In the alpha mode of mobile we show a number inside the talk icon that
shows how many open talk topics there are on a page.
For example here:
On the San Francisco [1] page you see a 7. If you click it there are 7
topics / sections.
The code has been stagnating for some time, which is a real shame in
my opinion as it surfaces the talk page and discussions more. It works
by generating a number of sections on each save and storing them in a
page property to avoid performance implications.
I personally find it very intriguing when I see a high discussion
count on what seems like a non-controversial topic. e.g. Tofu has 37
open topics and makes me curious to click on it and read what people
have been discussing around it [2]
It's hard to measure the impact of the talk bubble when it is
displayed like this. I'd be interested to do some sort of A/B test
around it to see whether more people visit the talk page when the
number is shown - I'm not sure if Growth has any plans to do this.
Also I wonder if this is something Flow is thinking about.
Either way can we make a decision and either kill this code, or bring
it into beta mode?
[1]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco?mobileaction=alpha
[2]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu?mobileaction=alpha