Wikipedia Help Project

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Was "Talk" previously "Discussion"?

Were the Talk pages once called Discussion pages? If so, why was the name changed? John Link (talk) 23:28, 8 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@John Link: The name of the "Talk" tab was changed in 2012 after this discussion. But the "Talk:" prefix, as in "Talk:Main Page" is much older than that, and was never "Discussion:" -- John of Reading (talk) 05:18, 9 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, John of Reading. I would have voiced my opposition to the change, which I consider a dumbing down of the language, similar to "talkback" replacing "question-and-answer session" or "discussion" for what sometimes happens after a performance. John Link (talk) 05:55, 9 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Talk" has two advantages over "Discussion" from standard rules of good writing: 1. It has less syllables, 2. It is Anglo-Saxon rather than Latin. editeur24 (talk) 21:55, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discrepancy with MOS:INDENTGAP

Help:Talk pages#Indentation says Comments are indented using one or more initial colons (:), each colon representing one level of indentation. However, MOS:INDENTGAP says However, this markup alone is missing the required <dt> (term) element of a description list, to which the <dd> (description/definition) pertains. As can be seen by inspecting the code sent to the browser, this results in broken HTML (i.e. it fails validation^[1]). The result is that assistive technology, such as screen readers, will announce a description list that does not exist, which is confusing for any visitor unused to Wikipedia's broken markup. This is not ideal for accessibility, semantics, or reuse, but is currently commonly used, despite the problems it causes for users of screen readers.

The <dl>...</dl> issue is addressed in Phabricator ticket T6521, but shoildn't the two prescriptions be brought into alignment pending a resolution? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:03, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification on pages of cited materials

Thanks for your clarification on pages of cited materials appearing in the body of the article. I was surprised when I saw them. I thought they were due to some mistakes made by me.Greatman012 (talk) 14:42, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Should Talk sections be in inverse chronological order instead of chronological order ?

Currently, the convention is to have the comments in a Talk section from first in time to last. That is clearly best. Another convention, though, is to have the sections themselves, the topics, also in chronological order. Should this be changed to reverse chronological order?

I can't see a good argument for chronological order, except maybe in the Archives, but people mainly get to the Archives by Search anyway, not be browsing.

The argument for reverse chronological order is that most of the action is in the newest Section, and putting it first means less scrolling to start a new Section, to read one, or to edit one.

Should the convention be changed? This would involve changing the Help page here to tell people to add Sections at the Top, not the Bottom, and changing the software so that if the software does it automatically, it goes to top and not bottom. editeur24 (talk) 21:09, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Such a change also implies changing almost all of the talk pages already in existence, plus their archive pages.

Chronological order makes sense because people write and read from the top down. We already have enough trouble getting people to thread properly within a discussion; I don't think it would help to have the pages going in two directions at once. And generally, the older discussions at the top are the ones that should be looked at first, whether for people familiar with the article and its talk, or for editors making a first-time visit. The older discussions get archived or closed first, so should be looked at first. Top-down chronology allows users to get an idea of the page's history; going backwards (reverse-chronologically) would make that harder. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 09:53, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@JohnFromPinckney:What I've seen most commonly are Talk pages where the first few sections are from 2005, 2010, 2012, etc., and then maybe there is one from 2019 at the bottom. For such Talk pages, nobody wants to read the older entries first, though you might want to search for whether your topic had been covered already. Within-Section, it's important to have the entries chronologically; between section, one wants to see the latest first, I think. editeur24 (talk) 19:24, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your observations about the advantage of reverse chron order, but I don't see that it's a significant one. For those of us who arrive at a discussion through watchlist notifications, whenever someone either added a section with the "New Section" tab and whenever someone edited an existing section with the "Edit Section" link, we reach a section directly from the link in the edit summary. The table of contents at the top of the page also gives quick access to the bottom—as does (on a PC, at least), Ctrl-End. So the advantage would be incremental, and wouldn't stack up against the challenge of retrofitting every talk page already in existence. Such retrofitting would be obligatory because, IMO, suddenly shifting practice without rearranging existing sections would make reading existing talk pages a nightmare. Finally, how would we possibly acquaint the entire Wikipedia community with the change simultaneously and have any realistic expectation of consistency in following it? Largoplazo (talk) 11:24, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Largoplazo: Good point about arriving from a link--- in such cases, order doesn't matter. And you're right that the Table of Contents helps. But retrofitting wouldn't be obligatory. What would be wrong with just changing new pages? Existing pages would continue to be in inconvenient, chronological, order, but eventually they'd all be archived and it wouldn't matter. If people don't currently want to read sections in chronological order, as I suggest, then they wouldn't care about what the order is below the fold anyway. editeur24 (talk) 19:24, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Editeur24: If old talk pages were left as-is, how would anybody, coming to a talk page, know without inspecting the date of the first contribution to each section whether the newest entries are at the top or the bottom? With existing pages, do you imagine no user would be confused on which end to add a new section to (assuming they don't use or don't even know about the "New Section" tab)? Or that they'd even know which pages were in existence at the time of the switchover and which had been created since then? Largoplazo (talk) 21:49, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's kind of like suggesting at this late date that it would be better for such-and-such reasons if traffic in one's country were to drive on the other side, and resolving to put the change into effect, but only on new roads (ten years later, who, encountering a new road, will know whether it's a before-road or an after-road?), and with a likelihood that all the details of the new rules will reach no more than 2% of the driving population. Largoplazo (talk) 21:57, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Editeur24: You're about twenty years too late: decisions like this should be made when a project is still young and in an ebullient state of flux, with people posting here, there and everywhere; the object would be to bring chaos into order. We now have order: any apparent chaos is due to the natural unfamiliarity that all newbies have, and is easily rectified. You write about "changing the software": but the software isn't merely the MediaWiki "New section" feature - there are a large number of bots and scripts, all maintained by different people, which add message at the bottom of discussion pages. We would need a coordinated effort to get all these people to amend their software, and put the amendments live simultaneously with a huge task to alter the existing order of all discussion pages and their archives. In short: this isn't going to happen. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:21, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Redrose64: You're right that I'm 20 years too late, but better late than never. From Python 2 to Python 3 the command "print var2" was changed to "print(var2)" and the world survived. As I said to Largoplazo above, I think this could be done incrementally. It could even be half-done without changing the software at all, just by changing the convention. The current order is no better than random, so making some of the pages inverse chronological would be a definite improvement, I think. editeur24 (talk) 19:24, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It could even be half-done without changing the software at all, just by changing the convention. You seem to be saying we should change they way we're all supposed to do it, but not change the software that works based on the supposed convention. That can't be right. And your The current order is no better than random, so making some of the pages... leads me to conclude your proposal isn't really serious at all. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 19:37, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes--- this is a situation where half-changing is better than not changing at all. That is because the current order is indeed no better than random. When sections jump around between totally unrelated topics, order doesn't matter, except that it would be convenient to have the newest on top. editeur24 (talk) 20:11, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You can't unilaterally ask many thousands users to change an ingrained habit. You need to get their agreement, and it needs to be an overwhelming consensus of the whole Wikipedia community - and for this page with its 54 page watchers who visited recent edits, a notice here, perhaps followed by a poll, simply isn't enough. Even if you can get all of those page watchers who have not yet commented to support you, that's still only 51 people, which is a tiny proportion of the community. Then consider the hundreds of WMF wikis that are not English Wikipedia - such as Commons, Wikidata, Meta, the various Wikipedias that are not in English (French, German, Spanish etc.) of which there are more than 200, together with a number of Wiktionaries, Wikibookses, Wikinewses, Wikiquotes, Wikisources, Wikiversities, Wikivoyages all of which are also multilingual - it's a big list. As far as I am aware, they all follow the convention of adding new topics at the bottom, so you either need to persuade all of those to switch over, or demonstrate why it's a good idea for English Wikipedia to go it alone and be different from all the others. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:54, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I quite agree. If Wikipedia were a monarchy, the next step would be to convince the monarchy; under current governance, I'm not sure how I'd go about it. Posting here is just a first step---this seemed the most appropriate place. I hope to be read by one of the people who goes to Wikipedia conventions, tries to get consensus, writes software for it, etc., and have them pick up on the idea. Maybe I'll be one of those people someday. editeur24 (talk) 20:11, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Multi-line bulleted comments

Some types of discussions use top-level bulleted lists, e.g. requested moves. How should I post a top-level comment with multiple lines? Should I use : for subsequent lines, or *? If I want to include indented bullet points in my top-level comment, where should my signature go — at the end of the last bullet point, on a new unindented line, or somewhere else? Rublov (talk) 16:51, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Rublov: See Wikipedia:Colons and asterisks#Best practices 3. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:33, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Reply Tool: a new opt-out feature arriving soon

I have inserted this new section about the new Reply Tool at Help:Talk pages.

This will be an opt-out feature which all desktop users will soon be seeing, following its successful trial in beta. Its rollout on English Wikipedia was initially intended for 7th February 2022. However, after discussions at WP:VPP, that rollout has been held back a short while so that as many users as possible are made aware of this feature, and for brief explanatory notes to be provided on Help pages and for users of other help fora to be made aware. Nick Moyes (talk) 22:29, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]