On 10 September 2014 18:37, James Forrester jforrester@wikimedia.org wrote:
There have been proposals to use a right-hand bar to show information relevant to the content in view ("see related Wikidata item"; "articles on this subject in other languages use these images"; etc.); that could be a neat place to put relevant discussions' subjects/titles (or even the whole discussion). Alternatively, we could put little markers in a tray/gutter that users can click on to see more of, or put a highlighted ring around content subject to recent discussion when editors change it. There are lots of ways we could consider making a more powerful, more visible way to discuss content. Making these kind of tool available through VisualEditor would be pretty easy (though getting the design right for all our workflows would need some care, and as always the challenges of getting a reasonable, consistent design for phone, tablet and desktop platforms will need some thought). Doing it in the wikitext editor in a way that makes sense for users might be harder. However, "hard" is not a good enough excuse for us not tackling these kinds of big issues around making editing a simpler, more obvious experience that doesn't need people to have read the talk page and all its archives before making an edit. Does that sound like a useful change for experience editors? :-)
Yes, I like that a lot - the idea of "well, you hit edit. There's a discussion about *this* point *here* that you should probably read and argue in."
- d.