@nray @alexhollender seems relevant given our current work on talk pages
Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Torridincolidae with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Torridincolidae
Should we turn off the page issues code on talk pages so that the content is revealed when you click "read as wiki page? "

Why the "about this page" hyperlink only appear in "Talk" namespace? It should load in other talk namespaces (File_talk, Project_talk etc).

Change 794562 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; 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

(To clarify, my proposal is to display our thing below the existing talk page content, whatever it is, not to replace it.)

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
Mobile

In T210428#7962195, @ppelberg wrote:

Approach #1: Extend the empty state experience (T270323) to include talk pages that only contain templates

• 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.
• Open questions
  • How do we decide whether to show an empty state or not?
  • How would we display the empty state on pages that contain some non-discussion content?

Approach #2: Disable hiding mboxes on talk pages (or all non-content namespaces)

• Considerations
  • Mboxes usually look awful on mobile, because they were designed on desktop. It’s possible to make them mobile-friendly, but this requires work, and needs to be done by the communities (as mboxes are styled on-wiki).

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:

• https://ban.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pabligbagan_Sang_Anganggé:Matma_Rex
• https://mai.wikipedia.org/wiki/प्रयोगकर्ता_वार्ता:Matma_Rex (this one actually had a signature, but it's not detected because the timestamp format on this wiki was changed at some point)

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.

In T210428#7934084, @Tacsipacsi wrote:

In T210428#7933043, @ppelberg wrote:

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.

Also, I'm glad you caught the mistake I made in closing this task and decided to re-open it...thank you, @Tacsipacsi.

Aside: @matmarex will deploying the patch to resolve this issue also resolve cases 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 listed in T270323?

In T210428#8057314, @ppelberg wrote:

• On mobile, the empty state will appear beneath the page title, as the existing content is currently stored "within" the About this page link.

It depends. For example, https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion:Chanson_québécoise doesn’t have an About this page link, as the WikiProject box doesn’t have classes recognized by MobileFrontend.

In T210428#8058018, @ppelberg wrote:

Aside: @matmarex will deploying the patch to resolve this issue also resolve cases 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 listed in T270323?

Not really, I don't understand what's the relationship of that task to this?

In T210428#8062527, @matmarex wrote:

In T210428#8058018, @ppelberg wrote:

Aside: @matmarex will deploying the patch to resolve this issue also resolve cases 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 listed in T270323?

Not really, I don't understand what's the relationship of that task to this?

Note: @matmarex addressed the question I posed in T270323#8062802.