User blog comment:Jenburton/An Update on Message Wall/@comment-3388044-20111001062627/@comment-1091639-20111001110759

Spike: You do make convincing points. However I wouldn't call replacing talk pages with the Message Wall "reducing the experience to the lowest common denominator". There's a very good comment in the previous Message Wall blog post by The 888th Avatar, who describes how the criticism of the new feature is based on incorrect presumptions. Some users here seem to assume that the fact that it's going to look and work similarly to commenting on social networking sites will automatically diminish it's quality/functionality and encourage more social activity and less editing. I disagree with this assumption. I know of non-Wikia wikis, translatewiki.net comes to mind, for which replacing the archaic talk page system with some other extension (Liquid Threads) was very beneficial. If the Message Wall will be anything like Liquid Threads then I can't wait to see it.

I have no problem with using talk pages, but if there's a way to simplify the communication between contributors, then why not follow it? I don't agree with the "If wikis have problems with newer users not using talkpages correctly, educate them!" argument. That's like saying "why use a calculator to multiply 36843 by 259643, if it can be done without it?".

I agree that the experience differs from wiki to wiki and I wish for nothing else than to maintain this diversity, but I also realize that the admins will be biased against the Message Wall, simply because they know and have learned the talk page system already. It might be better for the admins but not necessarily better for the every-day user/contributor, who is probably even unaware that the crude talk page system can be replaced with something more intuitive.