Hello
Some weeks ago there was a discussion of how to improve threading within the Wikipedia discussion pages. A possible solution would be http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LiquidThreads, however that most likely will not come any time soon.
Would the following be easy to implement?
1 When adding a new contribution the user is forced to use a header, that is the construct == == is automatically inserted. Right now I have to press the button *+*. But couldn't that functionality be on the button *edit*?
2 then when the user wants to reply to a contribution by using the `local' *edit* button, automatically a subheader would be inserted, in this case === ===, then the reply to that would get a ==== ==== header and so on and so on.
More sophisticated implementation
- when doing 1, a yes-no questions pops up: do you want to reply or to compose a entry?
- when doing 2 automatically and RE: is added behind the ===.
If such features would be implemented the tableofcontents would server somehow as an overview of the threads.
Uwe Brauer
Uwe Brauer:
1 When adding a new contribution the user is forced to use a header, that is the construct == == is automatically inserted. Right now I have to press the button *+*. But couldn't that functionality be on the button *edit*?
I changed the "Click on a red talk page link" behavior a while ago to use the "+" feature rather than "edit" by default. Brion reverted it because some users complained that they found the new behavior confusing. I think that some initial confusion is inevitable, and that the changed behavior would be the right thing to do.
Because the change was imperfect in other ways (you could no longer call the regular edit page even when requesting it explicitly, and it should filter the ==..== when templates are inserted into the subject) I left it for now, but I still intend to work on that issue again.
Making these headers mandatory is not a good idea (for one thing, some user message templates which are frequently subst:ed include the headers already), but giving the user the comment interface when they are typically adding comments encourages proper sectioning on talk pages (the change already led to many better-structured talk pages in a few hours). Renaming "+" to something more intuitive would also help; on Wikinews we use "add comment".
2 then when the user wants to reply to a contribution by using the `local' *edit* button, automatically a subheader would be inserted, in this case === ===, then the reply to that would get a ==== ==== header and so on and so on.
That would look terribly ugly, but some hack to produce a "reply" link would certainly be useful (it's harder than it sounds though).
Erik
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