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Show the new topic empty state experience on pages which have templates, but no discussions
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Description

Split out from T210428

Considerations

  • We'd need to make sure the definition of "empty" does not accidentally include talk pages that are not actually meant to be used for discussions because we wouldn't want to lead people to think they ought to start discussions on talk pages that do not contain any discussions and are not actually intended for hosting discussions. Perhaps the presence of the _NONEWSECTION_ magic word appearing on a page is sufficient enough signal to prevent said pages from receiving the empty state experience.

Specification

  • The empty state will appear on talk pages that already exist (read: they contain some content) if both of the following conditions are met:
    • A) The page does not contain a signature
    • B) The page does not contain a section heading
  • Location of the empty state experience
    • On desktop, the empty state will appear beneath the content already present on the page
    • On mobile, the empty state will usually appear beneath the page title, as the existing content is usually hidden away in the the About this page link. If this doesn't happen the empty state will appear beneath any existing content.

Event Timeline

Esanders added a subscriber: Tacsipacsi.

With the new talk page empty state experience (T270323) now being available on mobile web where DiscussionTools is enabled [i], I think we can resolve this task

No, we can’t. The talk page empty state experience is about non-existent pages, while this task is about existing pages that contain only tmboxes. See for example https://simple.m.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Talk:Avalanche: it does exist, thus the empty state experience doesn’t appear, but it contains nothing but a talk page header, which is hidden on mobile, so no real content appears either (not even the About this page seems to appear for some reason):

Screen Shot 2022-05-17 at 13.16.28.png (2×1 px, 256 KB)

A few comparisons of how pages would look like after these changes: (using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tridell,_Utah as an example)

Existing page (before)Existing page (after)Non-existing page (before/after)
Desktop
image.png (2×3 px, 419 KB)
image.png (2×3 px, 517 KB)
image.png (2×3 px, 241 KB)
Mobile
image.png (1×828 px, 93 KB)
image.png (1×828 px, 127 KB)
image.png (1×828 px, 63 KB)

I ran into one more interesting case: on many wikis new users receive a welcome message on their user talk page soon after registering, and some of those messages do not have a heading nor a signature – the proposed patch would add the "empty state" below the welcome message in this case.

Examples:

I think this would be fine, and might actually be helpful in some cases if you don't speak the local language. (You can get the messages even if you've never edited, just viewed the wiki while logged in – I've never edited on ban.wp, for example.) It would be inconsistent between wikis though. (But I think this is fairly rare. I found 2 examples, but I have about 20 other talk pages like this which do have a signature after the welcome message.)

If you think about it, this is actually a lot like the article talk page templates on en.wp, but it's also different enough that I thought I'd mention it here.

Next steps

Per today's team discussion, we are going to deploy the proposal @matmarex illustrated in T210428#7986613 which will cause the empty state experience (T270323) to appear on discussion pages – as determined by its presence in a talk namespace – that have already been created so long as they do not contain any signed comments or a section heading.

In doing the above, we are knowingly accepting the fact that there will be cases (as @matmarex named in T210428#7987263) where the empty state experience could appear on talk pages where a discussion has already been started, albeit by a bot, mass message, or other volunteer using a welcome template to communicate with a newcomer that does not contain a signature, etc.

We are comfortable accepting this tradeoff because we assume the cases described in T210428#7987263 to be relatively rare and inconsequential.

Change 794562 had a related patch set uploaded (by Esanders; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Show new topic tool empty state on existing pages with no topics too

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/794562

Change 794562 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Show new topic tool empty state on existing pages with no topics too

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/794562

matmarex added a subscriber: hgzh.

@hgzh noticed, while testing the tool for the de.wp opt-out deployment, that the empty state can now appear on non-talk pages if they meet the other requirements, e.g. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sperrprüfung. This was a mistake in my last patch, I'm not sure if I just forgot about this check or if I thought it was supposed to be that way.

Change 817916 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Don't show new topic tool empty state on existing non-talk pages

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/817916

Thanks! Another observation I made: the message also appears on talk page redirects with ?redirect=no (e.g. https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modul_Diskussion:Radsportplatzierungen&redirect=no). This should also be avoided IMO.

Thanks! Another observation I made: the message also appears on talk page redirects with ?redirect=no (e.g. https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modul_Diskussion:Radsportplatzierungen&redirect=no). This should also be avoided IMO.

Good spot!

Change 817916 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Don't show new topic tool empty state on existing non-talk pages

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/817916

Change 818126 had a related patch set uploaded (by Esanders; author: Esanders):

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Don't show empty page state on redirect pages

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/818126

Thanks! Another observation I made: the message also appears on talk page redirects with ?redirect=no (e.g. https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modul_Diskussion:Radsportplatzierungen&redirect=no). This should also be avoided IMO.

Good spot!

This is also an issue in core so I filed T314048.

Change 818126 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Don't show empty page state on redirect pages

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/818126

Should this appear on pages that do NOT meet the 2 criteria above, but ALSO include NONEWSECTIONLINK? See also related discussion at T314547

Should this appear on pages that do NOT meet the 2 criteria above, but ALSO include NONEWSECTIONLINK? See also related discussion at T314547

@Xaosflux: to confirm, are you asking whether the "new topic empty state experience" should in the case where all three of the following are true?

  • A) The page does not contain a signature
  • B) The page does not contain a section heading
  • C) The page does include the _NONEWSECTIONLINK_ magic word

If "yes," then I think it makes it sense to suppress the "new topic empty state experience" in this case.

Looks, good.

By the way, @Xaosflux, the images of the building/stairs you added to https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Talk:Empty_page are mesmerizing!

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