Community Wishlist/Wishes/Having long, complex and in depth discussions is basically impossible
Having long, complex and in depth discussions is basically impossible Open
Description
Discussing edits on the talk page has the following issues:
- Long discussions become unwieldy very quickly
- Irrelevant comments get in the way of on-topic discussion
- It is difficult to distinguish open items and issues in dispute from resolved or agreed upon items. Open items are often spread across the talk page (across topics as well as across threads)
- Arguments for an against a proposal get totally lost. Some editors kindly summarize these points, but inevitably have to repeat the work regularly as the discussion grows in length.
- It's basically impossible for a new user to enter a conversation in a meaningful way if they were not involved from the beginning.
- Once a discussion gets archived, it becomes even more difficult to find. Realistically what ends up happening is the whole discussion is brought up yet again at some point in the future, and all the work that was done previously goes to waste.
- People get overwhelmed as a result of this frustrating process. This gives edit warriors an incentive to be filibuster.
Given how much web technology has advanced in the past 20 years, and given how much people have grown to rely on wikipedia as a source of information, it seems crucial to address some or all of the above issues. I'm sure more experienced editors will have better suggestions and observations.
Assigned focus area
Unassigned.
Type of wish
System change
Related projects
Wikipedia
Affected users
editors who work in topic areas that involve a lot of editwarring