User blog comment:Dopp/Communicate Easily with Message Wall/@comment-824313-20110927064840

I'm not going to start trashing all of you staffers quite yet, but I would like to say that I'm really not all that happy with this upcoming feature. If there's something that I'm wrong about, since I haven't even begun reading the 460 previous comments, feel free to correct me. To list some things I disapprove of:
 * There is no way for a user to organize his or her messages, we're forced to use a specific format. I know plenty of users who d things like add a title to a talk section. Will this be achievable?
 * It implies, since comments are replacing the talk pages in other namespaces, the complete loss of signatures, which I and many other users have spent a significant amount of time and effort on.
 * The name, of course. "Wall" is the second thing you remember when you think about Facebook, the first being the News Feed. Not that I expect you to rename WikiActivity to Special:NewsFeed or add status updates to the masthead... then again, you never know. It just seems like you're trying to duplicate Facebook again. Just changing the name would take care of this one... you guys changed "Watch" to "Follow," I don't see how this could be any harder.
 * Since their beginning, wikis have been about the articles, and talk pages have been nothing more than a tool to talk about those articles (or user contributions). Now, this being a prime example, hundreds of people are discussing an article that one person has edited. And it's a lot harder to follow previous discussions. A talk page format allows discussions to flow, while a comment format forces choppy conversations and repetitive inception of the same idea.
 * Will one be able to delete/remove spam conversations from their wall, or do they just have to wait for them to be removed by an admin or paginate off the page?
 * Somehow, I feel like a "Wall" system encourages people to pop in and say hi. I don't need people popping in to say hi to me, I need constructive criticism and notification from editors who bother to look at the RC, or even WA, and find problems I've made.
 * The messages menu thing in the corner, again, looks like Facebook and makes me miss the MediaWiki I know and love.
 * Not that this one is a huge problem for me personally, but it's being forced on the Monobook users. If I recall correctly, the goal of leaving Monobook alone was to let them enjoy the original experience and not have to worry about new features changing their experience. I can't see how styling it for Monobook skins would make the Message Wall any more productive, it's still disturbing the routines of those of us set in our ways.

Also, some quick questions:
 * How will we access our old talk pages? I mean, obviously we can search it or type the URL, but will there be a link in the Wall page?
 * Being some higher-up level of protection, will our old talk pages still be searchable/linkable/etc (or will it just be op protection)? I would expect so, but I don't know what happens with staff-level protection.
 * If it is some weird level of staff protection, can administrators still revert vandalism or other changes from the old talk pages, or do we have to get it over with the next week or two?
 * Will User talk: still show up on Special:EditCount, or will it disappear?
 * Will these messages be RTE-enabled, or will they be like comments and force Wikimarkup unto new users?