Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Archive/Release VE on Talk pages

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Release VE on Talk pages

N Outside the scope of Community Tech

Problem: Currently VE is disabled on talk pages without any proper reason. This makes editing, especially for new users, more complicatted.

Who would benefit: Everyone, but especially new users.

Proposed solution: As I said in the headline: Simply enable VE on talk pages, it's possible.

More comments: It would help a lot with regards for help to n00bs, if all wikipages could be edited in the same way. Now there is a artificial and not technically necessary Division between the article and the talk page.

Phabricator tickets:

Proposer: Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 11:53, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Last year it was somehow declared out of scope to simply turn it on on another wikipage, I still don't have the faintest clue, why this was proihibited. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 11:53, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

But let VE be able to edit by sections (because VE setup is slow on large pages). --89.25.210.104 17:53, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I dislike this idea because often I only need to edit a section on the talk page and not the whole thing. I think the script linked above for 'reply' link on talk pages is a better implementation. Gryllida 22:25, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

But that's a problem with the VE on every huge page, regardless where it's located. This is a feature, that should be implemented in the article namespace as well. Up to now the VE makes a artificial differentiation between wikipages and wikipages, despite wikipages should behave the same way everywhere. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 05:30, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

This would help in training new editors. I often teach them to use VE, but don't have time to explain source editing, so sometimes they feel lost trying to edit a talk page. It would also make Wikipedia's editing interface on talk pages more consistent. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:41, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If I remember correctly one reason why it's not released on talk pages was that indenting comments is not easy using VE. There should be some button provided by VE where you can choose to which comment you want to reply and indents should then come automatically. Stryn (talk) 21:46, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There is no problem using indenting here in this discussion with the VE. So if this was given as a reason, it was either a bigus reason then, or it was solved since. I use indention with a ":" here in this paragraph, and I'm using VE, so no problem. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 05:27, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

VE was built for article pages, basically--it would take too much time to make it work for talk pages. Even if that were not the reason, re-requesting a change that wasn't in scope last year isn't going to make it in scope this year. --Izno (talk) 02:46, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A wikipage is a wikipage is a wikipage. There is no difference between wikipages in regard of editability, at least that's what it is supposed to be. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 05:27, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Sänger and others, I have good news and bad news about this proposal. :) The good news is that the Wikimedia Foundation is starting the planning process for a big global Talk pages consultation which will begin in February. The idea is that we need to step back from LiquidThreads and Flow, and start over with a totally public and transparent consultation. We want to bring together as many people as possible, and come to consensus on the problems with talk pages that we want to solve, the good things about talk pages that we want to keep, and the tradeoffs involved in finding a solution that will work for new and experienced editors. You can read a lot more about it on that project page that I linked. The planning has just started, and we're starting to talk about the structure for this consultation and how it's going to work.

The bad news for right now is that we don't want to include proposals about talk pages in the Wishlist Survey voting. No matter what happens in the Wishlist Survey voting, all of the future talk page work will be determined by the Talk pages consultation happening next year. We don't want people to vote for something, and then find out that we still have to have another process before we make any decisions.

But -- these proposals and the discussions that people are having here are important, and I've added a section on the Talk pages consultation page which lists each of the related proposals, so that they can be a part of the public record during this planning stage. We'd like to include all of you in the consultation -- and in the planning, if you're interested. There's a lot to talk about and figure out.

I'm sure this will be disappointing right now; I hope it's also heartening to know that this problem will get a lot of attention next year. Let me know what you think. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 06:40, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think, this is delaying a simple and feasible solution another year, just to not let people get any experience with the normal editors on talk pages. If you just switch it on, even perhaps just as a test on some user talk pages, there could be some experience with it, but as this could be some positive experience that would be detrimental to Flow, this will not happen. Flow is far too much protected from any harm by those, that seem to have invested a lot in it, regardless of it's usefulness, that any negative possible side projects have to be avoided.

I just saw in the source code, thar VE uses <blockquote> here in this talk instead of normal colons, that's making the text quite unreadable in source code, i.e. the old Editor/normal talk page Editor. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 08:12, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sänger: Yes, in the past Wishlist Surveys, we closed all proposals related to talk pages because there was another product team working on Flow, and Community Tech couldn't do anything that would interfere with that team's work. We're changing that strategy now, and the Talk pages consultation is going to help us all figure out what we're doing next. Turning on VE for talk pages is one of the things we'll be talking about in that consultation -- see the section in the Talk pages consultation page about "Possible solutions". For right now, we're not going to make any changes related to talk pages, because we want to have those discussions first. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 14:16, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Fine, you moved it from meta to MW, where I'm banned in some shady backroom kangaroo court because I was a bit outspoken against the devs, that ignored facts and perpetuated falsehoods about Flow and VE. I thought MW was only about technical stuff, this is something about social and community interaction stuff, the technology has to follow the needs of the editors, not the other way around. So here on meta would be the right place for this discussion, not over there. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 21:06, 8 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]