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

Can you think of pages where people adding new topics to them are instructed, via Edit notices or otherwise, *NOT* to sign the topics they post?

CONTEXT

We ask the above with the following in mind...

As we are currently thinking about the New Discussion Tool, people who have it enabled will notice that clicking a "New section" / "Add topic" link will lead them to the new tool. This new tool will automatically sign all sections created with it.

Before implementing the above, we would like to know if there are instances where this behavior would be disruptive.

On the English Wikipedia, there are some substituted templates that automatically include the user's signature, and this the user shouldn't include a duplicate signature. en:Template:Please_see is one example.

Yes, at the Teahouse on en-wiki, there was recently implemented a new 'Ask a Question' button which autosigned the first post by that new editor. It was intended to avoid the issue of new editors forgetting to sign, and then making more work for Teahouse hosts if Sinebot didn't autosign the question for them. (I'm not convinced that the extra 'hidden text' that is then visible when editing - especially in mobile view - makes a new editors life any easier, and we sometimes get double signature from those who already instinctively know they need to sign their posts. See a discussion about this and screenshots here. Any help/advice to improve the coding there would probably be appreciated - especially by @Sdkb, who implemented it for us)

...at the Teahouse on en-wiki, there was recently implemented a new 'Ask a Question' button which autosigned the first post by that new editor. It was intended to avoid the issue of new editors forgetting to sign, and then making more work for Teahouse hosts if Sinebot didn't autosign the question for them

@Nick Moyes it's great to see your name again! You sharing the above reminds me of a related question we are seeking an answer to and I think you, and perhaps @Sdkb are well positioned to answer...

Holding the design of the form aside for a second, have y'all observed cases where newcomers use the "New section" link/tab at Wikipedia:Teahouse instead of the "Ask a question" button? If so, what mistakes do you notice them making?

The question above sits within a separate and related investigation we're doing into how the new workflow for starting a new discussion will relate to the existing "New section" affordances. This task has some more context: phab: T263710.

cc @Iamjessklein

I agree with @Sdkb (below) that the Teahouse would happily adopt any method you provided us with of posting which makes that task easier for new editors to ask questions. We don't do things just to be different, but sometimes it is really hard to put oneself in the eyes of a brand new editor - we do try!

I certainly see quite a lot of new Teahouse posts where the poster has simply clicked edit and added a brand new question to the end of a completely unrelated topic. I probably have to deal with that myself maybe twice a week, though its hard to say how many such posts are made in total and handled by other Hosts. I usually deal with that simply by adding in an anodyne header title like" ==Question==" without any berating or advising the questioner as to what they did wrong.

Eek, I'm sorry for the late reply here, @Nick Moyes. A few comments and a question in response to what you shared here, below.

...the Teahouse would happily adopt any method you provided us with of posting which makes that task easier for new editors to ask questions

This is encouraging to hear. We anticipate having an initial design proposal to share this week. Would you be open to reviewing them once we have them posted?

...new Teahouse posts where the poster has simply clicked edit and added a brand new question to the end of a completely unrelated topic.

Interesting. This is leading me to think that in the usability test we have planned, we ought to be explicit about asking newcomers what they understand the "Add topic" and "Edit" tabs to mean.

I've added this to the Phabricator task where this work will be happening: phab:T243249.

@PPelberg (WMF)Yes, I think we'd be delighted to look over anything that might ease user interaction. @Sdkb has a better practical understanding than I do of templates and script operations, but we (or you) can bring anything up for general discussion on the Teahouse Talk page if you want wider input. We've recently had quite an influx there of new 'Teahouse Hosts' who will may probably bring a fresher perspective on engaging with new users than some of the older hands. (I would also note that I was also unaware of Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability which, to their credit, SDKB appears to be singlehandedly lifting from the doldrums. I've now added it to my watchlist.

I think we'd be delighted to look over anything that might ease user interaction...we (or you) can bring anything up for general discussion on the Teahouse Talk page if you want wider input.

Wonderful! Would you be up for posting an invitation for feedback at the Teahouse? I'm thinking it will be helpful for this to come from a familiar "face."

If this sounds good to you, please let me know if there is particular information/language you think would be helpful to have from beyond what we're planning to share (see below).

New Discussion Tool feedback

Below is a list of what we plan to include in the post we make on mw.org inviting people to share feedback about the New Discussion Tool mockups:

• Mockups showing the proposed design
• Mockups showing the current "Add topic" experience/workflow
• The specific feedback questions we are seeking peoples' input on/answers to
• The scope of changes we considered for this round of mockups (e.g. we didn't focus on the initial call to action in this iteration)

They do indeed sometimes use that button, or the general "edit" button, which can cause problems. You might be interested in this discussion.

I'd add the caveat, though (and this is sort of related to my reply to Nick), that the en-WP Teahouse is a very non-standard space. It's non-standard because it tries to use workarounds to address the problems that make the normal way of doing things too unfriendly for beginners, but it would be better if the normal way was beginner-accessible enough that it could just be adopted there (i.e. what you're trying to do). So in most regards it's not the best place to use as precedent for making project-wide decisions.

...en-WP Teahouse is a very non-standard space. It's non-standard because it tries to use workarounds to address the problems that make the normal way of doing things too unfriendly for beginners, but it would be better if the normal way was beginner-accessible enough that it could just be adopted there (i.e. what you're trying to do)

Mmm, this is helpful context, @Sdkb and we agree. We are designing this new workflow/tool to be, as you described, "beginner-accessible."

As I mentioned to Nick above, would you be open to reviewing the design approaches we are considering taking for this new discussion tool once we post them on-wiki this week?

You might be interested in this discussion.

This is great; would it be accurate for me to understand you starting this particular conversation as a response to you observing newcomers face the following challenges?

• Newcomers are not clear which call to action ("Edit," "Add topic" or "Ask a question") they ought to use to ask the question they came to ask.
• It can be difficult for newcomers to post questions that comply with conventions considering 2 out of the 3 potential workflows ("Edit" and "Add topic") do not offer them any kind of guidance.

Yeah, I most likely will; just share it at WikiProject Usability or similar forums.

Awesome and woah, WikiProject_Usability, this is the first I've heard of this project. You sharing the mockups there would be wonderful, thank you! cc @JKlein (WMF).

By the way, I'm not sure if you saw, but I updated the comment above [i] with an additional question for you.

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i. https://w.wiki/itP

I'd say yes, those are both accurate descriptions of problems newcomers face at the Teahouse.

Understood, okay. Thank you for confirming.

Now, in response to the two issues you've highlighted here:

1. Newcomers are not clear which call to action ("Edit," "Add topic" or "Ask a question") they ought to use to ask the question they came to ask.

I've added this issue to the ticket [i] where we are accumulating the challenges people, across experiences level, face with how the actions, activity and content on talk pages are currently presented.

2. It can be difficult for newcomers to post questions that comply with conventions considering 2 out of the 3 potential workflows ("Edit" and "Add topic") do not offer them any kind of guidance.

To address the above, we're currently thinking about doing the following:

For people who have the New Discussion Tool enabled (eventually, we anticipate this tool be enabled for all newcomers by default), clicking on the "Add topic" will initiate the New Discussion Tool which, ideally, will lead people who are new to add new topics in ways that comply with wiki conventions (e.g. topics are signed, topic titles are defined and the entirety of the post is appended to the bottom of the page).

In parallel, we'll see in usability testing [ii] whether people seeking to start new conversation become distracted/confused by the "Edit" call to action. If they do, we're thinking we can explore drawing more attention to the "New topic" (exact copy TBD) affordance as part of the talk page "visual enhancements" work I mentioned above. [i]

If anything above prompts new thoughts or questions, we'll be keen to hear.

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i. phab: T249579#6580475

ii. phab: T243249#6580445

Thanks for the ping, @Nick Moyes. Templates that autosign are basically just a patchwork fix to the larger problem of discussion pages being too complicated for beginners to easily engage with. The new discussion tool being developed here will hopefully obviate the need for that sort of patchwork fix by addressing the more fundamental issue.

@Nick Moyes, @Pppery: Thanks for these. The tool will prevent duplicate signatures, so these cases should be ok. To clarify, we are looking for workflows where any signature at the end of the comment is undesirable.

Signatures are at least unnecessary on some pages, e.g., w:en:Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals/Workshop. I'm not sure anyone would complain if the comments were signed, though.

If you're starting an RFC at enwiki, then you might prefer a signature that includes the date only. A very long time ago, RFCs at the English Wikipedia were supposed to be dated but unsigned. I don't know what other wikis' practices are. @Gnom, is an unsigned discussion ever a good idea at the German-language Wikipedia? @Koavf, can you think of a wiki where editors prefer to have a new ==Section== for discussion started with no signature?

None come to mind.

Hi, I have to say I don't know where that would be the case.

@Pppery, @Nick Moyes, @Sdkb, @Koavf and @Gnom: we appreciate you putting thought to this.

It sounds like as far as everyone here is concerned, we're not currently aware of pages/contexts where it would be disruptive for the new sections posted there to contain their authors' signatures.

I've represented as much in the Phabricator ticket where this ticket grew out from: T262313#6490050.

Note: the above is not meant to suggest our quest for cases is complete!

@PPelberg (WMF)

I see this:

>This initiative sits within the Talk pages project, our teams larger effort to help contributors, across experience levels, communicate more easily on Wikipedia using talk pages. To accomplish this, we are building upon the Talk pages consultation 2019, and existing community conventions, to evolve existing wikitext talk pages.

Going up a level I see:

>It contains information about the goals of this work, the past efforts that have influenced it and why evolving talk pages is a priority right now.

(however the word goal appears only once in the document - in the introduction and nowhere else)

What I do not see is a document explaining the wmfs strategy in regards to improving talkpages: what is the overall purpose of this project, what are the timelines for implementation, which wmf-wikis are affected, etc.

The overall purpose is: to make it easier to participate in discussions.

The timeline is: Finish this year.

The wikis affected are: all of them. Eventually, all WMF wikis and most non-WMF third-party MediaWiki installations will likely want to use this.

User:Whatamidoing (WMF) Someneone enWQ VP was asking about lenghthy unarchived talkpages. Will this project fix that? Thanks in advance, BTW will this project be concluded this year?

Some of the work they did will make it easier to address archiving problems (e.g., broken links) in the future, but they will not address archiving directly.

I believe that they hope the project will conclude in June 2022. Also, it feels like everything has taken approximately twice as long as hoped for. Therefore, there's a chance that things will not be finished in June after all.

A case where adding the signature of an editor is not helpful is when manually archiving something. For example, when I am clerking for ArbCom on enwiki I will use the new section link to create a section which then contains the archived request. This shouldn't have my signature at the end as I'm not making a comment when archiving, but simply copying verbatim to a talk page so that it's archived. Pinging @PPelberg (WMF) as they said they were looking for use cases where signature addition would not be appropriate. This, however, is such a small use case that I think the clerk team could always adapt to just using wikitext editing to create the new section (instead of relying on the new section link).

My thought was that the edit interface could have a tickbox only shown to users who meet a certian condition which allows the removal of the users signature but defaults to adding it. This condition could be having a user right or alternatively having a preference set. This would prevent inexperienced users from accidentally or mistakenly clicking the disable signature option, but would allow users who understand when and when not to sign to not append the signature when manually archiving.

An example of this is w:en:Special:Permalink/1045395589#Clarification request: Antisemitism in Poland (September 2021) where I used the tool to create a section. My signature was added at the end, which I removed in a subsequent edit. Although removing the automatically appended signature does not take much time, it may be missed.

@Matma Rex, if I copy someone else's message to the correct talk page, what happens to the proposed [thank] button? Does it just fail to work, because there's no signature in the comment that aligns with the page history?

I don't know, I think we haven't even gotten to the point where we'd consider this yet. (Did you mean to ask this question in some different topic? I don't understand why it came up here.)

It came up here, because Dreamy Jazz (and all the enwiki ArbCom clerks) spend a lot of time rearranging pages. People frequently post things in the wrong place. If it's just moving the comment to a different place on the same page, I would expect the thank tool to find the original; if you move the comment to a different page, then I would expect it to get confused.

Perhaps it is a use case to remember for that magical future.