Forum:Conversations across two user talk pages

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I'm curious: why do most "User talk" discussions take place on two pages simultaneously? E.g. Fred posts on Sally's talk page; instead of replying directly Sally posts her response on Fred's talk page; he responds again on hers (threading as a reply to his initial post), etc, etc. Is there a reason this emerged as a convention, rather than just keeping the discussion where it originated? It makes reading an entire conversation ...rather trying, when you might want to for reference. Starkidsoph ☎ 01:23, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

Not sure if there is any actual reason why, but I find it very confusing to deal with. I also find it very telling that this is some random thing this Wiki made up as when you get Fandon employees use the talk pages on this Wiki, they don't do this bizarre practice (and the same is true across other Wikis. I'm all for changing it TBH.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

01:27, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Hell, I'm pretty sure at least one of our inactive admins refuses to do it. I think at least part of the reasoning is that if you respond on someone's talk they get a notification, so for a two person conversation it works better. Makes it harder to read stuff later, but during that conversation it makes sense. IMO the system is bad compared to having done it as conversations on a single talk page since the beginning, but it would be worse to change. Since people would be doing both for quite some time and it would be even harder to read for years, you'd have to figure out what was going on on the fly with each conversation. And in the future people would have to keep in mind that things change at a certain time point except they kinda don't and it's messy. Consistency is a benefit for these sorts of procedural communication things. Najawin ☎ 02:45, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia does it like us, so, if I'm remembering correctly, that's probably its origin. Bongo50 ☎ 11:02, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't think continuing to do a bad method of communication should be kept just because we've always done it. I don't think it would be that hard to switch as we've only got around twenty regular editors, and non-Tardis editors do it like this anyway. Just put out a notice to alert everyone to the change an then if anyone misses that and does the old method, we can politely tell them we don't do it like that anymore.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

11:41, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Epsilon. "Because we've always done it" shouldn't mean we continue to do so if it's an outdated/bad system. — Fractal Doctor @ 11:53, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Speaking as someone who's currently reading through talk page archives, it's a massive headache to swap between pages, but it would be more of a headache to not know if I need to do so before I open up a discussion. Consistency for communication is actually very important. These things are path dependent. Najawin ☎ 18:48, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Surely you can refer to the dates? If it's past, I dunno, August 2023, you'll know it's on one page.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

19:20, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Two issues with this. The first is that you tend to look at conversations in batches, and it doesn't transfer as easily as that. You might look at, say, everything on a single person's 4th talk page archive. The second is that you're imagining that everyone switches over perfectly. Let me disabuse you of this notion. Large scale communication procedures never change properly when you try to switch over unilaterally. There's universally problems. What will end up happening is that there will be a transition period where both things chaotically happen in parallel with no rhyme or reason until people get used to the new procedure. This could take a few months to a year or two. Oh. And people who come back after years will still use the old procedure. You never ever change over communication procedures all at once. Najawin ☎ 07:10, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Sure, but let's say after we ruled that these conversations should be on one talk page, and then a user missed that and did two; the simple answer is to simply move the message and attribute the edit history.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

12:50, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

But then what happens if someone looks through someone's edit history and see that they comment on someone else's talk page and go to that talk page looking for a comment that isn't there? Doesn't necessarily affect my workflow, could affect someone else's. These sorts of minute optimizations are infamous for causing more problems than they solve. Najawin ☎ 18:45, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

A note could be left explaining where the message is? Bongo50 ☎ 19:08, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't think this solves the issue, because ostensibly in my example the person would figure out what is going on. It's just that every suggestion introduces discontinuity and uncertainty into how you have to deal with talk pages, and it's not as simple as "oh, just change over after a certain date". I honestly don't know why this is controversial, it's just local/global optima. Najawin ☎ 19:31, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Are there situations where it's difficult to tell whether you're seeing a whole conversation, or are you just talking about workflow problems with having to open extra stuff? The few people already using the single-thread model don't seem to be creating widespread confusion, as far as I've seen. (I agree that moving people's comments is probably not a good idea.) Starkidsoph ☎ 01:13, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Opening extra stuff isn't the issue per se, but confusion as to how much you have to open is. Also, if there are three or more participants in a conversation, which does happen, having it in this hybrid model where perhaps two people have a conversation on a single talk page and one person responds on another would cause more confusion still. Najawin ☎ 01:27, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I think the decades of precedent across all wikis everywhere present a pretty strong Chesterton's fence on this one. But I'd be very interested in exploring other ideas for how to make it less confusing: for instance, maybe we could create a minimalistic template to place at the start of a section header containing links to specific subsections where the conversation started or continues. I've also taken to preemptively creating redirects for future archive pages of my talk page, such as User talk:NateBumber/Archive 5, which allows for future-proof section links (although I've not yet checked how badly this messes with the Archive Tool). – n8 (☎) 16:02, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

I strongly support changing user talk pages to the way every other talk page works. In fact, I was thinking of creating this thread myself to discuss it. They are a headache to both navigate and respond to, and is confusing to new users. I do recall seeing User:CzechOut claim somewhere that the way it's done is a "longstanding MediaWiki principle" or something like that, but the fact of the matter is I know of zero other wikis that do this. Contrary to what was stated above, no, not even Wikipedia does this.

I am not too knowledgeable about the technical aspects, but I believe it would be feasible to archive every user talk page, add a notice to these archives saying these are from when things were done the back-and-forth ways, and perhaps add a temporary site notice (definitely an announcement) of the change being made. Maybe such a notice can appear only in the Talk namespace? I'm not sure.

I will address one thing, which is possibly the reason for the current situation in the first place: notifications. The current system ensures that by having your user talk page edited, you are notified of an update to the discussion. The "classic" form of talk pages would mean that you have to check other users' talk pages, or follow them, which you may not wish to do. Personally, I strongly think the mild inconvenience of being notified by a separate discussion on a user's talk page strongly outweighs the mess we have now (to put it lightly). Additionally, Wikipedia gets around this by having a feature that essentially allows you to "@" mention users, and perhaps such a thing could be added to this wiki. It would be useful for any sort of talk page or forum too. Chubby Potato ☎ 07:25, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

But even when you watch a page you don't get notifications when it's edited. Aquanafrahudy 📢 07:33, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

As far as I know, it would not be possible to add Wikipedia's ping system (as great as it is). Bongo50 ☎ 12:25, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

I believe I am the “inactive admin” Najawin mentioned above. I agree that the current system makes no sense, and makes following old conversations unnecessarily difficult. The only advantage is notifications. Perhaps what we need is a simple template to notify users that there has been a reply to a conversation they were participating in on so-and-so’s talk page. So if User A starts a conversation on User B’s talk page, User B could reply there, and drop the template on User A’s talk page so they get the notification. Or is that too cumbersome? —Josiah Rowe ☎ 17:55, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Now that we're off Fandom, we could fix the notifications issue, and add Wikipedia's ping system, with extensions. However, these extensions and their dependencies would require us to upgrade our hardware first. Bongo50 ☎ 18:03, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Well, if we reach a stage where it is viable to upgrade and there is a significant enough desire amongst us all for such a change, I'd happily support it.
JDPManjoume Regular Editor ☎ ✍ 18:10, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Well. Now that we've upgraded, and pings are working, the discussing seems to be ripe for reopening. @User:JDPManjoume, @User:Josiah Rowe, @User:Fractal, @User:Epsilon, @User:Starkidsoph, @User:Bongolium500, @User:Chubby Potato, @User:Aquanafrahudy. :P (@ Nate who isn't yet with us.)

I think I'm still against the idea, personally, for path dependency reasons. But it's more viable now, and the discussion is certainly plausible. Najawin ☎ 05:13, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Ping! If I'm understanding correctly, it would now be straightforward to carry on a conversation on one talk page, with both users getting notifications as long as the hosting participant @ mentions the visiting party in each message to them? I can see that getting complicated with three or more interlocutors, sure, but I can't imagine that the separate-page model exactly makes that sort of conversation easy to follow now.

In my opinion the biggest problem with the current system is that there isn't any linking between the two sides of a conversation, so to read a past exchange or one involving especially talkative users you need to comb through manually matching timestamps. If there was some sort of universal thread numbering system that could be linked to, like for the old forums (I think? Before my time), this would be less of a problem, but currently it really is quite tedious. I get the resistance to changing long-established conventions, but I don't think this would be too awful – even if only some people go along with it, in the majority of cases it should be pretty immediately obvious whether or not a given user talk thread contains replies from the hosting user, since I doubt people would be inclined to change their practice mid-conversation. We could also add a message to the talk page notification informing users of the protocol should they wish to reply, or one of those pop-up things in the edit window, for a while? Starkidsoph ☎ 14:40, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

There are plans to add a feature that will allow following discussions and receiving notifications for any new messages added to them which would make the single-page options even easier. Bongo50 ☎ 15:02, 31 July 2024 (UTC)