Forum:Your Concerns On The New 'Wall'

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NOTICE! Most of you might think this is to stop the new wall from launching, well think again! This is for Wikia to see the loop holes and fix them. Thank You

This isn't a petition, nor is it a place for opinions, it's a place to write your concerns on the new wall. I made this because after my experience, petitions are the ones that are most likely not to work, so we should talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the new editor (as Wikia seems to be more interested in these than anyone's opinions, as I noticed in the comments). Feel free to write any advantage or disadvantage, or add to the discussion. I'll start, you add.
--.Nobody Cares .Talk • Contribs. 12:51, September 28, 2011 (UTC)

Disadvantages

1. Since it ressembles a message wall from facebook, new users may think this is a personal section for them to fill with random messages like what are they doing, their daily matters, or whatever irrelevant conversations you can imagine. This would probably increase the socialization of people, making lots of edits on this "wall" or abusing it. Because of the auto archive and the way it may be flooded, important messages and warnings posted by sysops would be hidden very fast by random messages. Since it would increase the activity in those "walls", it would flood RecentChanges as well.
2. The ways you could design your own talk page will be much limited.
3. Since it's like blog comments, the use of signatures will be probably extinguished, specially since there's no button to add the signature, and some languages/keyboards don't have the special tilde "~" sign accessible. So goodbye to personal custom signatures.
4. There's no way to find what has been updated since a particular date (history and/or diffs), because there's no history of all the talk page. This makes specially trouble to find old updated messages (paginated ones, aka archived) or replies of archived messages.
5. Users can easily edit (or delete on their own wall) their posted messages without no one noticing it, to say "I've never said that". About "no one noticing it" I mean specially the users to who is this new system addressed: newbies that don't know what an history is or scared (according to Staff, of course) of RecentChanges.
6. You cannot edit or fix other user's comments (fixing links, removing unnecessary or abusive use of images, bad words, etc), unless you have special rights (ie, you are sysop).
7. Both previous issues introduce the common problem seen in almost every blog post: One person that is replying to a particular message post their response as a new message instead of replying to the previous message, splitting conversation and breaking the structure of it, making it more difficult to track. If the user realizes that, it's unable to delete the message he/she just posted.
8. The indentation is single: Only replies are indented and all use the same level of indentation. That makes it difficult to mark when you reply to someone's reply, and causes large discussions very difficult to follow.
9. The edit interface for comments is excessive minimal, with no charinsert for special characters, no custom edit buttons, no LinkSuggest, etc. Talk pages are often used to explain complex wiki code and now it would be more difficult for either experienced and unexperienced users.
10. There's no way to see the source code of an existing message, so if someone puts an example of wiki code as an explanation it should be posted between <pre></pre> tags so other users could see the source code.
11. The comment system sometimes fail to post a message: A temporary error from the server when it's under high load, and connection problems (and this may happen periodically). When you hit save, if the edit is not posted, you lose all what you have written (which is extremely annoying). With the old MediaWiki editor you can go back or hit F5 to repost your message without losing it.
12. You cannot redirect a talk page. For example a bot talk page, being a redirect to the bot controller.
13. With an easier way to chat and talk with friends on Wikia, general conversations will flood the Recent Changes page, making important comments hard to find.
14. Blog comments past from first page aren't indexed by search crawlers. This means it's more difficult to search for an old message using google (because Wikia's internal search is buggy or outdated).
15. Also, long conversations are hidden by default, so if you want to search for a particular reply using the browser search or visually you have to notice the "view all XX replies" and click on it to discover them.
16. Some users could flood it with derogatory messages, causing them to be paginated, making it harder to find important ones.
17. You cannot move discussions or parts of the talk to another talk page (for example, to a forum page so more people participate), because you cannot delete the original source (unless it's your message wall), but you can't even copy the content of the talk because there's no way to see the source code (wiki) of messages posted by other people. You can only copy the text. And it's also inconvenient because when copying to other pages you won't get the signatures of the people participating on the discussion.
18. No way to put an edit summary when editing a message. No way to put a reason when deleting comments.

    No way to preview a new post to the Message Wall, as it works like article comments.*

    Old talk page messages and archived ones (made before this new system is implemented) aren't (easily) accessible on monobook.*

    No way to put a sticky notice at the top of the talk page, with information like "the user will be inactive until XX date", or direct users to post requests to other pages (like Staff or VSTF users have on their talk page).*

    *This is more likely of being implemented than not, but it hasn't been implemented yet.

19. Once put into the wiki, the Wiki Activity feed on the main page messes up everything else.

Advantages

1. Easier to write messages and post replies, which would prevent users from being intimidated by the edit interface when they want to reply to a message.

   If you need to contact new user because he/she made inappropriate edit you get better chances of getting an answer because that new user doesn't have to learn anything to answer you**

2. No need to structure the discussion manually. Missing titles, headers and indentation will no longer be a problem.
3. Automatic signature solve the problem of users not signing their posts.
4. Lack of custom signatures, which when too obtrusive, can make a talk page unreadable.
5. Ability to follow some threads but not the whole Wall - if you are only interested in one topic on someone else's Wall you can do that.
6. Notifications about replies and new messages that are informative and provide some information on first glance. Clicking them takes you to appropriate thread page right away instead of taking you to one large Talk Page where you have to find the part you where just informed about yourself.

   IF developed properly, will allow to track changes easier, both on the whole talk page as well as particular threads.**

7. Clear separation of content from different users instead of "wall of text"
8. When you are reading someone's Wall replying to one of the threads is a lot faster once you decide to do so - just one click away, no waiting for Edit page, no hunting for the right spot to put your reply in
9. Easy to manage threads (this will be improved upon even further) - if you decide to delete a thread you don't have to enter edit mode, carefully select appropriate parts of it and than remove, you can just hit Delete, confirm, and be done with it
10. If you need to restore parts of the Message Wall (that is, one thread) You can easily do so regardless of other content that was added in the meantime as Undelete only restores single thread without affecting others

    **Dupe of above(s) one.

Discussion

• Advantages: Attracts more users to register and join in. O RLY? How could you prove this? --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) ^-WikiDex 19:02, September 29, 2011 (UTC)
  • Yes it does attract unexperienced users who doesn't know any coding lol.
    --.Nobody Cares .Talk • Contribs. 11:56, October 5, 2011 (UTC)
    • Everyone is inexperienced at some point. The goal is to have flat learning curve so that all those inexperienced users do not leave but turn into valuable contributors. Piotr Bablok 22:34, October 7, 2011 (UTC)
      • A feature that can only be accessed through one's talk page isn't going to attract more contributors, since readers come to wikis to see the content, no to see talkpages. Anons even do not have access to talk page until they edit. Removing it.
• Disadvantages: Might be misinterpreted by new users / Might be abused by people. I would change them by: it would make people think that's a message wall from facebook and thus they will use it as such, generating unnecesary spam on recentchanges. And the second... you mean it'd be more easy for users to leave SPAM or message massively on a lot of talk pages? --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) ^-WikiDex 19:02, September 29, 2011 (UTC) Already changed.
  • If someone "spams" their own Message Wall they are going to be the only one to see that. Message Wall does not work like facebook. It works like User Talk pages, that is, you have to go to someone's Wall to see messages there. RC "spamming" is a valid concern and should be addressed with filters. Piotr Bablok 22:34, October 7, 2011 (UTC)
    • RC can only filter by 1 namespace. If the flood is coming from 2 or more namespaces you're lost: blog comments, article comments and now wall messages.
• Advantages: Easier to use, which should encourage more users to leave feedback and ideas regarding the wiki. Leave feedback where? On their own talk page, since they don't know anybody to leave the feedback on? Forums are the place for leaving feedback. Their own talk page not. Nobody would see it.
  • True, but if they *do* decide to contact someone it's a lot easier for them to do so. More importantly, if *YOU* decide to contact them because they did something wrong they have much easier time answering your message! Piotr Bablok 22:34, October 7, 2011 (UTC)
    • Since the only advantage is ease of use, not to leave feedback, I've merged two of them into one, deleting the feedback part.
• @Fandyllic: If you cross out speculative disadvantages, then for the sake of objectivity, you should also cross out speculative advantages. On this stage pretty much everything is speculative. — Sovq 06:32, October 5, 2011 (UTC)
• What happens to the content of the existing talk page? And it's subpages/archives?
  Head.Boy.HogTalk  Happy Halloween!  23:32,10/6/2011 
  • As mentioned in the blog, it will be archived, and it can be edited by admins.
    --.Nobody Cares .Talk • Contribs. 11:14, October 7, 2011 (UTC)
• As an admin, I find that my talk page gets filled up rather quickly. Archiving with only twenty messages is way too low. User:Conqueror of all Zombies
  • Twenty is a limit of threads, each of which can have different topic and it's own replies. Besides "limit" is not a good word to use here - it only forces pagination on that 20, nothing else. You can still easily access all threads. Piotr Bablok 22:34, October 7, 2011 (UTC)
• I've reformulated some of the advantages/disadvantages, trying to be neutral. Feel free to review them or change them if you find something I missed or you don't agree. --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) ^-WikiDex 10:36, October 8, 2011 (UTC)