Rationale
Two key ways of contributing to/participating on talk pages is starting a new discussion/topic or replying to an existing one
Trouble is – as the Talk Page consultation and the team's research over the past couple of weeks uncovered – contributors, across experience levels, find replying to specific comments on Talk pages to be challenging.
This work is intended to make participating productively on talk pages easier and more intuitive for contributors.
Where "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 "easy."
It is important to note the mention of "participating productively" in the first paragraph. We appreciate that 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.
Specifications
The versions and specifications for each can be found in the tasks below.