User blog comment:Poseidon133/Why do some wikis have talk pages?/@comment-4189499-20150420041255

Personally I believe that talk pages are superior to comments, but am split when it comes to user talk pages versus message walls.

When it comes to talk/coments, I think talk pages are better. They allow people to separate out the discussion of the page from the page itself, which makes the page look nicer to readers and easier to follow for editors. Comments are irritating as you cannot add them to your watchlist to be notified of replies, and it's easy for there to be many separate discussions of the same thing in comments, whereas it's much easier to combine separate discussions under the one header on a talk page. As mentioned, talk pages can be archived, unlike comments, and it's easy to navigate their different sections using the ToC. However, there is a place for article comments. On wikis with barely any users and super low activity, comments provide a means for readers to start interacting with the wiki rather than just reading it. This in theory can start to generate more interest among non-editors, bringing them to the wiki and introducing them to the existing community, who can then further encourage them to turn into editors. Now, this isn't something that is particularly beneficial for bigger or even medium sized wiki communities, but if Recent Changes often comes up empty and the community is small enough that discussion of pages happen in either forums or even just on the message walls of the coule of other occasional users, it may be a good option to sacrifice the editor friendly talk pages for the reader engaging comments.

When it comes to user talk versus message walls, I just prefer user talk because I get email notified to changes on a user talk page, but I can't do the same with my message wall without getting bombarded with emails from all threads. Message walls are more practical in terms of multi-person discussions, but if a user needs to notify me of action which needs to be taken quicky, such as the creation of an inappropriately named page which needs deletion, I would prefer to be notified of it as soon as possible so I can react, regardless of whether or not I'm surfing Wikia at the time. If I get notified of all thread chages via email as well as just my message wall, it can be hard to tell without opening Wikia itself if it's something that needs my attention specifically. That is why I prefer user talk pages over message walls.