that I have to cancel out and do a section edit. I’d like some way to add a top-level or first-level comment at the bottom of a discussion, regardless of what has gone before. That's not a blocker to turning it on as an opt-in, but it would be a nice-to-have feature. (Compare Structured Discussions, which has two affordances for replying at the bottom, both of which unfortunately do the same thing. One should indent and the other should not-indent.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pelagic (talk • contribs) 20:24, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

  @Pelagic, the team has been talking about this. If you imagine replying to a comment that starts with ::::::::::::, the key points seem to be: send me back to zero, send me back to one :, and let me adjust by just one (which would help with the slightly wonky discussions). Does that sound about right to you? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:44, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

  @Whatamidoing (WMF): I was thinking of a "reply at end of discussion" feature/affordance, but yes "adjust indentation" is a more general solution. Then you could reply anywhere (vertically) in the conversation flow and tweak the indentation to where you want it. I imagine it would feel quite natural to achieve "reply-to-thread" by hitting "reply-to-last-comment" followed by "outdent to zero (or one)". It would also save scrolling up a long discussion to find the OP with its Reply link. [Left, right, and zero (or one) would suffice – once you’re at zero (or one) then it’s just one more tap/click to get to one (or zero).] I hope that makes sense. Is there a decent chance that adjusting indent will be on the to-do list and not in the too-hard basket? Pelagic ( messages ) – (22:08 Tue 02, AEDT) 11:08, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

  We have a decent chance. I haven't heard them talking about it in the last couple of weeks, so it's not likely to happen soon. When they've talked about it in the past, none of the devs have ever mentioned concerns about difficulty. My impression is that the coding is easy, and the only potentially difficult part is the design (where exactly do you stick the button, and how many options do you offer?). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:09, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

  The main task is phab:T265750. I'll mention you there, so you'll be subscribed to it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:14, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

• Probably the thing I find most annoying is that when using the source editor normally, pressing tab takes you from the main text input box to the edit summary box, but when using the reply tool (in source mode at least) tab takes you to the first highlitable thing in the preview (usually a link or your signature). This means my normal workflow of finishing my commnet, pressing tab and then end and starting to type my edit summary takes me to a random point on the page. I have no idea whether it is technically possible to set the edit summary box as the target of the first tab after the editing box, but if it is doing so (or being able to set a preference to do so) would be really useful for me. Thryduulf (talk) 21:44, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

  This is a timely comment, because they've been talking about fixing some tab orders in the New Discussion tool. I'll pass it along. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

• I like the reply tool, but I never "stress-tested" it. I tried the visual mode maybe once or twice but always use the source mode; I don't think I ever used the reply tool in a long or complicated discussion (such as this one, where I see the same issue as Special:Diff/1009479248). Besides that, the only issue I recall was (as others have said) the tool's not working on certain "boxed" user talk pages. —2d37 (talk) 08:55, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

  One problem with these tools (both Reply and New Section) that I realized today is that one might never see a page's sanctions editnotice if one always uses these tools. —2d37 (talk) 10:19, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): there is a small amount of additional feedback at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Request signature button in new talk page interface. I've directed people there here, but I obviously don't know whether they'll come and/or repeat what they said there. Thryduulf (talk) 00:12, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll go over there. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

One thing I've noticed is that the tool blocks the charinsert extension from appearing. So despite the source version accepting wiki markup the syntax has to be remembered as the charinsert panel which allows click to add isn't there. Nthep (talk) 19:10, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Highlight

For a while now, I've noticed that the highlight that shows when a comment made using the reply tool or new comment tool is added to a page, the orange highlight extends from the last line of your comment to ~3 lines above the first line of your comment, highlighting someone else's words as well as your own. It seems to be unaffected by length of the comment (a 1-line comment brings a ~4-line highlight, a 10-line comment gives a ~13-line highlight) or visual/source mode. If I scroll between pressing reply and the comment being saved, the position of the highlight is sometimes (but not always) incorrect, but still ~three-too-many lines long.

Reproduceability on en.wp is (nearly) 100%, but I'm unable to reproduce it at all on the patchdemo wiki. Is anyone else experiencing this? Thryduulf (talk) 02:20, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

I see this fairly often, but I still can't figure out what the trigger is. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:17, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

A bit late, but it seemingly always happens for me - although strangely it didn't occur for this reply. Remagoxer ^(talk) 11:39, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

@Remagoxer, the bug doesn't appear for every comment, but it does still happen. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:38, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

New toys

Thryduulf, Pelagic, and anyone else who's interested:

If you want to try out the toolbar for 'source' mode, go to the end of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing and tick the box for "Enable experimental tools in the quick replying and quick topic adding features' source modes". Once you have it enabled, most of the Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Keyboard shortcuts will start working in the wikitext source mode for you. Try @ to ping someone and either ⌘+k (Macs) or Control+k (everyone else) to search for the name of the page you want to link to. (⌘+⇧ Shift+k will give you the magic citation template generator. :-D) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:14, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Woohoo, shortcuts and toolbar! Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF). — Pelagic ( messages ) – (07:06 Fri 14, AEST) 21:06, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

@Pelagic and everyone else: I expect to talk to the product manager tomorrow, and probably again on Monday. Is this working? Do you think it should just be turned on for everyone in the wikitext source mode? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:40, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I haven't had any problems so far. (Except one issue with source mode that's unrelated to the toolbar.) From a user-convenience viewpoint, I really like having the toolbar, so I may be a little biased when I say "yeah! enable for everyone by default". I think we should keep the preference checkbox so that people can disable for troubleshooting or if for some reason they decide they don't like it – might be worthwhile monitoring how many people un-tick that. — Pelagic (talk) 21:45, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, @Pelagic. I'm not sure what the prefs situation will look like, but we have time to talk. I don't think they anticipate doing anything about this for at least a few weeks. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:59, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Editing news 2021 #2

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When newcomers had the Reply tool and tried to post on a talk page, they were more successful at posting a comment. (Source)

Earlier this year, the Editing team ran a large study of the Reply Tool. The main goal was to find out whether the Reply Tool helped newer editors communicate on wiki. The second goal was to see whether the comments that newer editors made using the tool needed to be reverted more frequently than comments newer editors made with the existing wikitext page editor.

The key results were:

• Newer editors who had automatic ("default on") access to the Reply tool were more likely to post a comment on a talk page.
• The comments that newer editors made with the Reply Tool were also less likely to be reverted than the comments that newer editors made with page editing.

These results give the Editing team confidence that the tool is helpful.

Looking ahead

The team is planning to make the Reply tool available to everyone as an opt-out preference in the coming months. This has already happened at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.

The next step is to resolve a technical challenge. Then, they will deploy the Reply tool first to the Wikipedias that participated in the study. After that, they will deploy it, in stages, to the other Wikipedias and all WMF-hosted wikis.

You can turn on "Discussion Tools" in Beta Features now. After you get the Reply tool, you can change your preferences at any time in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

00:27, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

While I've got a moment: If you want to know more about the stats, please read the actual report. A few details on the parts of the study that I care about:

• This is a plain 50–50 randomized controlled trial: If you were bucketed to the group that got the new tool, but you didn't use it, then you still count as being in the tool-having group, and if you were bucketed to the group without it, but you went to Special:Prefs and turned it on and used it, then you still count as being in the tool-not-having group.
• They were comparing people who tried to post a comment in the two groups. Most newcomers don't even look at talk pages (that's a separate problem) or try to do anything with them. So to get compared, you had to click on a trackable button on a talk page. In practice, this mostly means the [reply] button or the [Edit] button at the top of the page.
• There's a long list of complications, like what happens if the editor is making an edit that isn't a comment (it got counted anyway), or if the page doesn't exist (so there isn't a [reply] button). But they believe that these complications have a small effect overall – nothing that changes the overall result.
• In some Wikipedias, such as French and Portuguese, people who encountered the Reply tool were more likely to attempt to post a comment, but at other Wikipedias, such as Chinese and Hebrew, it was the other way around. In every case, though, the percentage of people who attempted and succeeded at posting on the talk page was higher for people given the Reply tool than for people who attempted and succeeded at posting in the wikitext editor.
• That bit about needing to fix phab:T280599 applies with particular force to the English Wikipedia.

If you have questions, please ping me. I'm still not getting a graduate degree in statistics, but if we can't figure it out, then I can ask one of the people who do. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:48, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Performance with blocked username gadget

This may be a gotcha rather than a bug, so not sure of the best place to mention it. I had an issue that was driving me nuts with Reply Tool, and I've just now tracked down the cause. When the gadget "Strike out usernames that have been blocked" is enabled, typing a reply in Source mode is very laggy (Visual is unaffected). I can't say how recently it started, and I was noticing it mostly on one particular device.

Steps to reproduce:

1. On English Wikipedia (or another wiki with the same gadget), go to Preferences – Gadgets, and enable "Strike out usernames that have been blocked". Also enable discussion tools ;)
2. Go to (or if already open, reload/refresh) a talk page with a good number of user links. Teahouse or Help Desk, or even this page.
3. Click/tap Reply to a comment. Switch to Source mode if not there already.
4. Type some text. Then try mashing the keyboard rapidly for an enhanced effect. Tap backspace repeatedly to delete a bunch of characters.
5. Notice that keystrokes a registered in bursts. Also notice that the wikilink colours on the page are pulsing.
6. Switch to Visual mode and compare.
7. Disable gadget and repeat.

It it seems like updates to the Preview could be triggering that gadget to re-check the page. Both tools are very useful on certain help and notice-board talk pages; it would be great if some way could be found for them to co-exist.

Can anyone reproduce this, or at least confirm that the gadget code is being called repeatedly? — Pelagic (talk) 22:34, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

Seems like the "mark blocked" gadget does a refresh whenever the "wikipage.content" hook fires, and the Reply Tool is calling that hook every time a keystroke happens. While I guess the Reply Tool's behavior is within the spirit of the hook ("Fired when wiki content is being added to the DOM"), I'm sure the gadget isn't the only one that assumes "wikipage.content" won't be fired very often. Relatively uneducated backseat driving: maybe the Reply Tool should debounce with a half-second timer and only then call the hook? Or we could fix the gadget instead (caching?). Enterprisey (talk!) 08:25, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't notice any problems with the Russian Wikipedia's version: ru:MediaWiki:Gadget-markblocked.js. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:03, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

They look very similar, but ru registers

mw.hook( 'wikipage.content' ).add(function () { markBlocked(); } );

and en has

mw.hook( 'wikipage.content' ).add(function () { markBlocked(container); } );

I would have though that passing in a specific object to search would be a good thing – $( container ).find( 'a' ) instead of mw.util.$content.find( 'a' ) – but that's the limit of my JS skills. Pelagic (talk) 01:31, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining, @Enterprisey. A similar issue with some SPI scripts was discussed by @RoySmith and @Tacsipacsi at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Replying#Repeated page-load events in Source mode.

Even if the the various scripts and gadgets need fixing, perhaps some measure to rate-limit the events would be prudent. It would take more than half a second to stop typing and move the mouse to the preview to see navpops (Phab:T279141), so could the timer be set for longer? Pelagic (talk) 01:48, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Also see WT:HotCat#Doubled HotCat insertions with Reply Tool -- RoySmith (talk) 15:45, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

@RoySmith, I can reproduce this problem (at least in Firefox). Usually, after posting a comment with the Reply tool, none of my scripts load (e.g., the one that highlights my username). There must be something specific to HotCat that makes it better at noticing that the page has re-loaded. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:01, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

FSVO "better" -- RoySmith (talk) 19:09, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

@Enterprisey Reply tool already throttles the calls, they happen at most once per second. (Technically, we throttle our API requests to parse the preview, but the hook is only called after updating the preview.)

@Pelagic @Whatamidoing (WMF) Passing the container there doesn't make a difference, since it's the script's own variable for the container of the whole page, rather than the container provided by the wikipage.content hook. It definitely should use the provided container though. I'll try to fix that.

@RoySmith That turns out to be a different issue, not related to the wikipage.content hook. I replied on the other talk page (and also fixed it). Matma Rex talk 13:35, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

@Pelagic I made changes to the gadget that should resolve this problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-markblocked.js&diff=1032763221&oldid=1021641704 (I'm a global interface editor as a volunteer, in addition to working on the reply tool at WMF). They ended up being a bit more complicated than I would have liked… Matma Rex talk 14:19, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Matma, I really appreciate the extra work. Good to hear there's already a rate-limit. Pelagic (talk) 12:25, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

oops forgot ping Pelagic (talk) 12:26, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Yup, my bad on the speculation, and thanks for making the fix. Enterprisey (talk!) 04:01, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Merge with Convenient Discussions?

Hey @Whatamidoing (WMF), hope you've been doing well. I saw the new update to Discussion Tools (the formatting tools to the source view) and it's pretty good! However, I've stopped using it because the script Convenient Discussions seems to have everything the beta feature offers and more (plus the two conflict with one another). Is there anyway to collaborate with the script author and add those functionalities in? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 20:21, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Convenient Discussions belongs to @Jack who built the house, who has been very helpful to the Editing team for a couple of years now. Some of the features in the older script are already planned for the Discussion Tools. I don't ever expect them to be identical. IMO you should use whichever one you like better. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:44, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

No worries. I'll still keep subscribed to see what changes are made to Discussion Tools. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 21:57, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Comment not appearing

Some, but not all, the time when I leave a reply using the reply tool my post does not appear on the page. It has been posted, but just doesn't appear until I manually refresh the page. I'd guestimate it happens about 30-40% of the time, but with no pattern that I've been able to establish. Thryduulf (talk) 13:07, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

@Thryduulf, is this still happening to you? phab:T287035 (reported at the Hungarian Wikipedia) should have been solved last WP:THURSDAY. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:45, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Also, there's a second case there, in which the [reply] button doesn't work, until you re-load the page. Please let me know if you're having that problem, too. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:46, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

I've never experienced the reply button not working. I haven't encountered the original problem for a few days now, although I've not been making heavy use of the reply tool so I'd say it seems resolved but insufficient data to say definitively. Thryduulf (talk) 21:42, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

@Thryduulf, thanks for the update. Please ping me if it reappears. Hopefully that one's fixed. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:45, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: pinging and other tools in source mode

In the "Experiences" conversation above, and others before [i], many of y'all requested that easier ways for pinging and linking be added to the Reply Tool's source mode.

We have a prototype ready that introduces this functionality and we would value you trying out the prototype and sharing what you think about it by commenting in this thread. I'm going to post a couple of feedback prompts in the comment that follows this one.

Before posting that, a couple of things to note:

• You can try the prototype by clicking this link on a desktop computer: https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/12cdbb1f7baf0b71e7dc733aff3da949/w/index.php/Talk:Main_Page
• The link above will take you to a test wiki that is NOT connected to any other wiki and its contents will eventually be deleted. So please, experiment freely.

---

i. See the "Tool ideas" section of phab:257391's task description for links to previous conversations. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 04:33, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Prototype feedback prompts

• What did you find unexpected about how the prototype looks and functions?
• What do you appreciate about the prototype?
• What do you wish was different about the prototype?

Also, I'm going to ping some of the people who requested easier ways for pinging and linking be added to the Reply Tool's source mode with the assumption that they would be interested in trying the prototype: @Ahecht, @Berrely, @Barkeep49, @The Earwig, @DannyS712, @KevinL, @Pelagic, and @SQL. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 04:37, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@PPelberg (WMF) - I can't seem to sign in and since I don't want to IP edit I can only comment on the interface which is even nicer than I expected. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:25, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

It's not a single-sign on wiki, you have to create a new account if you don't want your IP visible. Thryduulf (talk) 17:35, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

I can't seem to sign in and since I don't want to IP edit...

@Barkeep49, are you trying to sign in using the username/pw you use on production wikis? If so, those credentials won't work on "patchdemo." You would have no way of knowing that since I didn't mention it...I'm sorry about that!

Instead, you can use the prototype without exposing your IP by doing one of the following: 1) Creating a new account on patchdemo or 2) Signing in with the following credentials username:Test / pw:testaccount1.

Do either of the two options above sound feasible to you? PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

The only IP I've seen on Patchdemo is 172.16.0.164, which is an internal address for the server. But, yes, please do create an account or use the Test account to try it out. (The whole Patchdemo instance can be deleted and started over from scratch, too, if there's ever a privacy problem.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:33, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@PPelberg (WMF): it's all working well based on my experiments so far. The one exception is that you cannot cancel the "find user" dialog until you have entered at least one character that usernames can begin with into the box, this means that you cannot enter a plain or trailing @ character until you have entered at least one more character (space and full stop do not count, exclamation mark and alphabetic characters do, others not tested). Before that time pressing escape brings you to the "do you want to cancel your comment" box. Once you have entered a valid character you can then escape and delete what you entered unnecessarily. Thryduulf (talk) 17:42, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

It would be better I think if the find user dialog triggered only at the start of a comment or following whitespace. That way it doesn't get in the way when typing an email address, a URI (google streetview URIs often do) or pagename (e.g. 3D@Home) that happens to contain an @ character. I'd guess programmatically harder, but disabling the popup when [ or [[ has been typed but the corresponding ] or ]] has not would be potentially nice (titles like 5 @Home exist). Thryduulf (talk) 18:33, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: we appreciate you thoroughly testing the tool and sharing this feedback. Some comments and questions in response to what you shared below...

you cannot cancel the "find user" dialog until you have entered at least one character that usernames can begin with into the box...

To make sure I am understanding what you are describing, can you please tell me whether the steps below accurately describe the experience you are reporting here?

1. Open the "find user" dialog by typing @

2. Realize I no longer need/want to use the "find user" dialog, so I press escape

Actual behavior

3. ❗️The "find user dialog" remains visible

Expected behavior

3. ✅ The "find user" dialog disappears and I see @ within the tool's text input area.

It would be better I think if the find user dialog triggered only at the start of a comment or following whitespace. That way it doesn't get in the way when typing an email address, a URI...

Great spot. I've filed a ticket for this issue: phab:T277827. Please let me know if you think that ticket could be changed to better communicate the behavior you are describing. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:11, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Regarding the inability to cancel the find user dialog, that was the behaviour I was experiencing but now it seems to be working as desired/expected (i.e. it cancels whether you've entered a character or not). I don't think anything has changed on my end, and I've just tested logged in in Firefox and logged out in Chromium in both visual and source modes on the patchdemo wiki you shared above.

Regarding the @ not triggering the find user when preceded by something that isn't whitespace, you have accurately captured the main request I was making. The secondary request (don't trigger after [ until ]) has not been captured at all, but I think that would be better as a separate task so the perfect doesn't prevent the good. Thryduulf (talk) 00:53, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

So when I get deep into parenthetical asides (because I do that [@Thryduulf, I do it here on purpose ;-)]), then you don't want me to be able to ping you? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:51, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Hmm, I hadn't thought of parentheticals - the situation I was thinking of was internal/external links. This clearly needs more thinking. Thryduulf (talk) 20:53, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Inside [[ and ]] would probably do it. I don't know how feasible it is to disable a toolbar item based on the wikitext, but double brackets should probably be enough. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:49, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the whitespace rule will catch URIs inside [ ]. The only case remaining would be the link text of external links that contain an @ character not preceded by whitespace. While they will exist, it's almost certainly going to occur so infrequently as not to be worth worrying about. Thryduulf (talk) 23:27, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm really excited at the prospect of getting a toolbar in Source mode as well as Visual!

• What did you find unexpected about how the prototype looks and functions? Pleasantly surprising: pasting formatted text in source mode gives the option to add corresponding markup.
• What do you appreciate about the prototype? I appreciate that the formatting tools are included along with the @-mention button. Markup like <code> is fiddly to type on a touch-screen keyboard, so the formatting drop-down is helpful. (I really appreciate being able to "at" people without switching modes, that’s more important than the formatting – just saying that I’m happy to have both.)
• What do you wish was different about the prototype? Of course there are features I would like to see added or behaviours I wish were different generally, but in terms of the bringing the Source mode up to parity with current Visual mode, the prototype ticks all the boxes for me on a touch-screen. If I were to use a physical keyboard then the ESC-key behaviour that Thryduulf mentioned would probably impact me.

— Pelagic ( messages ) – (10:02 Sun 14, AEDT) 23:02, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Knowing the prototype is worked as you would expect so far is helpful to hear...we appreciate you giving it a try and letting us know as much, @Pelagic!

A quick question about the ESC key behavior...does what I described here accurately describe the experience you expected to have? PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:40, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, @PPelberg (WMF), I don’t have an ESC key right now, but if I did then I would expect it to behave as you have described. It's analogous to what happens if I type "[[" then cancel.

I also thought Thryduulf's suggestion about only activating the drop-down for @ after whitespace or start-of-line would be a nice refinement, but I see from the Phab ticket that it gets complicated when you need it to work with Chinese, Japanese, etc. Thanks for creating the ticket and giving it consideration, though!

There is a slightly related thing I encountered today (it was in Reply Tool not New Discussion, but presumably behaves the same in both) — sorry, I’m wandering off-topic now. I typed "<ref" in Visual mode, hoping to eventually close the tag and create something that renders as <ref> (i.e. <nowiki><ref></nowiki> in the source code). But when I cancelled the pop-up, no text was inserted. It’s not a huge deal, as most users who know enough to want to type tag names should(?) be comfortable with switching to Source mode to achieve that (as I did here), but it is an inconsistency compared to "[[" and "<pre". Is it worth logging a separate request about that? Also, preformatted text (using <pre>...</pre>) does interesting things if I insert it in Visual mode and switch to Source. Pelagic ( messages ) – (16:56 Sun 21, AEDT) 05:56, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

For tag names, get used to the character escape for the opening bracket, which is &lt; (less than). Never need a nowiki again for such things. (Or you could go the other way and use {{tag}}.)

Preformatted text is simply not well supported in this environment thanks to parser vageries; there are discussions on Phab about how best to deal with that. Izno (talk) 18:08, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

I've run into this before. The Phab task should belong to the visual editor (not specifically the Reply tool). @Pelagic, the workaround is to type ref> first, and then move the cursor back to add the < at the start. You'll end up with <ref> (escaped, so perfect if you're trying to tell someone what to type). @Izno, I'm pretty sure that if you type < in the visual mode, it would just get escaped. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:32, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

• On the patchdemo wiki, the ctrl+z shortcut to undo doesn't work (it does nothing) in source mode. It works as expected in visual mode, as does ctrl+y to redo (which I obviously cannot test in source mode). Other shortcuts (e.g. ctrl+i for italic, ctrl+k for a link) do work as expected in both visual and source modes on patchdemo wiki. Ctrl+z and ctrl+y both work as expected in both visual and source modes on this wiki (en.wp). Thryduulf (talk) 00:58, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

  This would be fixed if they put the toolbar in the source mode. It sounds like the plan is to make the toolbar (in the wikitext source mode) be a separate pref/button/something for a while, so that we can try it out and make sure it works as expected, before letting everyone else have it. I don't know when this will be ready. Not today, maybe one of the upcoming WP:THURSDAYs? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:54, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

  @Thryduulf does the "Behavior" I've listed below accurately capture what you are reporting here: On the patchdemo wiki, the ctrl+z shortcut to undo doesn't work (it does nothing) in source mode.?

  Behavior

  1. Visit the prototype

  2. Open the Reply Tool's source mode

  3. Type the following characters: hello

  4. Press control + Z

  Actual

  5. ❗️Notice hello still appears within the Reply Tool's text input

  Expected

  6. ✅Notice the Reply Tool's text input is empty PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:41, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

  @PPelberg: yes, that's exactly it. I'll have a look at T276614 and T276608 (re your other ping below) later. Thryduulf (talk) 01:49, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

  @PPelberg (WMF): fixing the ping. Thryduulf (talk) 01:49, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

• Before enabling the pinging feature on public wikis, make sure that the find user dialog does not suggest usernames that have been suppressed. I cannot test this on the patchdemo wiki (even if there are any supressed usernames there I don't have the privs to see what they are). Thryduulf (talk) 03:38, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

  I don't know how that system works internally. That question is now at phab:T277919. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:58, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

(Meta) @Barkeep49, @Pelagic, and @Thryduulf: when you have a moment, can y'all please give T276614 a quick read and let us know whether you noticed any issues with the prototype that are not listed in the task descriptoin's == Feedback == section? The reason I'm asking: we're wanting to make sure the inventory of issues we have matches up with y'alls as we consider what needs to happen before the new tools can be made available as an opt-in beta feature (see: T276608).PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 01:27, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

I've added a list of tickets I'm aware of in a comment at T276614 that are still outstanding which I am aware of, including one new one (T279141) that I cannot test on the prototype. I've also given a indication of personal priority. Only T277919 is a blocker imo, but there are a couple of high priority ones that would (imo) be preferable to implement before a widely advertised beta. Thryduulf (talk) 12:39, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I replied at Phab:T276614, along the lines of "works for me". I don’t know enough about name suppression, so will trust Thryduulf on T277919. I guess you’ll want to have the tracking in place so that you can check for any unexpected corruption. Pelagic ( messages ) – (05:00 Tue 06, AEDT) 18:00, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

@Pelagic + @Thryduulf: the lists you've compiled and shared in Phabricator are wonderful – thank you! I figure it's best for us to continue the coversation there.

One other note RE I guess you’ll want to have the tracking in place so that you can check for any unexpected corruption.

👆 Great call, @Pelagic. I've created a specific ticket for us to verify this. See: T279396. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 01:21, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Oh... I was misinterpreting some of the related tasks, but glad my cluelessness proved useful! Pelagic ( messages ) – (15:41 Tue 06, AEDT) 04:41, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

@Pelagic I wanted you to be aware that we decided to not continue with the investigation into whether the New Discussion Tool is causing unexpected corruption. Namely because, the New Discussion Tool uses the same process for publishing topics drafted with the New Discussion Tool to talk pages as the existing, &action=edit&section=new, workflow. [i] More context in T279396#7252868.

---

i. We understand the existing workflow does not cause content corruption. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 18:01, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Great to hear that there are no concerns over corruption for new-discussion, @PPelberg (WMF). T279396 appears to be about NWE source mode (in replies) rather than new-topic mode. Am I reading it wrong? ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 23:47, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

It was about the toolbar, in either place. (But it might also have been about Peter being an extremely methodical person. ;-)) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:04, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Imagine a world in which you subscribed to sections on talk pages

The Editing team is working on a "subscribe" feature. It's early days, but you can test it at Meta-Wiki via the mw:Beta Feature in your prefs there.

Imagine that you were auto-subscribed to get Echo/Notifications about new comments posted (not just typos fixed, etc.) to every section you commented in. You could manually subscribe to others, and manually unsubscribe. The subscriptions follow the first comment in the section, so if the whole conversation gets moved to another page, you still get notified.

Now: Do you really want to stay subscribed forever? Or would it be more sensible to follow the "watchlist expiry" model by default, so that after a certain length of time (three months? a year?), this conversation is no longer a priority, and you'd find changes instead via your normal watchlist.

If you have thoughts on this, please consider posting in the (Flow-based) thread at mw:Topic:Wbx238kff1u4d7x6 (or here, if you'd rather). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:40, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

I've updated Wikipedia:Talk pages project#Notifications for topic subscriptions to describe this a little more, and to post the screenshots. This is available in the Beta Features at most Wikipedias now, plus Commons, Wikidata, MediaWiki.org, and Meta-Wiki. It could be here in a few weeks, if all goes well.

If you want to try it out on this page, please click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Talk_pages_project?dtenable=1 to reload the page with the features on, look for the [subscribe] button for this section heading, click it, and post here to let me know. If we get a couple of people posting, then you can see how this works. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

We're trying it out at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)?dtenable=1#dtenable_testing if anyone wants to join in the fun. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:23, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I've not looked to see if this has been brought up elsewhere, but I think watchlist expiry style would be good as long as it's configurable per topic and the default is configurable via a preference. Useful time periods would I think be 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 1 year, forever. Maybe 6 months too but if 6 options is too many that's the first I'd drop. Thryduulf (talk) 01:36, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

At the moment, there's a hard limit of being subscribed to 5,000 discussions. I don't think anyone is near that level yet. This seems to be a temporary "please don't risk the servers if something goes wrong" thing, not where we'll end up. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Extra eyes needed

hi y'all – if you notice talk pages looking and/or functioning in "weird" ways [i] this week, can you please ping me or @Whatamidoing (WMF)?

The reason we are asking...

On Thursday (23-September), a backend/infrastructure change (T273072) will arrive at en.wiki. This change will make it possible for us to deploy a second change (T282029) that will enable you to click a notification from within Echo (e.g. a mention) and then be taken to the precise location on the talk page where the content you are being notified about was posted.

While we think this a backend/infrastructure change (T273072) is not likely to cause any disruptions, we thought increasing the number of people who are aware of the change would enable us to more quickly address any issues that might surface.

Of course, please let us know if any of the above brings new thoughts/questions to mind.

---

i. E.g. [ reply ] or [ subscribe ] links appearing on talk pages unexpectedly. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 19:52, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Archived sections

As you're thinking about developing this further, one issue that pretty much inevitably confronts editors as they're learning (albeit at a more intermediate stage) is links to discussions that have been archived. These generally get broken, making it difficult to follow past discussions and benefit from their precedents or insights. There is an excellent script that handles this, User:SD0001/find-archived-section, but it's not turned on by default and not quite as fully integrated as it would be if you took it on and made it a part of Discussion Tools. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:14, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

CD does have it integrated. ― Qwerfjkltalk 22:21, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Subscriptions follow the comment, not the page title or section heading. If someone posts a new comment in an archived thread (which they shouldn't do, but it does happen on occasion), you'll get notifications for it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:40, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF) While that's true, that doesn't help if you're not subscribed to the section. ― Qwerfjkltalk 19:45, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Reply tool status

The tool for "quick replying", as Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion puts it (if you have the Beta Feature enabled) has been deployed, default-on, for all editors at nearly all of the wikis. Left on the list are the big ones from the POV of the servers: English, French, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias, Wikidata, Commons, etc. This is the tool that gives everyone a [reply] button. Thousands of editors have already posted hundreds of thousands of comments with it. Across all the wikis, fewer than 10 editors have asked me how to turn it off. (Answer: Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion and un-check "Enable quick replying". You'd want to do this if you already have another, similar tool that you'd rather use, and of course there's always someone who doesn't want to look at the "clutter" of an extra button.)

Most of the deployments have been waiting on approval from Ops. I think that we're going to be cleared for deployment sometime in the coming weeks, so I wanted to check in with you all here and say: Does this sound okay to you? Do you think it will be a problem? Are you ready for the usual questions (see mw:Help:DiscussionTools and especially its sub-page on pages with formatting problems), and maybe even for a world in which SineBot has a lot less work? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:06, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Ops approved deployment of the [reply] tool to the French Wikipedia today, and if that's stable (as expected), then I imagine that we won't be too far behind. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:57, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

The [reply] took went out to the French Wikipedia yesterday. There's been a big jump in use there, but it's less than we already use the Reply tool here. The German-language Wikipedia might be next on the list; we'll see. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:46, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi

Hi, I am going through some of the talk pages for a usability case study and I was directed to this project page which is really helpful! I am wondering if there's a page where I can find user feedback about the talk pages? Or would anyone wanna reply here to share some feedback? Appreciate any help given! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jncwtopac (talk • contribs) 09:56, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Hello, @Jncwtopac! Feel free to talk to us here. But first, let me give you the magic code: Click on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Talk_pages_project?dtenable=1 Then scroll back down here and find the little [reply] button. If you also click the [subscribe] button, you'll get pinged every time someone replies to you. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:58, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

If you're looking for relevant research, then look at mw:Talk pages project and Talk pages consultation 2019, especially the two reports. There is a huge about of user feedback collected in the two reports and the other linked pages. The reports summarize responses from hundreds of editors in many languages. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:01, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing the links! Is the link (for this reply/subscribe option) you shared available for other pages as well or just this talk page? Jncwtopac (talk) 04:02, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi! I found the options to opt in the beta mode, and I was wondering if there is any collected feedback about the beta mode? I'll just keep looking through pages to find feedback too! Thanks again! Jncwtopac (talk) 04:25, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Editors have been very generous about sharing feedback. You might start at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Replying, if your hope is to find information from editors about the [reply] tool specifically. There have been other discussions in multiple non-English languages as well. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:05, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Blender

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.

---

Anyone up for discussing Blender? 103.143.169.54 (talk) 11:42, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above 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.

Manual topic subscriptions

About a month ago, we had a lot of fun with the discussion that is now archived at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 192#dtenable testing. I think the [subscribe] button is working pretty well, and I'd like to recommend that the devs put it into the Beta Feature here. If they do this, then the [subscribe] button will appear on talk pages if you have turned on "Discussion tools" in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. If you don't have the Beta Feature turned on, then nothing will change for you.

I'm going to ping everyone from the old discussion (apologies if I miss anyone). This is your best opportunity to object, if you don't think the [subscribe] tool should be used (in a testing mode) here: Elli, Timtempleton, Mandarax, TheDJ, Opabinia regalis, RoySmith, Pelagic, Schazjmd, Klein Muçi, Matma Rex, Qwerfjkl, Cryptic, Blaze The Wolf, Nick Moyes, Asartea, Chipmunkdavis, Enterprisey, Xaosflux, Yair rand, Pppery, Jorm, Sdkb, PPelberg (WMF), and User:DLynch (WMF).

If you want to try it out on this page, then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Talk_pages_project?dtenable=1 is the magic link. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:56, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

• Not sure if I love all-or-nothing DT+Subscribe tool, can these be OR in beta features? — xaosflux ^Talk 22:58, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

  If you turn the Beta Feature on, then you can turn individual components off in the "Editing" tab. I suspect that reply+subscribe without New Discussions will be a popular alternative for experienced editors. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:08, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

• I'm looking forward to it. I enjoy the whole changes that have been happening on the talk page infrastructure and have wanted changes like these to happen a long time ago. Now if we only could have a fast-edit option and everything would be perfect. - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:03, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

  A fast-edit option is blocked by the parser upgrades. Maybe this decade, but not this year. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:08, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

  Klein is sad. :( - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:16, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support rolling out to beta. The feature works, and it's badly wanted. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:03, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

  I think someone else mentioned this somewhere, but I'd also like to see an option to subscribe by default to any discussion you start strongly considered. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:36, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

  That's called "automatic" topic subscription. See phab:T263819. – SD0001 (talk) 18:49, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

  Among the options being considered:

  • automatic for new sections (but not replies)
  • automatic for everything posted by new editors (existing editors could opt-in)
  • automatic for everything and everyone

  I think the technical end of automatic subscriptions will be fairly straightforward, but I'm concerned about the "social" effects. IMO the biggest risk is: What if this speeds up disputes? A fast and happy conversation is fine, but a fast and angry one might make people hate editing. Imagine that I'm involved in angry dispute, maybe over some COVID disinformation. Maybe I'd rather be able to open other pages without having a notification pop up to say that Wikipedia:Randy in Boise has just replied again to promote his conspiracy theory. Maybe it'd be better for me to not know that he has replied until tomorrow, when I might be feeling a little more detached (or whenever I checked my watchlist, because all comments will additionally appear in your watchlist – there's no connection/interaction between the two systems). Maybe it'd be better for me to not get a notification until some other editor has had a chance to step into the conversation.

  I could learn to step back, to Wikipedia:Breathe, to WP:KEEPCOOL, to give people a chance to meatball:DefendEachOther, and to let the notification sit for a while (maybe a long while: Echo/Notifications are auto-deleted after two years and/or 2,000 newer messages, whichever comes first). But I wonder how long it would take for all of us to learn that and to support each other in that approach, and how much nastiness might happen before then. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:51, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

  That might have been a good reason to make the subscription feature work through watchlists rather than notifications. It seems like you made that decision a while back, though. I think if you make the option something that's opt-in rather than on by default, that'd reduce its usage, especially among newer editors who might be the most likely to get into trouble. One thing to consider, though, is that most replies already happen right after we read something, even if we just come across it in our watchlist; the notifications may speed up the pace of the discussion, but I'm not sure they're reducing the breather pause before replying. If this continues to be a big concern and you want to get fancy, one thing I noticed that Facebook Messenger recently implemented is a "remind me later" option, where you can dismiss a push notification about a message and it'll come back in a few hours. You could consider building something like that for Wikipedia notifications to encourage breathers. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:44, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

  I understand that it's much easier to integrate these notifications into Echo/Notifications than to integrate them into the watchlist. Also, one of the things that the communities said is that it's really important for newbies to get these notifications, and I am not sure that new editors use their watchlists regularly.

  I have wondered whether automatic subscriptions should be on by default for newcomers and off by default for experienced editors.

  I like your idea of a "remind me later" option. Someone else suggested a maximum of one notification per day per conversation. I'm not sure what I think about that – not a bad idea, but I'm not sure it's a good idea, either. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:48, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support as I find it more useful to subscribe to specific conversations as opposed to entire talk pages (especially with the broken archive bot over at the Teahouse). ― Blaze The Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 23:18, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support. There was lots of nit-picking about minor details in the WP:VPT thread, but I think it was universally hailed as an excellent piece of work and an important improvement in how talk pages work. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:20, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support, although not a pingee. My sole disappointment about this feature was that it worked only on talk pages, not places where I'd really use it, like ANI or the Teahouse (as Blaze mentioned). But hey! Look! I just tried it out (again), and apparently it works (with ?dtenable=1) there, so I am very much looking forward to this becoming a reality. And if it always worked, then I have no explanation for why I thought it didn't. Bring it on. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 00:34, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Huh? Just about everyone tested it primarily on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), which is no more of a talk page than those are. —Cryptic 00:51, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

  See this comment on WT:TEA. ― Qwerfjkltalk 06:14, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support with the caveat I don't currently use the Beta Features. Potentially very useful, would be good to see how it interacts with other functions. CMD (talk) 01:17, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
• Absolutely support this, the new features are awesome. -- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 07:36, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks for your comments. The team's planning to add this to the Beta Features tomorrow. The [subscribe] button will only be available if you have the Beta Feature enabled. If you want topic subscriptions but nothing else, then you can enable "Discussion Tools" in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures and then immediately go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion and disable everything except the topic subscriptions/notifications item (which isn't there today, but the other current ones are).

  NB: If you enable the Beta Feature, you'll still see future features, one of which will change the appearance of the talk pages. I'll post here before then (it could be months from now), but please just make a mental note that if the article page looks normal and the talk page looks different, then mw:Talk pages project/Usability has probably appeared, and if you don't want to spend a week or two getting used to it, then you'll just need to head back to the same Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion and turn that off, too. I think the "Usability" work is going to be a good thing (they want to add some information, like a count of how many people have commented and a note about how long it's been since the last edit, and that means there has to be a place to put that information, and that logically means that the appearance has to change...), but all changes to appearance require a while to get used to them. So if you don't want to do that, that's okay; you'll just need to turn it off. (It can't be pre-turned-off now because the feature doesn't exist yet.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:00, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: I think I'll continue to use JavaScript as I described in WP:Village pump (technical)/Archive 192#new discussion tool: where is "subscribe"? to make it available as needed without always cluttering up pages.
  One thing I would strongly prefer is for the notifications to go elsewhere. Having it in the same place as other notifications makes it much less likely that I'll want to use it very often. It should have its own dedicated location, either a separate icon next to the existing notifications icon, or on the Watchlist page. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 18:26, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

  @Mandarax I'm glad you decided to share share this feedback here because this broader topic of what might be a more valuable way of surfacing communication-related notifications is a topic I think could benefit from more discussion.

  A couple of questions for you...

  1. Would it be accurate for the "elsewhere" you were referring to here [i] be a dedicated space for all communication-related notifications/activity to be shown?
  2. More broadly, are you able to share what prompted you to post this feedback [i]? Asked another way: what have you noticed happening as a result of notifications from conversations you are subscribed to appearing within "Notices"?

  ---

  i. "One thing I would strongly prefer is for the notifications to go elsewhere. Having it in the same place as other notifications makes it much less likely that I'll want to use it very often." PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 19:57, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

• PPelberg (WMF), what prompted this was the realization that even just a few subscriptions could potentially cause an overwhelming number of notifications, and the other types could get lost among them. I was suggesting that the current notification icon ( ) should continue to function as it has previously, and section subscription notifications would be counted separately with their own icon. It seems that the most logical location for a new icon would be at the top of one's watchlist page, which is where one could always check for activity on the subscribed-to pages. I can also see how some people would prefer it with the other notifications, but it would be better with its own dedicated icon next to the others. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 08:41, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

  🎉 The [subscribe] button is now available everywhere, if you have the Beta Feature enabled.

  This conversation has 23 comments (this comment is #24), and that means that if you subscribed to it from the beginning, you probably received ~20 notifications. Two conversations like this each week for six months would be a thousand notifications, which probably would seem overwhelming to many editors.

  This is probably a good time to remind everyone that the Notification message for subscribed topics has an ••• options menu, and an "Unsubscribe" link is hidden in there, in addition to the one at the top of every section. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:56, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

  WOOHOO! Enterprisey (talk!) 23:05, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

  @Mandarax this extra bit of context is helpful – thank you for sharing it with us.

  You raising the idea of showing some kind of indication within the Watchlist when people have unread new comment notifications is leading me to think it may be helpful, to start, to provide some kind of link to Special:TopicSubscriptions within the Watchlist.

  We are tracking ideas for where and how we might show "entry points to Special:TopicSubscriptions in Phabricator here: phab:T289906. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 01:27, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

• I experienced an odd bug. I had subscribed to a section. There were no replies after I subscribed, but then a user performed a OneClickArchive, and I received five notifications, one for each of the messages that user had left in the section. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 06:32, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks for this, Mandarax. Do you happen to remember if the dates in Echo/Notifications were the same? I experienced a bug once, and that might be the explanation for it.

  @Matma Rex, I think you'll want to look at this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:41, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

  (Sorry for the late reply, but I've been away.) Yes, the time of each of the five notifications was the same as the time the archive was performed. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 17:19, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Mandarax, it looks like there are multiple scripts to do that. This one used User:Evad37/OneClickArchiver. I think that @Evad37's tool is the most popular version these days, or at least it's the one I've seen more often. I'm not sure what's triggering this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:34, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Mandarax @Whatamidoing (WMF) This is reported as T290803, we'll work on it soon. Matma Rex talk 19:56, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

• @Whatamidoing (WMF) I had another strange bug. I was notified of two comments on WT:RW, but on the notification it said 'SD0001 replied in discussion on User talk:SD0001/Making user scripts load faster'. All the links lead to the correct page, however. ― Qwerfjkltalk 07:27, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

  @Qwerfjkl The notifications show the section title, not the page title – I am guessing that they referred to the section Wikipedia talk:RedWarn § Discussion at User talk:SD0001/Making user scripts load faster. Matma Rex talk 12:50, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks, my bad. ― Qwerfjkltalk 13:49, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

January 2022 deployment

Hello, all,

As an update on our October discussion about the #Reply tool status, we're cleared for takeoff...in January. The [reply] tool (nothing else) will be deployed default-on for all editors some time in January. Since I expect most questions (How do I turn it off? Why doesn't it work on this page?) to end up at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), I've just posted links to the relevant help pages over there. The discussion at VPM in November didn't raise any questions that would make me concerned about everyone using this. (That's also the place to go if you dislike the appearance of the [reply] button.)

Hopefully this will really get out the door in January. It's been a long time coming. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:09, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Update: Realistically, I think Tuesday, January 11th is the earliest possible day. NB that I don't expect it to happen that day, either, but I think we can safely rule out any deployment here before then. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Prototype: Automatic Topic Subscriptions

The idea of becoming automatically subscribed to discussions you participate in has been floating around since Manual Topic Subscriptions were first introduced.

Now, there is a prototype ready we would value you all trying to see how the "automatic topic subscription" experience could look and work.

If you are interested, below is the information you will need to:

1. Try the prototype and
2. Share feedback about the prototype

If any questions come up as you are attempting to try the prototype, please post them here...it is likely someone is wondering something similar to what you are. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 22:43, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Trying the prototype

1. On a desktop / laptop computer, visit: https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/2f3d9efbec/wiki/Talk:Main_Page
2. Create an account by clicking the Create account link. Note: this is a test wiki so you will not be able to log in using the same username you use on other projects.
3. Return to https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/2f3d9efbec/wiki/Talk:Main_Page
4. Start a new discussion
5. Comment in an existing discussion
6. Disable being automatically subscribed to the discussions you start and/or comment in

Note: for ease of testing, the popup appears every time you get auto-subscribed. In the production version, the popup will only appear once. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 22:44, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Sharing Feedback

Once you have tried the prototype and you are ready to share what you think of it, please:

1. Add a comment in this discussion with answers to the following questions:
   1. What did you find unexpected about how the prototype looks and functions?
   2. What do you appreciate about the prototype?
   3. What do you wish was different about the prototype?

PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 22:46, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

@PPelberg (WMF):How to enable this on this wikipedia? Greatder (talk) 11:39, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

hi @Greatder – you can enable the Automatic Topic Subscription beta feature on your account by doing the following:

1. Using the desktop site, visit: Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures
2. Confirm the "Discussion tools" beta feature is enabled
3. Visit: Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing
4. Find the "Enable topic subscription" setting and enable it by clicking the checkbox that appears next to the setting
5. Now, find the the "Automatically subscribe to topics" setting
6. Click the checkbox that appears next to the "Automatically subscribe to topics" setting
7. Click the "Save" button at the bottom of the Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing page
8. On the desktop site, start a new discussion on a talk page or comment in an existing discussion
9. Notice after publishing the new discussion topic or comment described in "Step 8.", you see that you've become automatically subscribed to the discussion you just started or commented in
10. ✅ That's it

Can you please comment here if you run into any issues doing the above? PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 20:44, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks PPelberg (WMF)! I will be testing it for now and will report (if) I find something unusual. Greatder (talk) 02:47, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I will be testing it for now and will report (if) I find something unusual.

Wonderful and that sounds great, @Greatder. Also, if you encounter any questions, please just ping me or @Whatamidoing (WMF). PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 03:23, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Clicking a collapsed subscription notification doesn't do a thing I liked anymore

At some point, clicking a notification like "5 new replies on [topic]" would take me to the subscribed thread and highlight all the new replies. Now it just takes me to the top of the thread, and only highlights if I expand the notification and click each reply individually. Is this something that was removed on purpose? JoelleJay (talk) 01:56, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

@JoelleJay we value you coming here to report this issue. The functionality you are describing was not removed on purpose, but rather caused by a bug (phab:T299813) that should be fixed next week. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 02:57, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Ok, that's all I needed to know, thank you! JoelleJay (talk) 03:06, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

You got it. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 03:21, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Also, if I'm reading the task timeline correctly, the issue was opened just 30 minutes before I finally decided to make this comment (after noticing it but misattributing the cause on January 8), which, wow, what are the odds! JoelleJay (talk) 03:28, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

A delightful coincidence indeed ^ _ ^ PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:20, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

@JoelleJay a quick update: the fix for this issue should arrive at en.wiki tomorrow, 27-Jan-2022. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 16:59, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks! JoelleJay (talk) 17:19, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Reply Tool not necessarily activated by magic word?

Resolved

mw:Extension:DiscussionTools#Reply tool and mw:Help:DiscussionTools#Replying say that the Reply Tool is available on, among other pages, pages with the __NEWSECTIONLINK__ magic word, but I find that the tool is not necessarily available on such pages. For example, after I added the magic word in my sandbox, my sandbox was enhanced with a "New section" button but no "[ reply ]" buttons. Am I missing something?

Also, pasting the quotation above from rich text into wikitext, I for the first time encountered the message You pasted content with rich formatting. Would you like to convert this formatting to wikitext?, followed by DiscussionTools' helpfully adding the markup I would have lost. Thanks!

—2d37 (talk) 02:25, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

hi @2d37 – we appreciate you spending the time to experiment with these new tools and coming here to share the experience you're having with them so far!

Now, as it relates to ...no "[ reply ]" buttons. appearing on your sandbox page, are still experience this issue?

The Reply Tool seems to be appearing for me, as evidenced by the comment I made using it. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 03:00, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, @PPelberg (WMF). I see the "[ reply ]" buttons there now. The issue appears to have been fixed. —2d37 (talk) 03:27, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh, wonderful – I'm glad to hear it ^ _ ^ PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 05:35, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Will this progress be brought to mobile too?

Progress on mobile seems to be stalled. Unlike desktop commenting on mobile offers no link, ping, bold, italic buttons. Everything is source only mode. Greatder (talk) 11:35, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Great question, @Greatder. The mw:Editing Team will soon begin work on bringing improvements, like the ones you mentioned above, to mobile web talk pages.

You might value reading this page which offers details about the plans we have for making it easier for people to use mobile talk pages in productive ways.

Also, if that page brings any new questions to mind, please ping me here on this talk page. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 19:45, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Also I hope discussions can be expanded and shrinked like reddit. It will make discussions a lot easier to navigate.(and auto reply pings) Greatder (talk) 11:45, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Can you say a bit more here, @Greatder? When you say, "... discussions can be expanded and shrinked like reddit." are you referring to be able to collapse and expand discussions (read: h2 sections)? Threads within discussions? Something else?

And about auto reply pings: would it be accurate for us to understand you suggesting this feature as a strategy for increasing the likelihood someone will see, and ultimately respond to, the comment you are leaving for them? PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 28 January 2022 (UTC)