User blog comment:Dopp/Communicate Easily with Message Wall/@comment-3123266-20110929024407

I have brainstormed some suggestions for this "Message Wall"... Wow. What wishlist. http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/templates/images/3/3d/Icon_eek_std.gif I'll stop for now.
 * 1) This feature really need to be called something else. For one thing, it doesn't work exactly like a facebook "wall", which is really simple blogposts FROM the user with view/hide of others' replies. This feature shows messages TO the user with view/hide of the user's replies. It's misleading. May I suggest "Talkbacks"?
 * 2) Customizable page header. Yep, we need that.
 * 3) Avatar placement. As it is, it is on the left-hand-side as done with Article Comments, which wastes horizontal space. I suggest tacking it on top of the message, with header information like User name, aka name, timestamp, statitics, reply button, hide/show button for message content, permalink, history link, last-edit-timestamp, last-edited-by, delete link, etc, etc. That way, the message itself gets full width.
 * 4) I figure that the edit box is just a text box, as done with Article Comments. I don't see a Post button anywhere, so I figure once you press ENTER, it gets posted like in facebook wall. I propose that if any wikitext is detected, it automatically pops up a preview, that you either press ESCAPE to cancel or SPACEBAR to post. Also, you can set in My Preferences to always preview, even if the post is all text.
 * 5) For complex edit, I think there needs to be "Leave Message" button somewhere (e.g., the custom page header) that will take you to an editor. Works just like "Leave Message" for talk pages but post a Talkback message instead of Talk page section.
 * 6) Archived messages. Instead of indexing them in multiple subpages as done with Article Comments, maybe you specify in a textbox the messages you want to view. For example, if I have 1000 messages, by default it will state "Messages [981] to [1000]". I can then change that to "[501] to [550]" to show messages from 501 to 550. If I press "Pg Up", it will then show "[451] to [500]". If I press "Pg Dn", it will show "[551] to [600]". Alternatively, "[50] Messages from [551]".
 * 7) List View. This will look like Special:RecentChanges, where you only a list of messages with entries like Username, Timestamp, # of bytes, # of replies. You can view the 20, 50, 100, 200, or 500 entries at a time, and also set the offset or date for the first entry to be listed.
 * 8) Like DeviantArt, I suggest that if I reply to a post from Dopp on my "Talkback", my reply is also a post on Dopp's "Talkback". So Dopp can reply to my post, and Dopp's reply will be another post on my "Talkback". To expand on that, by default, my Talkback will show all messages sent to me, with a link to my replies. It may be useful to see all messages I sent to other people, with links to their replies. If select a particular message, I can view/hide all replies for that message at the bottom. At the top, I can view/hide all the "reply-to" messages (i.e., by recursively trace the parent of the message).
 * 9) Subject header - it is kind of useless actually. Even on talk pages, the section heading does not usually help to describe the topic of the message itself. Twitter has a good idea that messages can have one or more topics by using embedded "#topic" syntax. We can have something similar to "Add Category". So, if I want I added "Drupal", "MediaWiki" and "Joomla" categories to my message, I can view all messages under "Joomla" topic by clicking on Joomla.
 * 10) Quickie replies. For some messages, you may want to just state "Support" or "Oppose" with no content... or "Support" or "Oppose" along with a message content... or no content. Either way, it would be useful to tally the # of supports and opposes with no duplicates.