This page talks about the Editing Team's work to improve contributors' workflows for replying to comments on talk pages, across Wikipedia's 16 talk namespaces. This new workflow for replying to specific comments is intended to make participating productively on talk pages easier and more intuitive for Junior and Senior Contributors.
This initiative sits within our team's larger effort to help contributors work together more effectively. To accomplish this, we will build upon existing community conventions to evolve talk pages. It is our intention to evolve talk pages in a way that gives experienced contributors more leverage to coordinate their work and connect with other editors, while making communicating on-wiki more accessible and intuitive for newer contributors.
To participate in and follow this project's development, we recommend adding this page to your watchlist. We will use this page to do things like:
The reply tool is an extra button that appears at the end of a post on a talk page. When you click on it, it opens a reply form that makes replying to that post easier to do correctly. It indents correctly, helps ping correctly, and automatically signs correctly for you, among other things.
See Help:DiscussionTools and Talk pages project/Feature summary (screenshots!).
Technical informationThe replying feature is implemented via the DiscussionTools extension.
Troubleshooting information is available at Help:DiscussionTools/Why can't I reply to this comment?
Status updatesThis section contains updates about the project's development.
13 July 2023 https://dtcheck.toolforge.org/The scale of the Reply Tool's usage has grown beyond what the current architecture of dtcheck.toolforge.org/dtstats can sustain.
Absent of there being a clear need for the Editing Team to invest in updating dtcheck to cope with the volume of edits people are using the Reply Tool to make, we will sunset the feature on September 1, 2023.
Please comment on T341821 if you see reasons why disabling dtcheck would be disruptive for you.
As of early October 2022, more than 2,000,000 new comments have been posted through the Reply tool. 27 May 2022 New comment indicator in the Reply Tool.As of 19 May, a new experience is live for the new comment indicator that appears in the Reply Tool when someone publishes a comment while you are drafting a reply.
The Editing Team would like to acknowledge Beta Kots for the work she did in leading the design of this improvement.
In early April 2022, the one millionth comment was posted with the Reply tool. 9 March 2022Scaling
On Monday, 7 March 2022, the Reply Tool became available to everyone (logged in and out) on desktop at English Wikipedia (en.wiki). Details about this deployment can be found in Phabricator.
18 February 2022Scaling
As of today, the Reply Tool is available to everyone (logged in and out) on desktop at all Wikimedia wikis except for en.wiki (T296645), fi.wiki (T297533), and ru.wiki (T297410). You can see the full list of what Talk pages project features are available at what wikis by visiting Talk pages project/Deployment Status .
Notifications about New Comments
The team is working on introducing functionality that will alert you, in real-time, when someone posts a new comment in the discussion you are using the Reply Tool within. Instructions for how to try the prototype and share feedback about it can be found here.
The 700,000th use of the Reply tool happened in January 2022. By the first week of February, more than 750,000 comments had been posted with the Reply tool. 7 December 2021 The 500,000th use of the Reply tool happened in December 2021.Scaling
Today, 7 December, the Reply Tool became available by default on desktop to everyone — logged in and out – at MediaWiki.org. You can try the tool on Talk:Talk pages project/Usability.
17 November 2021Scaling
Today, 17 November, the Reply Tool became available by default on desktop to everyone — logged in and out – at Commons.
29 October 2021 The 450,000th post was made in October 2021.Scaling
On Monday, 25 October, the Reply Tool became available by default on desktop to everyone—logged in and out–at the French Wikipedia.
Conversations are ongoing with volunteers about also offering the Reply Tool as an on-by-default feature at the English, Finnish, and German-language Wikipedias.
15 October 2021 New functionality that enables you to preserve text formatting when pasting content into the Reply Tool's Source mode.New functionality
Starting next week, you will gain the ability to preserve text formatting when pasting content into the Reply Tool's Source mode.
30 September 2021Scaling
A screenshot showing "dtcheck" a tool for seeing how the Reply Tool is being used at the Wikimedia Wikis it is available at. More information about the tool can be on GitHub here: https://github.com/MatmaRex/dtcheck.Today, 30 September, the Reply Tool became available as an on-by-default feature at all Wikimedia Wikis except the projects listed here:
In the coming weeks, we will start conversations with volunteers at the wikis listed above about the prospect of offering the Reply Tool as an on-by default feature there as well.
In the meantime, you can see how often people are using the Reply Tool to publish talk page comments by visiting https://dtcheck.toolforge.org/dtstats.html.
31 August 2021 By the end of August 2021, more than 300,000 comments had been posted with the Reply tool.Scaling
Today, 31 August, the Reply Tool became available as an on-by-default feature at 21 new Wikipedias:
Spanish (eswiki), Italian (itwiki), Japanese (jawiki), Persian (fawiki), Polish (plwiki), Hebrew (hewiki), Dutch (nlwiki), Hindi (hiwiki), Korean (kowiki), Vietnamese (viwiki), Thai (thwiki), Portuguese (ptwiki), Bengali (bnwiki), Egyptian (arzwiki), Swahili (swwiki), Chinese (zhwiki), Ukrainian (ukwiki), Indonesia (idwiki), Amharic (amwiki), Oromo (omwiki), Afrikaans (afwiki).
6 August 2021 To date, people have used the Reply Tool to make ~250,000 edits. SourceUsage
To date, people have used the Reply Tool to post 250,000+ talk page comments.
New toolbar in Source mode
Yesterday, 5 August, the Source mode toolbar that was introduced as an opt-in setting in May, became available to all people who have the Reply Tool enabled by default. Note: you can still turn this toolbar off if you would like within Special:Preferences.
Offering the Reply Tool by default at more projects
In the coming weeks, we expect to be able to resume plans with offering the Reply Tool as a default-on feature for all users at all projects. Once the next set of wikis where the Reply Tool will be offered by default is finalized, we will post an update to this page.
For context, plans to offer the Reply Tool more broadly had been stalled while we worked with the Performance and Data Persistence Teams on infrastructure enhancements to ensure the Reply Tool continues to function as expected at this larger scale.
13 May 2021 A screenshot showing the new toolbar that can be enabled in the Reply Tool's Source mode.New toolbar in Source mode
As of Tuesday, 11 May, you can enable a toolbar within the Reply Tool's Source mode. This toolbar introduces easier ways for pinging other people and inserting links into the comments you are drafting.
To start, this new mode is being offered as an opt-in preference. You can enable it by taking the following steps
Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editingDiscussion pages sectionEnable experimental tools in the quick replying and quick topic adding features' source modesSaveA/B test results
Percent of Junior Contributors that completed at least one comment attempt on a talk page during the AB test. | SourceThe results are in from the A/B test of the Reply Tool that ran from 11 February through 10 March on 22 Wikipedias. What follows are the conclusions we are drawing from these results and the steps we are taking next.
Conclusions
The full report can be found here: Reply Tool AB Test Report.
Next steps
Considering the A/B test has shown the Reply Tool causes a greater percentage of Junior Contributors to publish a comment without a significant increase in disruption, we will proceed with the plan we shared in T252057 to begin making the Reply Tool available as an opt-out preference at all Wikimedia projects. The sequence and timing of these deployments will be finalized in T280388.
23 March 2021Deployments
23 March, the Reply and the New Discussion Tools will be available as an opt-in beta feature at the German Wikipedia, so it will be at all Wikimedia Sister Projects from 23 March.
16 March 2021A/B Test
On 10-March, the Reply Tool A/B test finished. We are now analyzing the data and expect to have results for you to review in the next four to six weeks.
Deployments
Yesterday, 16-March, the Reply and the New Discussion Tools became available as an opt-in beta feature at the English and Russian Wikipedias and all Wikimedia Sister Projects (except German Wikipedia).
Note: you can review how and where all Talk pages project features are available here: Talk pages project .
12 February 2021A/B Test
On 11 February, an A/B test of the Reply Tool started at 22 Wikipedias (full list here). During this test, 50% of all editors at the Wikipedias included in the test will have the Reply tool automatically enabled, and 50% will not. People at these wikis will still be able to turn the tool on or off in Special:Preferences. The results of this test will help the team decide whether people benefit enough from the tool for it to begin being made available by default, at all projects. We expect to have results to share in 2-3 months.
22 January 2021Engagement metrics
Completion rates for comments made with the Reply tool and full-page wikitext editing. Details and limitations are in this report.On 5 January 2021, the team completed an analysis of the first ~2.5 months of Reply Tool usage at the three wikis where it is available by default (Arabic, Czech and Hungarian). The findings are encouraging, tho not conclusive considering the limited sample size.
A notable finding from this analysis: the edit completion rate for Junior Contributors using the Reply Tool is 4x higher than the edit completion rate for people using full-page wikitext editing.
You can review these findings in more detail by reading the Metrics section below and/or reviewing the full report: Reply Tool workflow engagement metrics.
17 December 2020Completion rates for comments made with the Reply tool and full-page wikitext editing. Details and limitations are in this report.
A/B Test
We have decided the key metric we will use to compare the A/B test's control and test groups will be the rate at which people in either group publish the comments they initiate. More information in can be found in the Metrics section below and in Phabricator here: T252057.
It is important to note that we are not considering notable positive changes in the rates at which people start and continue participating on talk pages as well as the rates at which people are participating on talk pages in disruptive ways as prerequisites for the Reply Tool being made available to all people, at all wikis, as an opt-out user preference. We've come to think this for the following reasons:
Measuring engagement
The team is analyzing the Reply Tool usage data from the Arabic, Czech and Hungarian Wikipedias, where the tool has been available as an opt-out feature since 24-September-2020.
This analysis will help us determine whether people, across experience levels, are having success using the Reply Tool and whether people are using the tool in ways that disrupts others.
We will post the results of this analysis in the Metrics section below (see: "Analysis 2: Engagement"). You can expect these results to be posted no later than January, 2021.
Evaluating impact
The team is preparing to run an A/B test to evaluate the impact the Reply Tool has had on how people use talk pages. This test will help the team decide whether we should move forward with plans to offer the tool to all people, at all wikis, as an opt-out user preference.
More details about the test can be found in the Metrics section below (see: "Analysis 3: Impact").
4 November 2020Deployment planning
Today, 4-November, the Reply Tool became available as an opt-in Beta Feature at an additional ~250 Wikipedias. This means the Reply Tool is now available as either a Beta Feature or opt-out user preference at all Wikipedias except for the following projects: English, Finnish, Gan, German, Inuktitut, Kazakh, Kurdish, Russian, Tajik, and Uzbek.
28 October 2020Deployment planning
In the coming weeks, we are planning to offer the Reply Tool as an opt-in Beta Feature at all remaining Wikipedias except for the following projects: English, Gan, German, Inuktitut, Kazakh, Kurdish, Russian, Tajik, and Uzbek.
An exact date has not yet been set. Once it has, we will announce it on this page and in Tech/News.
Note: the above was also mentioned in this week's Tech/News. See: Tech/News/2020/44.
16 October 2020Deployment
On Wednesday, 14-October, the Reply Tool became available as an opt-in Beta Feature at an additional 30 projects. The objective of this deployment is to ensure the Reply Tool is usable and useful for editors at Wikipedias that write in languages/scripts with unique characteristics (e.g. long words, unusual font sizing, many diacrtics, rare fonts, etc.).
The full list of projects where the Reply Tool is currently available can be found here: Talk pages project .
25 September 2020 As of September 2020, more than 25,000 comments have been posted with the Reply tool.Deployment
On Thursday, 24-September, the Reply Tool became available to all users (logged in and out) at the following Wikipedias: Arabic, Czech and Hungarian. This deployment marks the first time the tool is available to people who have not enabled the feature in Beta Features or appended ?dtenable=1 to the URL of the talk page they are viewing.
The primary goal of this deployment is to understand whether contributors, across experience levels, are having success using the feature and finding it valuable. You can find more details about how we think about the deployment process here: Deployment process.
You can see the kinds of edits people at the Arabic, Czech and Hungarian Wikipedias are making with the Reply Tool by filtering Recent Changes:
Custom edit summaries
By the end of Thursday, 17-September-2020, anyone using the Reply Tool on a production wiki will be able to customize the edit summary that accompanies the comments they post with the Reply Tool.
This functionality can be accessed by clicking the Advanced link that will appear beneath the text input area (see the "Custom edit summary implementation" screenshot).
Custom edit summaries
Inspired by the feedback volunteers have shared [i][ii][iii][iv], the Reply Tool will soon offer people the ability to customize the edit summaries that accompany comments posted with it.
As part of implementing the custom edit summary functionality, we created a technical prototype.[1]
You can try the prototype by visiting this page: https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/23fd7e0b373b74aceaf8ddec1d82ab09/w/index.php/Talk:Main_Page.
If there are comments and/or questions that the prototype brings to mind, we would value you sharing them on the talk page here: Talk:Talk pages project/Replying/2020/08#h-Prototype:_custom_edit_summaries-2020-08-27T02:18:00.000Z.
7 August 2020Deployment
Metrics
Version 2.0 usability test findings
Version 2.0 deployment
?dtenable=1.Version 2.0 testing and deployment
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?dtvisual=1.Version 1.0 deployment
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Version 2.0 development
Our two areas of focus right now related to Version 2.0 are:
Thank you to Pbsouthwood, Pelagic, Samat and TheDJ for the efforts you have made offering design feedback about the version 2.0 mockups.
3 April 2020Version 2.0 designs
Version 1.0 deployment
Version 1.0 deployment
Version 1.0 deployment
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This work is intended to make participating productively on talk pages easier and more intuitive for contributors.
"Easier" means more experienced contributors can participate in existing discussions with less effort, and "intuitive" means newer contributors do not need specialized knowledge to figure out how to add their thoughts to a conversation. Said in a different way: as a result of this work, both newer and more experienced contributors should report the workflow for participating in existing discussions to be "obvious" and "approachable."
It is important to note the mention of "participating productively" in the first paragraph of this section. We appreciate it is not enough to build tools that simply encourage contributors to "talk more"; they need to encourage people to work together to help improve the project they are discussing.
While we are still defining how to measure the impact of this feature, a key part of this work will involve figuring out how to understand the impact this new affordance has had on the quality of discussions on the talk pages it is deployed to.
ImpactThis section discusses the three quantitative analyses we have planned to evaluate the usefulness, usability and impact of the Reply Tool. These analyses are discussed in detail below.
Analysis 3: Impact Percent of Junior Contributors that completed at least one comment attempt on a talk page during the AB test. | Source The percent of comments made by Junior Contributors on talk pages that were reverted within 48 hours of being published. | SourceIn this last analysis, we sought to learn two things:
To answer the questions above, we ran an A/B test of the Reply Tool from 11 February through 10 March on 22 Wikipedias. The results from this test can be found in the "Findings" section below.
Timing
This analysis was completed on 23-April-2021. The A/B test ran from 11-Febraury-2021 through 10-March-2021.
Conclusions
The clear evidence that shows the Reply Tool causes a greater percentage of Junior Contributors to publish a comment without a significant increase in disruption, signals to the team that it would benefit all Wikimedia Projects and volunteers to have the Reply Tool made available as an opt-out preference.
Findings
The data below included logged-in users who had not previously interacted with the Reply Tool (defined as users whose discussiontools-editmode preference was empty).
Report
You can review the full analysis results here: https://wikimedia-research.github.io/Reply-tools-analysis-2021//.
Analysis 2: EngagementThe next analysis we did was needed to help determine whether people, across experience levels, were having success using the Reply Tool and whether people were using the tool in ways that degrades the experiences of others.
This analysis's findings were used to decide whether the Reply Tool is functioning well enough for its impact on user behavior to be tested via a larger-scale (read: at wikis beyond our partner wikis) A/B test.
Timing
This analysis was completed on 5-January-2021
Conclusions
The high rate at which people who used the Reply Tool to publish the comments they started writing, combined with the lack of clear evidence of disruption, led the team to think the Reply Tool was ready to be tested at a larger scale via an A/B test. More details below.
Findings
In this first analysis, we sought to learn whether people at the Arabic, Dutch, French and Hungarian Wikipedias, where the Reply Tool had been available as a Beta Feature since 31-March-2020, were finding the tool valuable.
To determine the extent to which people were "finding the tool valuable" we looked at how frequently people were using the tool (as measured by the number of distinct days they use it on) and how intensely people were using the tool (as measured by the total number of edits they make with the Reply Tool and the percentage of total talk page edits they used the Reply Tool to make).
Understanding the above helped us determine the tool was ready to be made available as an opt-out feature at these wikis and made available as an opt-in Beta Feature at others.
Timing
This analysis was completed on 28-July-2020.
Findings
The data below included people who have used the Reply Tool as a Beta Feature at the Arabic, Dutch, French and Hungarian Wikipedias, between 31-March and 30-June-2020:
Report
You can review the full analysis results in this Jupyter notebook: https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/wikimedia-research/Reply-tools-analysis-2021/blob/master/Adoption-Metrics/Replying-Tool-Adoption-Metrics.ipynb.
BackgroundThis year, the Editing Team is committed to improving how contributors communicate and collaborate on Wikipedia, using talk pages.
For talk pages to be valuable, contributors need to intuitively know how to participate in the conversations that happen on them.
The trouble is – as previous user testing, the Talk Page Consultation and the team's research uncovered – contributors, across experience levels, find replying to specific comments on Talk pages to be challenging.
Specifically, the team's research has found:
In exploring an affordance for replying to specific comments on talk pages, we are striving to make participating productively on talk pages easier and more intuitive. We think doing so will help newer contributors understand and use talk pages as places to communicate with others and help more senior contributors collaborate more efficiently.
ChallengesOne part of building new features is codifying social conventions in software. In this context, "conventions" could mean deciding what character the software should use for automatically indenting or outdenting replies. "Conventions" could also mean deciding how the software should represent the first comment in a discussion in wikitext: Is there a linebreak between the reply and the original comment? Is the reply added to the line immediately following the original comment in the discussion? Is there another way this comment should be represented?
It is unlikely all communities will answer these questions in the same way. This means the software needs to be built in a flexible enough way to accommodate these different preferences. This is possible, although it adds complexity to the design and development processes.
DesignTo increase the likelihood this enhancement is useful for contributors across experience levels, we have broken down the improvements we have planned into a series of releases. These different releases are outlined in more detail in the "Versions" section below.
Also below are the latest iteration for the designs we are planning to implement in Version 1.0. If you have thoughts about anything included in this section, we would value you sharing them on the talk page: Talk:Talk pages project/replying.
❗️Please consider the features included below as drafts and expect them to evolve as we learn new things.
Versions Version 1.0 Version 1.0: a mockup showing version 1.0 of the new workflow for replying to specific comments on talk pages.This version will introduce the basic reply functionality to validate the core workflow. This version will likely include the following features:
You can try a prototype of version 1.0 of the new replying workflow here: https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Cats.
A mockup showing how version 1.0 will likely look once it is deployed can be seen in this screenshot: File:New replying mockup (v1.0).png
Version 2.0Assuming version 1.0, and any smaller releases that follow, helps us to validate and refine the core replying functionality, version 2.0 will likely include enhancements to make it easier and intuitive for Junior Contributors to draft and post their replies. This version will likely include the addition of the following features:
Version 2.0 overview: a mockup showing how version 2.0 of the new replying workflow could look.
Version 2.0. (visual): an annotated mockup showing the new Replying feature's visual text input mode.
Version 2.0 (source): an annotated mockup showing the new Replying feature's source (read: wikitext) text input mode.
This section contains information about how and where the Replying feature is and will be deployed.
Deployment statusTo see what projects the Reply Tool is available, please visit: Talk pages project .
Deployment decisionsDeploying Version 1.0 as a Beta Feature to partner wikis
On Monday, 16-March-2020, the team is planning to deploy Version 1.0 of the new workflow for replying to specific comments on talk pages as a Beta Feature on the following Wikipedias: Arabic, Dutch, French and Hungarian.
This decision is the outcome of the team being confident in the following:
This confidence is based on the team and volunteers testing the new Replying workflow on >75 different talk pages in three talk namespaces on the 4 Wikipedias where the feature will be deployed.
This testing proved necessary for identifying and resolving issues related to the core parts of the replying workflow. Issues like:
This testing was also important for identifying additional use cases the team is actively working to provide support for. Use cases like being able to reply to comments transcluded from a subpage. For more details on this work, see this Phabricator task: phab:T245694.
Deployment processThe deployment of this feature will happen in four steps. These four steps are described below.
Before the team decides to move on to the next step in the deployment process, they will do two things:
Deployment goal
The goal of this step in the deployment process is to answer these questions:
Deployment details
To make sure the feature behaves in ways contributors expect, new versions of the feature will be deployed to the Beta Cluster. This way, contributors will be able to safely experiment with new versions of the Replying feature without needing to worry about affecting existing content or contributors.
Step 2: Beta FeatureDeployment goal
The goal of this step in the deployment process is to answer these questions:
Deployment details
To make sure the feature behaves in ways contributor expect on production wikis before exposing the feature to a large number of people, the feature will be deployed as a Beta Feature.
Step 3: User Preference (opt-out)Deployment goal
The goal of this step in the deployment process is to answer these questions:
Deployment details
To determine whether a broad range of people are having success using the feature and are finding it valuable, the feature will be deployed as an opt-out User Preference.
Step 4: A/B testDeployment goal
The goal of this step in the deployment process is to understand whether the feature had the impact it was intended to have. To determine this, we will use this deployment step to answer:
Deployment details
To determine whether the feature had the impact it was intended to have, the team will run an A/B test on a to-be-determined set of wikis.
The team is finalizing the details of this A/B test.
Step 5: All wikisIf evidence from the previous 4 deployment steps suggests the new Replying feature makes replying to specific comments on talk pages easier and more intuitive for Junior and Senior Contributors, it will be deployed to all remaining Wikipedias. Determining how and when the feature is deployed depends on the team, along with volunteers from those wikis, being confident the feature works reliably and in ways people expect it to.
Usability testingThis section contains information about user testing the team conducts to ensure the revised experience works in ways contributors expect.
Version 2.0 prototypeTo evaluate whether the new features introduced in version 2.0 of the Replying tool are intuitive to Junior and Senior Contributors, we ran two usability tests that asked test participants to complete a series of tasks:
Overall, these tests demonstrated the majority of Junior and Senior Contributors were successful in using Version 2.0 of the Reply tool to write, format and publish comments on Wikipedia talk pages.
You can learn about the overall impressions people had, the key areas for improvement and next steps below.
Overal impressions
Senior Contributors described the tool as well-balanced and expressed appreciation for the new automatic pinging feature. Here are a few noteworthy comments:
Junior Contributors who were able to find the Reply tool successfully completed the tasks they were asked to and described the tool as being intuitive and straightforward to use.
With this said, when peoples' focus moved from the Reply tool to the broader talk page, they became confused and uncertain about "where" they were and what they ought to do.[4] Here are a few comments we thought were noteworthy:
Task analysis
The table below shows whether participants in each test group were able to complete the following tasks with Version 2.0 of the Reply tool.[5]
You can review the broader themes these tests helped our team identify in the "Key themes" section below.
Task description Junior Contributors Senior Contributors Identify the way to reply to a comment on the talk page ✅9/10 were successful ✅13/13 were successful Type a comment using the new visual mode ✅9/10 were successful ✅13/13 were successful Format the content they had written using the visual mode's formatting tools ✅8/10 were successful ✅13/13 were successful Ping someone who has already commented in the section they are commenting in ⚠️ 6/10 were successful ✅10/13 were successful Ping someone who has not already commented in the section they are commenting in ⚠️ 7/10 were successful ✅10/13 were successful Remove one of the pings they created ✅8/10 were successful ⚠️9/13 were successful Review how the comment they wrote will appear in wikitext before publishing Not asked ✅13/13 were successful Publish the comment they wrote ✅9/10 were successful ✅13/13 were successful Locate the comment they published ✅9/10 were successful ✅13/13 were successful
Areas for improvement
These are the broader areas for improvement that surfaced through these usability tests. You can review how we plan to address these themes in the "Next steps" section below.
Next steps
To address the issues and opportunities these two usability tests surfaced, the team will be working on improvements to make the following come true;
You can track the progress we make on the areas above by watching this page and/or by reading this Phabricator workboard: phab:Reply tool version 2.0.
Version 1.0 prototypeTo see how the version 1.0 prototype affected Junior Contributors' experience replying in conversations on talk pages, the team ran a control test with 5 participants on usertesting.com. You can review the test findings below.
How were we testing?This usability test was run on usertesting.com with 5 participants who were each screened to ensure they were technically advanced web users who have used Wikipedia before.
In order to compare the revised replying workflow to the existing workflow, each test participant was asked to complete the same tasks on a desktop computer, while narrating their experience:
Overall, the prototype seems to have improved Junior/newer contributors' experiences replying in an existing conversations. On average, it took participants using the prototype half the time to publish a reply compared to the time it took them in the previous test, using full page editing.
Task completion
Results
The prototype seems to have made it easier for Junior/newer contributors to reply to existing conversations on talk pages. Test participants used phrases like, "straight-forward," "no-problem whatsoever," and "really easy" to describe their experiences.
With this said, there are still parts of the replying workflow participants found difficult that could be improved:
More details can be found in this ticket on Phabricator: T236921#5744471.
Next steps
The team will decide if and when to make the improvements mentioned above (e.g. making it easier to visually distinguish between different replies in a discussion) and do further testing with more experienced contributors (this has started here: Version 1.0 prototype test).
Existing reply experienceTo identify the challenges Junior Contributors face when trying to participate in conversations on talk pages, the team ran a control test of the existing (full page) editing workflow.
How were we testing?This usability test was run on usertesting.com with 5 participants who were each screened to ensure they were technically advanced web users who have used Wikipedia in some capacity before.
Each test participant was asked to do the following tasks on a desktop computer, while narrating their experience:
Below is a summary of our findings from this user test. More details can be found in this ticket on Phabricator: T239175#5723843.
Task completion
Results
This test highlighted an important tension many Junior Contributors seem to face: they finish the task they set out to complete without realizing they might have done so incorrectly. And if they do realize they have made a mistake, they are not equipped to fix it because the proper conventions are not intuitive enough for them to understand.
Next steps
The team will be doing two things in response to this test:
Many projects have, and are, working to improve contributors' experiences with talk pages. This project is better off for their existence. Some of the projects the team continues to learn from are listed on the main project page and below. If there is a project you think we should be aware of, please boldly add it here.
The Talk pages project glossary is intended to help us all communicate about talk pages more effectively by making sure we have a shared understanding about the words we use in our discussions and documentation throughout the project.
See alsoRetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
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