@Ryasmeen – good spot. I don't think it makes sense for a reply link to appear within an image caption, despite that caption being signed (as it seems to be).

With this said, a couple of next steps:

• @ppelberg: investigate how common is it for contributors to sign image captions and other similar elements that are not intended to be places for conversations to happen
• @Esanders: would asking the software to not append reply links to signatures posted in image captions, like what Rummana identified here [1], be problematic for the reasons you shared in T245694#5901268?

1. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_Wikip%C3%A9dia:Accueil_principal/archive14?dtenable=1#Modif_de_l'accueil

Probably not, but I don't think this is that much of an issue. Social conventions dictate that the user just not use that reply link, in the same way they dictate that the original user probably shouldn't have signed inside the caption in the first place. As the product is based on unstructured input, there are always going to be unexpected outcomes like this is break with the conventions.

In T245772#5915780, @Esanders wrote:

Probably not, but I don't think this is that much of an issue. Social conventions dictate that the user just not use that reply link, in the same way they dictate that the original user probably shouldn't have signed inside the caption in the first place. As the product is based on unstructured input, there are always going to be unexpected outcomes like this is break with the conventions.

Understood and well put, Ed. Particularly this bit: "...product is based on unstructured input, there are always going to be unexpected outcomes like this is break with the conventions."

I do wonder whether if "Reply" links appearing often enough in contexts people would never expect to hold a conversations (e.g. inside an image caption) could cause them to become unclear about the purpose of the feature and talk pages themselves.

With this said, I am moving this to the backlog.

• Thinking: we are assuming it is unlikely for contributors to insert their signatures within an image caption. We will try to validate this assumption by sharing it as part of T245858: Publish replying 1.0 reliability evaluation on MediaWiki.