Is this about StructuredDiscussions ?

I'm saying at the top of
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_talk:MobileFrontend
there should be some "123 total" at top,
meaning that this very long page has a total of 123 topics.

(And on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_talk:DiscussionTools still say "2 total" even though yes, we can see that.)

Well on Facebook, we always know, before we click on something, how many items lie below.

Alas, with this interface (not sure what to call it), even after we open it, we still don't how many items we are looking at.

I suppose that is fine with some people though. But maybe not all.

Also why show the comment tallies, but not the [one level higher] tally?

@Jidanni: Could you please answer my question in the previous comment? Thanks!

@Jidanni Do you mean to show the number of topics on the topic selector button like "Browse Topic (72)" if that number is higher than, say 20?
That would be helpful: it's a bit hard to notice the scrollbar on the dowp-down, so I often get the illusion there are only 11 topics.
An alternative solution would be to show 10 topics with the 11th being "... (62 more topics)". This requires some updating logic.

It's bit hard to formalize this as a use-case:

• As a user I'd like to know if there are more topics than initially visible in the topic selector drop-down.
• After opening a flow page I'd like to know how many discussions took place there.

1. I don't know what tool this is about. Because there is no way to determine that.
2. You don't have to number anything, just say once somewhere near the top how many there are.

Or, if totals are bad, then remove the "10 comments" totals too.

When we go to the library, we can see which books are thick vs. thin vs. endless.
When we download files, we (usually) can tell if it will finish before dinnertime.
Users want to know how many items there are.
Yes you might say well just look at the (ever growing) scrollbar.
But that might mean one big item, vs. 1000 small items... same scrollbar.
So why not simply give them a count up at top?

In T249480#6031967, @Jidanni wrote:

1. I don't know what tool this is about. Because there is no way to determine that.

See the project tags in the side bar on the right in this Phabricator task. For wiki pages, see T249396 where this was already discussed.

In T249480#6031977, @Jidanni wrote:

Or, if totals are bad, then remove the "10 comments" totals too.

That's information about one collapsed conversation about a specific topic. While people might be interested in a topic, I still have a hard time to understand why someone would want to read all and every topic on a talk page AND also know beforehand how many topics there are. So it would be very helpful to explain that.

• After opening a flow page I'd like to know how many discussions took place there.

In T249480#6031967, @Jidanni wrote:

2. You don't have to number anything, just say once somewhere near the top how many there are.

• As a user I'd like to know if there are more topics than initially visible in the topic selector drop-down.

Count at the bottom of the drop-down:

In T249480#6032105, @Aklapper wrote:

I still have a hard time to understand why someone would want to read all and every topic on a talk page AND also know beforehand how many topics there are.

To make an estimate of how long that will take.

Although I seldom read ALL the topics, I usually want to skim the whole list to see if there was a topic where my question was previously discussed. Yes, I know not many people do that... they should.

I found that there are

$ w3m -dump https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_talk:MobileFrontend | grep -c Permalink
46

items!

@Demian's stuff looks great.

In T249480#6032150, @Jidanni wrote:

I found that there are 46 items!

From the size of the scrollbar I've guessed 72. That shows how accurate that is :-D

Yes expect similar bug reports in the future to not be sure what project to assign it to as per
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T249396#6028851 .

In T249480#6032169, @Demian wrote:

From the size of the scrollbar I've guessed 72. That shows how accurate that is :-D

Well then there is also "on this page" vs. "total".
And (at least for that text dump I did, it is not clear how many pages there might be.)

$ w3m ... | grep Load
Load more

In T249480#6032170, @Jidanni wrote:

Yes expect similar bug reports in the future to not be sure what project to assign it to as per
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T249396#6028851 .

@Jidanni: Humans are able to learn, now that it has been explained several times in your tasks which piece of software is what. :)