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

Hello! I'm an admin at some Albanian wikiprojects and I very much liked the changes that are being discussed about talk pages. I've been dealing for quite some times with new users and the way they interact with the software, hoping to make it easier for them so I can give some opinions on the subject.

For starters I can say that social media logic is dominating online conversations these days and whatever's true for Facebook, is considered a given for every kind of conversing online platform. They tend to expect to be able to mention/call someone by using the @ symbol and their name. Gone are the days when it would be more logical to use the word ping - a forum kind of style of mentioning. Maybe Ping is more well-known in the English world but @ is becoming more universal as time passes and more and more platforms starts to have the same style of mentioning other users. Mentions failing to send, problems with multiple-mentions, problems with editing or removing the mentions are all alien technical concepts to new users. Adding on that, signing their answer is something no new user does, no matter how much they get bombarded by intro-information and disclaimers that advise on doing just that. The word "sign" just doesn't make sense to them until they are advised personally by someone during the conversation. They expect to have their name and date automatically added after their "comment" (using social media terminology) and are usually very appalled by the crude interface Wikipedia has in these things. The same thing with indentation. Usually, the point when we have to explain indentation to them, it's usually the point when they start to express their frustration on the site's interface. "All these technicalities only to write a comment. Imagine writing an article!" In the Albanian Wikipedia, I've made the mentioning template as following "{{@|Username}}" only to suffice to that kind of logic. I've thought of proposing to activate "Flow" too to deal with the indentation and we've been thinking of having a sign bot. It would be very nice if we could have a single solution to all these problems.

Another problem that is very present in small wikis is the lack of discussion in general. You mention here that new users are confused by the terminology (add a new subject) or the purpose of the talk page in general, confusing it with a forum page. That's true but in small wikis we have a bigger problem: Not many users (new or veterans) actually use the talk pages at all. Since talk pages need to be created first, if you are not sure of their purpose, given that they somehow create the impression that they're a technical thing (since it's not a mainspace page), not many users dare create them. And even if the page is already created, they don't know exactly what that page is for. It may seem like a common thing to know in big wikis, but in small ones, the situation is a bit different. The few ones who actually have dared create one and proposed changes on it regarding the accompanying article, have spent hours, days and months without any answer and went on to do the changes themselves anyway and never used a talk page again. The whole talk page infrastructure works well in big wikis because they rarely have articles without their accompanying talk pages, all the talkpages have a well created header that explains what's it for and how to use it and they have bots dealing with their archiving process (and MANY veteran users already creating the right path/example for new ones). In small wikis, talk pages are usually only redlinks and on the few occasions that they exist, they are literally only blank pages that no one looks after since they don't create notifications, except for in the watchlist, again an option not many new user/veteran users use in small wikis. It would be nice if that infrastructure could be automatically applied by default to all talkpages as needed, without the use of manual templates and bots. Starting by the name of the talk page that makes it more clear what that page is for (discussing for changes in the article), continuing with a clear explanation on how to use it (the explaining header) and maybe a more eye-catching position related to the accompanying article (not many new users instinctively see at the top side of the article for somewhere to discuss about it), and maybe even dealing with the archiving process without the use of any user bots. Talk page autocreation (and even the ability to delete them together with the article if so needed - a phab request for quite some years now) would be a good idea too to implement.

Well, let's see if this is a reply...!

What I was saying below applies to your third paragraph: "...lack of discussion in general".

On Simple:Wikipedia, which has quite a small number of serious editors, you are unlikely to get a discussion going on a Talk page if no one is actively working on the main page. But if you start a new topic on Simple:Wikipedia:Simple talk, you are very likely to get some response. Or there may be a more specific page that it points you to.

So now I'm thinking, the next time I want to raise something there, maybe I'll put it in a Talk page and transclude the Talk page. And maybe I'll patrol Talk pages and transclude relevant sections of those, just to get the discussion going. And that reminds me that there was a question on a Wikidata Talk page that no one was answering...

Apparently you're right. It works if it's not the last comment. I think you can only indent on 1 level though. Let's try it. Even though 1 level would be enough.

PS: Apparently I'm not THAT familiar with Flow. Although I must disclose here that the overall discussion is not related to Flow in particular but to new changes being discussed for talk pages in general.

...unless you reply to a reply that's not the last!

...not the last reply at that level, I should have said.

1 level it is. That's enough though.

Apparently there are multiple levels possible. Even better!

Thanks for this message.

If a few editors at sq.wikipedia.org want to talk – maybe someone wants to talk to a few editors about creating a bunch of COVID-19 articles, for example – where do they do that? A café/village pump page? Or user talk pages? Or off wiki?

Well, first of all must be said that we are really struggling with WikiProjects. We don't have at least one WikiProject truly active. The only few that are "active" are actually maintained only by 1 specific user interested on the subject. With that in mind, collaboration between users is usually difficult (and one of the things I'm trying to help with personally) and only happens on form of "very bold actions". One user just decides to do something, the other just edits it over, the other might return those changes and, just before things heat up, (if we're lucky) one of them will try to communicate with the other either on his talk page or, on some rare cases, on the article's talk page. In other words, collaboration is usually motivated by frustration rather than a good will to co-work on something of mutual interest.

That's the most seen scenario and what usually happens between new users. Veteran users/admins/crats may use all kinds of interactions. But those are rare compared with what I mentioned above.

The only place where co-work initiatives exist are off-wiki, between user group members and other non-wiki collaborations. They produce noteworthy results to be honest, in the form of different wiki edit-a-thons and workshops but they do have a short lifespan. After the event is over there is usually (not to say always) no continuing of work by any of the participating members.

I don't think sqwiki will be big enough to support WikiProjects. My experience with WPMED and WikiProjects in general (as a volunteer) is that they work best when the group is fairly large. At enwiki, WPMED's main page is on the watchlists of 250 active editors (people who have edited this month, not counting former editors). When the whole community is that size, then you probably don't want to subdivide the group. Maybe a small community could support a broad WikiProject for "People", but not something as narrow as "Artists" or "Scientists" or "Actors".

I think that having most discussion on User_talk: pages is common in small communities. It's more friendly and personal.

Yes to everything. All in all I'm just trying to increase on-wiki interactivity between members in different ways. WikiProjects, WikiLove, etc. But I agree with everything you said.

Having said that, my first post was directed more toward the changes in the general infrastructure of talk pages. I'm an interface admin and given that I deal a lot with new users, both offline (workshops) and online, I know that "small" changes in interface and infrastructure like that, really help new users get along. Because it would seem more intuitive to them. Having to learn how to actually even ask for help (initiating a discussion) really feels like a technical indirect bite at newcomers, sometimes greatly diminishing their initial joy to be part of the community. In big wikis there are a lot of users who help facilitate technical shortcomings for the new users. But in small wikis we rely mostly on automated things because human resources are really limited and small technical shortcomings like those sometimes really affect new users' decisions to stick around after the first edits.

Anyway I must sincerely thank you for your interest in my discussion and our community. I was starting to think nobody was reading what I had written. :)

Is the bigger problem that nobody starts discussions on wiki, or the bigger problem nobody replies (perhaps because they can't find the new discussion)?

No. The bigger problem is nobody starts discussions. The whole "community spirit" is very fragile (compared with big wikis) and we're trying hard to crystallize it a bit more, if you understand what I mean. If discussions do start, they usually do get answers because the admins are attentive to them. The "admins" at SqWiki being mostly 1-2 users. We can manage to reply to different queries because there aren't a lot of them. Normally it would be better if not only admins would "help around" but that's where a stronger community spirit would come into play.

I wonder whether some of my wiki-friends from the English Wikivoyage might have some useful advice for you. They have about 450 editors a month, and sqwiki has about 250, so they have been where you are. Wrh2, Ground Zero, Ikan Kekek, Mx. Granger, do any of you have ideas about things that an admin can do to foster communication on wiki, or to make it more likely that people will ask for help, or to feel like they're part of the core group, or to grow the core group bigger than 1 or 2 people?

Coming from the English Wikipedia, one of the things that's different for me about Wikivoyage is that most of the conversations happen in the Village pump (the Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub) instead of on individual talk pages.

I found Klein Muçi's comments and ideas to be really interesting. I was involved in English Wikipedia for a very long time before moving to English Wikivoyage, so I tend to accept the wiki world as it exists. And I am old, so I am still in awe of what we can do with computers now (or, on a phone sitting beside a lake as I am now). But Klein Muçi's comments speak about a generation of potential contributors who are not me or of my generation. I've never looked at wikis from the perspective of those who have grown up with social media. I can see how they would very likely find wiki's interface to be antiquated, and how that would discourage their participation.

On the question of encouraging discussion, as Whatamidoing (WMF) has pointed out, with fewer participants, a lot of discussion in English Wikivoyage happens in the Travellers' Pub (Village pump). This is not ideal, but I understand why many editors start their discussions there. A question or comment on a talk page that gets little traffic often gets no response. There are lots of lively discussions on policy pages and on the talk pages of major articles, like the travel guides for big countries. But post a question on the talk page for a small town, and you won't get a response.

I don't know specifically how to encourage discussion, but the technical changes that KM suggests might be a good start to encouraging more participation, especially from the social media generation.

I don't have a good answer on how to grow and sustain a healthy online community, but what encouraged me when I started contributing 15 years ago was that people engaged with me to let me know that what I was doing was appreciated, that what I was doing wasn't "wrong", and equally as important, I saw them making contributions that I admired and made me feel like I was contributing to a group project that had a bright future. While the wiki tools seemed reasonably user-friendly back in 2005, today they are obviously dated, although functions like the "ping" template, and automated notifications that fire when you leave a user talk page message, can do a great deal to help keep users engaged.

@Klein Muçi The little mention icon here is a handy feature. It would make sense (to me) to put a big @ down there too. The fact that it pops up when you type @ is a helpful hint (but now I need to switch it off, but not forever...). Automatic signing is obviously long overdue.

Talk pages do seem to used less these days. Often they are just "notes", rather than conversations. It might make sense (in English) to have a difference between "add a note" and "talk about something new". In traditional Wiki style, "add a note" would go into a noinclude section. Everything else could be transcluded into a more general discussion page, so people can see new topics appearing "as if by magic". (I did this yesterday on Meta:talk:Abstract Wikipedia. If you click edit on a transcluded topic, you actually get to edit the transcluded talk page, so it's close to having it in two places at the same time.)

What we (sometimes) do on Simple.Wikipedia is create the Talk page with just a template in it. This explains what the page is for and points you to where you might prefer to be. I haven't tried transcluding Talk pages there yet, but it's only a matter of time! It's worth noting in passing that I haven't found a way to get to Talk pages from the mobile interface. I have to switch to desktop mode, which is tricky on a small phone.

[I just tried to copy this into a reply to your original comment, but that didn't work (on my iPad). Now... where's the preview button...?]

@GrounderUK, overall Flow would be a hands down choice for talk pages - new users relationship but it has 2 drawbacks:

1. It "doesn't allow" replies. - All the replies appear in an uniform manner, making it hard to follow up the discussion. Basically who is saying what to who.
2. It doesn't work well enough with wiki code for veteran users who like to do so.

Some times is really useful. For example auto-activating the mention function as soon as someone puts "@" somewhere or auto numbering a list as soon as you put "1." somewhere else. But other times it starts getting really frustrating. I was stuck with it for 3 minutes straight trying to find a way to autoput the 2nd point above until I gave up and went to source coding and even there wasn't able to fix it. (Please, someone help. :P )

Basically Flow is the ideal talk interface the new users' generation would like to have if it had the "reply indentation" integrated and a better, more powerful (or at least, more intuitive) visual editor. The overall interface looks better than the plain blank page of the traditional talk page and it has auto-headers and maybe (?) better topic lists.

As for Talk pages do seem to get used less these days. and the whole following paragraph, I'm not sure I would say the same. I think they still are used with the same frequency because you need a way to communicate with the world. And as for ...It might make sense (in English) to have a difference between "add a note" and "talk about something new"., I don't really understand what you mean here unfortunately.

And now I can "reply" in the expected fashion!

Anyway... My distinction between Talk and Note. If I'm editing an article, there may be something about the article that I want to fix but I don't have the time. And maybe "you" could fix it if you do. That's when I'd "add a note". It's just a remark about the article; we don't have to talk about it (but feel free). On the other hand, I might not be happy about the structure of the article or something. In this case, I want to talk about it and (if it's not already in the Talk page) that is when I want to "talk about something new", rather than just "leave a note" (better than "add a note"? I'm not sure).

So, perhaps we end up with notes about the article in one part of the page and discussions about the article in a different part of the page. Then it's just the new discussion topic ("talk about something new") that I might transclude in a more general forum page. If you look at the Meta:talk:Abstract Wikipedia/Plan page, maybe you can see what I mean. It starts with an editor's note headed "This subpage" (pinging the author, who later replied). Then it has a new topic for discussion ("Non-Wikipedia Content" and only that part of the page is transcluded into Meta:Talk:Abstract Wikipedia under that heading. This is because I put a noinclude at the top of the page and /noinclude after my signature. Using my simpler English from before, "add a note" has the effect of putting noinclude tags around the "note". Without these, the "note" is treated as a "new topic" and goes where the notice at the top of the page suggests. If that's not appropriate, a quick edit of the transcluded page will noinclude the "discussion topic", making it a "note".

I hope that is clearer, even if it's not useful for you.

Yes, now I could follow through what you mean with the help of the links. To be honest, I find that division (remark/new proposal) unneeded as a technical division. I think one talk page is enough and you can merge/move every other information on it using different ways. One of them like you did. Or just plain copy-pasting.

Maaaybe this could be useful on big wikis, while discussing new projects where work flow tends to expand in uncontrolled ways (because many users are involved). But in small wiki-s, I think it would just help in adding confusion regarding talk pages. I mean, if we had different places for remarks and new proposals. Even in big wiki-s I don't thing mainspace (articles) would benefit much from a division like that.

It rather looks like it is only the last comment whose reply is not indented. Is that a feature or a bug?

I think we categorize that one under "unfinished". They were supposed to sort out the ideal indentation system, but they stopped work before they got very far on it. I believe that the original designer would give the current system a big thumbs-down. So, describing what we do have rather than what we should have, if your comment is a reply to the last comment in a thread, it will be placed full width/no indentation, and if you reply to a comment higher in the thread, then it's indented. It's...okay, I guess.

One of the things that's specific to Wikivoyage is the "bread crumb", so that every page is placed in a single heirarchy (e.g., Continent > Country > Region > Subregion > City). If "City" talk pages are under-watched, then they could be redirected to a more central location. I don't think that would work for Wikipedias, but it might work for some projects.

But what lets people know that starting a conversation on the talk page is a good idea? I've looked up my first-ever new discussion on a talk page (here), but I don't remember anything about it or how I decided that would be helpful.

I don't remember my first comment on a Talk page, but I'm still waiting for answers to two queries on Wiktionary from 2009. Happily, the changes I made on the main pages are still in place.

It's all a bit of extra work, but if we could transclude Talk pages into a broader discussion area, or just say whom to ping... A lot of enwiki pages are adopted by projects, which have banners on the talk pages, so that's fairly straightforward. Smaller wikis might have a single "AllTalk" page, with sections or subpages as we see fit.

@Whatamidoing (WMF), I went on and saw how the discussion had continued after that writing of yours. You had gotten an answer pretty fast and the answer was very detailed. Everyone who is as lucky as you, surely will continue seeking discussion in the future again.

The problem is that in many times in small wikis, you just don't get any answer back or if you do, it's just a sort of a borderline one.

Some times it just feels like you're screaming into the abyss, pardon my artistic tone. :P

I agree with you. Getting a reply makes people feel like it's worth asking questions. It's possible with the new (2017) RecentChanges filters to get a list of all comments on talk pages on the wiki, e.g., https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges?hidebots=1&hidecategorization=1&hideWikibase=1&hidelog=1&namespace=all-discussions&limit=500&days=7&urlversion=2 Simplewiki seems to get fewer than 100 per day.

On a related note, have you seen the m:Small wiki toolkits/Starter kit?

Thank you a lot for showing that to me as I hadn't seen it before. Features explained there are exactly what I deal with in my home Wikis so that'll help I guess. :)