User blog comment:Dopp/Communicate Easily with Message Wall/@comment-1025281-20110928124310

Some years ago now, the online world shifted onto a new paradigm. Websites would no longer merely offer information and present it like the computer equivalent of books in a library. They would instead become a two-way avenue, a fusion of information and interaction. With the rise of the blogging phenomenon and such websites as MySpace and later Facebook, easy-to-use methods of rapidly posting opinions became a necessity. The basic engine of "commenting" as we know it now exists on practically every site that allows viewer opinion, including highly respected news websites, widely read and brilliantly written blogs and other guides and resources.

The meaning of this is simple — "commenting" is not just restricted to social networks. It is the general standard for all two-way publicly viewable communication on the web.

Unfortunately, MediaWiki and Wikipedia were created just before the Internet turned onto this new corner. Combined with the relatively low amount of investment and time that went into the original iteration of the most prevalent wiki engine today, this gave birth to the haphazard and difficult-to-understand "talk page" system as we know it. New users just don't get it. It's clear that all those warnings about using four tildes to sign have been of limited effectiveness. But it's not just them who are having trouble using this primitive tool. More experienced users growl in frustration at the differences in protocol, even on the same wiki. Do I reply on my own talk page to keep the flow of conversation intact, or do I reply on the other user's talk page to make sure he or she gets the message?

The current argument against a change in how user talk is handled makes dangerously incorrect presumptions. It presumes that the entire concept of "commenting", replete with avatars, user names and coloured boxes, is one for social networking. Yet, as I have just pointed out in detail, Facebook is far from the only site that utilises commenting. Sure, it may be the only site that actually uses the terminology "wall", but it is completely wrong to associate "commenting" with Facebook. I mean no disrespect, but that's exactly what so many of you here have done.

So now that we've established that "commenting" is not necessarily associated with that most reprehensible of social networks, the real big picture can be revealed. It reveals that there is a choice between the dirty and confusing method of wiki communication that we've been putting up for so long, and an alternative that may carry some stink from its extreme popularity across the web, but has time and again proven to be the Internet standard for public two-way communication. It reveals that there is a choice between the time-waster that is archiving talk pages and an alternative that contains the simple ease of just having the most recent conversations appear. It reveals that there is a choice between the infinite frustration admins in particular feel at other users' flashy or downright eyesore signatures (or lack of one), or the non-use of indentation, and an alternative that puts everyone back on an equal footing.

Would a move to "commenting" mean a loss in the encyclopedic nature of most established Wikia wikis, as so many of you claim? I find no logical proof in support of this assertion. There is no reasonable link to how easy a communication method is to use and understand, and the content of that discussion. On blog comments on the New York Times website, I often find very intelligent people engaging in a most intellectually stimulating debate, aided by a system of interaction that many Wikians clearly degrade as simplistic. On many Wikia wikis, on the other hand, I often find "editors" meeting for the online equivalent of an infinitely extendible coffee break chat — often with caps lock enabled or spelling and grammar errors strewn within, too.

So before you dismiss the base concept of this idea wholesale, actually take the time to reflect on who still uses such a primitive tool of communication such as is default on MediaWiki. The answer is no-one else, because the Internet has moved on from being a place for information technology specialists to being a place of mass participation built by specialists. Undoubtedly, there are problems with how this feature is currently being presented to us, but its ultimate foundation is sound.

Because time is wasted on trawling aimlessly through pages, making fancy signatures, fixing indentation, archiving every other month — time that could be better used to actually get down to business on building the best online encyclopedias.