On 10 September 2014 18:37, James Forrester <jforrester(a)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.