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

What do you think about the designs we are considering implementing for the first iteration of the New Discussion Tool?

When you are ready to share what you have to say, we would value you adding a new topic on this talk page by doing the following ^[i]:

1. "Start a new topic" on this talk page
2. Name this new topic: "Initial designs feedback: YOUR USERNAME"
3. Write the answers to you have to the Sharing feedback questions.

Designs

You can review the designs in their entirety on the project page here: Talk pages project/New discussion#Version 1.0.

Sharing feedback

These are the questions we would value you answering.

• What do you like about the proposed design?
• What do you wish was different in the proposal?
• Can you compare the designs being proposed here to the current experience? Can you accomplish your current workflow for adding new discussions with this proposal?
• What other improvements do you think would be valuable for us to consider making to the new tool?

...of course, if other comments/questions come to mind as you are reviewing the designs, please share them.

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i. This way of sharing feedback seemed to work well when we tried it with Version 2.0 of the Reply Tool: Talk pages project/replying/prototype testing#Reply tool version 2.0

Thanks for your feedback @Patriccck

Re: Help Editing Wikipedia - I believe that you are possibly misinterpreting the mockup as that is meant to be the title or subject of the message that someone wrote and the reason it's not focused is that in the mockup the contributor is writing in the text input box.

Floating button - is a good idea and one that we have been exploring. We know that there are versions of buttons on different wikis, but we thought for this first iteration of the feature, we'd get the infrastructure of the page sorted, moving around the major components of the interaction, and then add on page buttons in future iterations. The reason that we are exploring adding a button outside of the navigation is that when did usability tests junior contributors consistently struggled to locate the current button for starting a new discussion.

Pinging some people here who I thought might be interested in these New Discussion Tool designs and have valuable feedback to share.

If you have time, we'd value hearing what y'all, and of course, anyone else, thinks.

cc @Ad Huikeshoven, @Atmark-chan, @Diego Moya, @Dvorapa @Dyolf77 (WMF), @Geraki, @Lofhi, @MarcoAurelio, @Nick Moyes, @Pelagic, @Patriccck, @Sdkb, @Tacsipacsi, @Urbanecm, @ネイ

@PPelberg (WMF): Thanks for your mention. Unfortunatelly I am currently short of free time to engage in discussions regarding Discussion Tools. I am still interested in the feature though. While you may keep drawing my attention to matters regarding Discussion Tools, I apologize for not being able to reply in time (or reply at all) to some of them. Apologies again. Some comments though:

What do you like about the proposed design?

The new design feels okay. I feel that the capability to add new topics a talk page would be very welcome by both experienced and newcomers.

What do you wish was different in the proposal?

I can't remember if this was mentioned before, but I'd appreciate if the edit toolbar appeared not only in visual mode, but on source mode as well.

Hope that it helps.

Best regards.

Thanks for your mention. Unfortunatelly I am currently short of free time to engage in discussions regarding Discussion Tools. I am still interested in the feature though. While you may keep drawing my attention to matters regarding Discussion Tools, I apologize for not being able to reply in time (or reply at all) to some of them. Apologies again. Some comments though:

Understood (and thank you for sharing this context!). Please know that in pinging you I was not meaning to suggest that we expected a response :)

I'd appreciate if the edit toolbar appeared not only in visual mode, but on source mode as well.

@MarcoAurelio are there particular tools you'd value in source mode? @Patriccck, I was getting ready to ask you the same when I saw you'd already commented [i] a response to this question on the ticket where we are thinking about this topic (thank you!).

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i. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T257391#6476232

@MarcoAurelio I agree with you.

Haven't gone through the design yet but I advertised this at w:ja:Wikipedia:井戸端/subj/返信ツールをベータ機能として導入する提案.

...I advertised this at w:ja:Wikipedia:井戸端/subj/返信ツールをベータ機能として導入する提案.

This is helpful – thank you for taking the initiative to do this, @ネイ.

Note: Peter, Urbanecm is probably @Martin Urbanec.

Ah, my mistake. Thank you, @Patriccck.

Pinging some of the people on the Talk pages project/Participate list: @Dvorapa, @Stryn, @Barkeep49, @Gryllida, @Jules*, @ZI Jony, @Sophivorus, @Wladek92, @Aram, @Diego Moya, @Evolution and evolvability, @FNDE, @Awesome Aasim, @Semantoya:

Please look at this design and follow PPelberg's instructions to post your feedback. Also, please consider putting this page (Talk pages project/New discussion) on your watchlist. If you do, you'll get a notification about each new thread that's started on this talk page, so you'll have an easy way to find out about changes.

Please share this thread with other people, especially editors who work with newcomers at your home wiki. This link will work at all WMF wikis and bring people straight to the top of this thread: [[mw:Topic:Vwpwr84naer42ovi]].

So I find it funny that the instructions for adding a new topic for feedback here are incorrect for a tool that is all about people's inability to successfully add new topics.

What do you like about the proposed design? Follows the inline reply tool nicely.

What do you wish was different in the proposal? Needs to be clear that it's a completely new topic rather than a new subtopic. This seems like a point of potential confusion for Junior contributors.

Can you compare the designs being proposed here to to the current experience? Can you accomplish your current workflow for adding new discussions with this proposal? I generally don't use the add topic button but when I do this experience seems familiar. I am not seeing anything immediately that would be confusing. The one exception to this is that there are some workflows setup on enwiki where information is pre-populated when you click a button (one example: what happens after you send an email and click add topic). Doesn't happen a ton on enwiki but it does happen - especially in places that might be error prone for novice users and I'm not sure how much, if at all, this happens on other wikis.

Thank you for taking the time to review these designs and share what you think about them, @Barkeep49. A couple of clarifying questions for you in response...

...the instructions for adding a new topic for feedback here are incorrect for a tool that is all about people's inability to successfully add new topics.

Can you say more about this? Which instructions are you referring to? ...I'm wanting to make sure the instructions I shared here are not confusing to anyone!

Needs to be clear that it's a completely new topic rather than a new subtopic. This seems like a point of potential confusion for Junior contributors.

In saying the above are you saying something to the effect, "The tool should make it clear to people what type of heading "you" will be adding to the page when using this tool to add a new discussion topic."

The first question was about this feedback. It appears from what WAID has said below that I did not give the feedback in the way you desired; it was because I didn't understand the directions for doing so.

For the second question, yes that's what I'm saying. I maybe wouldn't use heading with a junior contributor but that's what I'm saying.

... it was because I didn't understand the directions for doing so.

Ah, okay. I've made an edit (see: Revision=vx9oa8215993stl5) the original post to try and make the directions more explicit. If you thing something else could be done to make the instructions more clear, please let me know.

....yes that's what I'm saying. I maybe wouldn't use heading with a junior contributor but that's what I'm saying.

I see. My instinct is that it will become clear to people what heading level the tool "places" topics at once they publish said topics to the talk page and/or review the diff of said edit.

With this said, the above would not solve for a situation where someone is reluctant to publish an edit with the tool because they're not sure the level at which the topic they are drafting will be "placed."

Assuming this describes the situation you have in mind, I consider it to be a part of the category of potential issues that's probably best dealt with once we observe it happening.

Please let me know if you are seeing anything I'm not.

I think Peter's hoping to get separate threads for most feedback. If you click on Talk:Talk pages project/New discussion you'll see a space to start a new thread (if you want to have your own thread).

I came here from an Echo notification which put me in the single Topic: view.

Did a bit of a double take – “what, add topic, where?” – then realised I needed to navigate up to the whole-board view to add the new topic.

I think one major obstacle for new users would be to find where you need to click to create a new topic, in this example. On most websites, I'd assume a big, visible button or empty text box. If you look at the animation in Talk pages project/New discussion#Version 1, many will probably be inclined to immediately scroll past the banner-like information of the kind we have been trained to ignore, and the "start a new discussion" is a rather anonymous option. I wonder if this meets the second condition, "People know what to click/press to initiate the process for talking about something new".

Thank you for taking the time to review these designs, @Julle! A couple of comments in response to the thoughts you shared below...

I wonder if this meets the second condition, "People know what to click/press to initiate the process for talking about something new".

We agree with you in thinking that Junior Contributors will continue to have difficulty asking questions/seeking guidance/etc. on talk pages until the affordance(s) for starting a new conversation are made to be easier to recognize and access. We think this need is pronounced on pages, as you alluded to, that contain large Talk headers.

Wit the above in mind, we also agree with what you astutely pointed out: the "People know what to click/press to initiate the process for talking about something new". condition will not be met until this issue around affordance(s) is resolved.

Our current thinking is to do the following:

• Ensure Junior Contributors who are able to successfully initiate the workflow for add a new topic, can complete successfully and then
• Ensure they (Junior Contributors) can instinctively identify the affordance for initiating said workflow no matter the type of talk page (e.g. user, article or project talk) they are on and the contents contained with in it (e.g. many/few talk headers, many/few existing topics).

This is the ticket where this second bit of work will happen (I'm sharing this ticket in case you'd like to follow along and/or participate): phab:T267444.

• What do you like about the proposed design? indication with text
• Can you compare the designs being proposed here to the current experience? Can you accomplish your current workflow for adding new discussions with this proposal? very easly
• What other improvements do you think would be valuable for us to consider making to the new tool? a link for source mode edition