Whatamidoing (WMF)

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Notify readers for page issues in talk pages

Hello! I had an idea and thought about discussing it with you given your involvement in talk page discussions. Some time ago I've expressed the wish to introduce the "resolved/unresolved" feature in DiscussionTools, or even summaries, things we already have at MediaWiki talk pages (they use Flow, no?). Now I'm extending that idea to incorporate a rather non-invasive notice of some sort in main pages accompanying talk pages if there are unresolved issues in them.

For a simple example, check this page. I wrote something in it nearly 2 weeks ago but no one has taken any action about it. Maybe a small notice of some sort in the article page would make interested readers come and act on it? Maybe this would give readers the opportunity to see if a page they're reading has any issues on it and possibly involve them in the on-going discussion? Or maybe we don't really want readers to participate massively in such discussions and this would be a bad idea overall? A similar mechanism already exists on big wikis though where articles get notice templates notifying readers about the problems they might have, even though they're not usually related to talk page discussions. This would make use of that principle and extend it to be a native feature in all namespaces, not only the main one. - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:35, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Hello, @Klein Muçi, I was happy to find a note from you when I returned from my long holiday.

I think the problem with that particular comment is that almost nobody is watching the page, and therefore almost nobody will see it. @PPelberg (WMF) and the Editing team (who are now focused on mw:Edit check) have talked about this problem, especially thinking about communities the size of sqwiki. An experienced editor will know how to provoke a response if something is important. Here, if it were important, you or I would go to a village pump, a WikiProject page, or a noticeboard. At smaller wikis, most communication might happen on User_talk: pages. But an inexperienced editor won't know how to do that, and if nobody's watching the page, then the comment will get overlooked. I don't think that they ever came to a conclusion about how to solve the problem.

If you are thinking about a category-based system (i.e., add a template that puts the page in a "Category:Wikipedia talk pages with unresolved questions"), then that might work, assuming that there were people interested in clearing that backlog. There would, however, be the difficulty of less-experienced editors knowing how to trigger the extra attention. This would be similar to the existing Wikipedia:Edit requests approach.

Automagically displaying the talk page situation in the mainspace would probably require a significant but feasible change to MediaWiki. I think that would require phab:T132072 (or something like it). That work appears to be one of those things that (almost) everyone agrees would be a good idea, but nobody ever prioritizes high enough to get it done. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:34, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi! Hope you had a good time on your vacations!
Actually what I'm thinking is neither of those suggestions (even though the phab task you mentioned looked really interesting). I was just picturing a system where each talk page discussion has a square box near it the tick of which marks it as resolved. If there are unresolved discussions/issues, a notice comes on the homologue mainpage notifying each reader that the following discussions are still open and on-going on the talk page and their participation would be valuable (this notice copies all the titles of the unresolved discussions and links to them in a list format). — Klein Muçi (talk) 15:25, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I think making the notice appear in the mainspace (reliably) would require this "meta-data" system to work. It could perhaps be faked with a bot, but cached versions would be outdated. (Perhaps it would work better if it displayed to logged-in users, since I have heard that those are a little different for caching purposes?) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:43, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, a bot could also help but it would be better if it was a native feature because small wikis tend to lack such infrastructures. — Klein Muçi (talk) 09:07, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you. Even in the larger wikis, bots aren't a reliable long-term solution. Bot operators may leave or lose interest. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:19, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	Thank you for your diligent effort over the past decade! ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 17:30, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the barnstar! I appreciate it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:59, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Season's Greetings

		Season's Greetings
		Wishing everybody a Happy Holiday Season, and all best wishes for the New Year! The Nativity scene on the Pulpit in the Pisa Baptistery by Nicola Pisano is my Wiki-Christmas card to all for this year. Johnbod (talk) 02:59, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Glitches in reply tool

I know it's been 3 years since you asked me about glitches in the reply tool, but I finally figured out the problem! Copying and pasting a block of text with a newline into the reply field causes it to break. I'll look into filing a bug report since you're no longer working at the WMF. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 16:04, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Oooh, that's an interesting discovery, @Chess. Thanks for the update. I believe that @Trizek (WMF) is supporting the Editing team now, and I suspect that either @DLynch (WMF) or @ESanders (WMF) will be interested in the bug report. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:03, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

@Chess, do you use any gadget? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 08:51, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF): Yes, several. I'll see what the minimal combination is to reproduce. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 13:14, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! I was asking, as I can't reproduce the issue. :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:58, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF): I managed to reproduce this on test.wikipedia.org where I disabled all of my gadgets. I also forgot to add a crucial detail that the bug happens on Chrome/Edge mobile when copying into the source editor for the reply tool. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 17:33, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for my delayed reply @Chess.

If I understand correctly:

• using Chrome/Edge on Android, on the mobile site
• copying and pasting a block of text with a newline into the reply field causes it to break (i.e. it splits a paragraph into two).

Is it all the time?

I can't find a glitch on your published edits at testwiki. Could you say more on how you tested this?

Based on your answers, we may create a bug report on Phabricator.

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:14, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF): Your understanding is correct. Copying and pasting multiple paragraphs separated by newlines causes the reply tool to break and not recognize any of the text. It gets "lost" and the text box shows the text, but can't do anything with it (i.e. Refusing to post). Additionally (something I discovered while writing this), if I add a newline in the middle of a paragraph, then immediately backspace and delete the newline, all the text after the newline gets lost from the reply tool preview/final comment but not the textbox. This results in garbled text. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 14:32, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Would you be comfortable enough to fill the bug report on Phabricator, @Chess? You have a better understanding of the steps you used to reproduce this, which I only can poorly translate in the structure of the task (is asks for steps to reproduce). Thanks! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:49, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF): My phone broke, so I bought a new one and now cannot reproduce the issue on mobile. I'll file the bug report when I have accurate reproduction steps. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 23:39, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the update. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 12:46, 21 October 2024 (UTC)