Talk:Talk pages project/Mobile

Let's do something now for mobile editors

Pinging some of my local friends: @Dyolf77 (WMF), @Omotecho, @Miya, @Fralambert, @Jules*

The problem: If you use a smartphone, it's difficult to edit, and it's really difficult to post a comment. But there are a lot of mobile editors, and they need to join discussions, too.

The proposed solution: Let's turn on the Reply tool and the New Discussion tool at the mobile site. (The [reply] tool is already turned on for all editors on the desktop site. The New Discussion tool is only in the Beta Feature. However, the New Discussion tool is probably better than the existing tools for mobile editors.)

The problem with the proposed solution: If you go to the mobile site (see this page on the mobile site), it starts in a collapsed, mobile-friendly form. If you want to read the page, you have to click "Read as wiki page" at the bottom of the page. To make the Reply tool work, we need to set the mobile site to "Read as wiki page" first. This change would affect all mobile editors at your Wikipedia. This means a trade-off:

• Mobile users get the Reply tool and New Discussion tool. 😇
• The talk pages look different on the mobile site. 🙂, 😖, 😳, 😲?

This is a big visual change. I don't want to surprise people. Where should I be asking your community about this? At a village pump? Is there a page for mobile editors at your wiki? Should we try to run a banner notice for mobile users? If this seems like a bad trade-off, I want people to tell me before the devs are ready to do this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:02, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi, thank you to keep on eyes, for language communities, and as an icebreaker (at the dead of winter here), perhaps we can talk numbers? I mean, could you share mobile user population vs desktop view users, in a very rounded up statistics?

Myself switch between mobile and desktop views, and one advantage is when I wish to scan why I've got a ping via mail from the Watchlisted pages. As you pointed out, collapsed view is easier to spot the target section, as for jawp-specific landscape, I am afraid not many talk pages apply archiving: I was noted we have unwritten rules/norm that you should keep all threads visible but not archive in most cases. Of course, RfC and any discussion-busy pages are bot-archived.

Standing among that landscape, I am honestly not quite sure how we scale the majority to target at. My hunch tells speaking up on talk pages, in general, esp on ja language communities, it has an wiki-age bias: longer you stay, you will become more silent or enjoy Read-Only-Mode, seldom offering comments or time tested wisdom.

On demography, "Read as wiki page" format and readers' happiness. If we consider those using tablets, on top of smartphones, then will it change how "happy" the format shift be accepted among audiences? Our pie multiples if you include those "silent uses", or people at school age. FYI, ja society (domestic) in general has been appreciating that elementary schools supply their students with tablets per head for studying remotely. One thing the pandemic did for the good of equality at education (;

No data at hand, though I guess ja schools won't allow their students to create accounts using their devices, other than accessing their own carricula. It could be implied that our non-login users include those developing web users, or our future editors. Are we giving them a bright picture if shifting to "Read as wiki page"?

Or retirees who come to our projects, who have more choices to create their accounts, but yet to bud as Wikimedians?

Is it so hard to have the workflow as: collapsed view -> [some action] -> [push reply button] -> start writing -> save/preview/post? My low tech brain itches (; -- Omotecho (talk) 00:45, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi, Omotecho, here are the numbers I have readily available:

Who posts the most comments on talk pages?

Platform	User Experience	Average Monthly Talk Page Contributors	which is...
Mobile Web	<100	164	6% of new editors who use mobile
Mobile Web	100–499	46	6% of middle editors who use mobile
Mobile Web	500+	78	11% of experienced editors who use mobile
Desktop	<100	353	5% of new editors who use desktop
Desktop	100–499	?	?
Desktop	500+	613	23% of experienced editors who use desktop

There are a lot of newcomers using the mobile site. Experienced editors tend to use the desktop site. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:30, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF), hi, appreciating the data you offered in table, and more senior editors are using reply button than I have expected. Thumbs up! Allow me input focused on jawiki in two folds:

(1) how Reply function being introduced on Help:Notepage/ja.

At section "how to post on note pages" (w:ja:Help:ノートページ#ノートページへの投稿手順), I read the following.

• this Diff shows when the Help:Notepage/ja on jawiki has offered a picture telling how to use Reply button, or 返信, to post reply. Dated 10:36, 22 August 2018 (UTC aka 2018-08-22) by w:ja:User:Nami-ja with edit summary as copy/edit/paste a picture for indentation sample from guideline on Notepage at internal link (→‎ノートページへの投稿手順: w:ja:Wikipedia:ノートページのガイドライン, Special:Permalink/68342807, 2018年4月27日 (金) 10:35 (UTC) よりインデント例を抜粋転記、改訂。)
  

(2) suggestion for reply button on mobile view.

Can we have edit summary window put open as default when replying? Or maybe add a reminder your reply will be added "reply" (返信) by the system, just like the auto-signature reminder? I see many replies lacking edit summary, maybe contrasted to back in Spring 2021, and my habit found it rather cumbersome the workflow on Desktop view. By try-and-error, I found we need to push blue 詳細 (details/specifics) button to unfold the Edit summary input area. On source mode or VisualEditor, I remember seeing the summary window anytime to input reply, at the bottom, so that you are reminded not to forget filling it and give context.

• NB, Help:Edit_summary#posting_a_new_comment/ja (#「新しいコメントを投稿」機能 ) tells the system fills summary and input section title for you. The section Help:Edit_summary#Autofill/ja (#要約欄の自動入力) does not include Reply also does the trick.

-- Omotecho (talk) 03:54, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

このスレッド（節見出し）の話題まとめ Summary for ja language users: モバイルビュー^※でもノートページで「返信ボタン」を提供するかどうか、ご意見ご感想を募集中です。ぜひ皆さんも日本語で投稿してください。もちろん、提議者さんは機械翻訳で読み書きをされるはずですし、時差は生じますが Omotecho でよろしければ翻訳しますので、お手数ながら文末に{{at|Omotecho}}と記して通知をくださるとまことに助かります。

議題＝返信ボタンを採用すると、モバイルビューの従来の見た目が変わること、その利益不利益は何か。多言語対応のため、多くの言語版の反応が待たれます。また Phabricator でも作業項目として立ちました。

1. 現状、モバイルビューは既定で見出し一覧を閲覧させる。
2. 編集（返信）をするには、利用者が画面下部で表示形式を切り替える。
3. ボタンが現れる。（a）節見出し直下の[編集]、（b）直近のコメントの署名直後の[返信]。
4. 利用者がボタンを押して投稿。

※＝モバイルビューとはスマホやタブレットで読みやすいように、調整した画面表示のことです。PC利用時もページ最下部の小さい青字の文字「プライバシー・ポリシー」の並びにある「モバイルビュー」を押すと体験できます。戻るには画面最下部の青さ「デスクトップビュー」を押します。（逆も真なり）

• ＝派生の課題として返信の宛先に「-さん」を自動で付けるパッチも整いつつあります。

別件で、Omotecho 自身はデスクトップビューでもノートページの編集要約欄は既定で折り畳んであり、「[詳細]ボタンを押す→要約欄に記入」の手間が不便だとコメントしました。モバイルビューに限らず、署名の自動化同様、注書きがほしいです。-- Omotecho (talk) 04:32, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Omotecho; I was not clear. That's the number of editors who post comments on talk pages each month, no matter what tool they use. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:57, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Message templates for mobile on talk page

xpost from https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:X4jst4gv7adlkgbg

A particular English Wikipedia talk page needs a message which appears to mobile editors. How can I do this? See the message which appears on desktop but not on mobile.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Better_Business_Bureau

Frequently users post from mobile because they do not see the desktop message.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Better_Business_Bureau&action=history

Thanks

Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:41, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Lack of summary on mobile

(Originally reported on itwiki)

Hi, the reply tool on mobile doesn't add the edit summary "Reply" as the desktop tool does. Can you fix it, please, or link the related task on Phabicator? Thank you. Patafisik (talk) 09:28, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

@Patafisik: The one that doesn’t indent and doesn’t leave an edit summary is the old MobileFrontend talk page overlay. So the related Phabricator tasks are T298060: Offer Mobile DiscussionTools at All Wikis and T298066: Disable MobileFrontend talk page overlay. According to the deployment table, an A/B test is running among others on Italian Wikipedia, which may confuse you. (I seem to be in the “test” group, so I see DiscussionTools on itwiki, and it preloaded the summary as expected – I didn’t try to actually post a reply, though.) —Tacsipacsi (talk) 21:04, 29 January 2023 (UTC)