Enable talk page topics to be collapsed and expanded on desktop
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Authored By

	• ppelberg
	Dec 11 2020, 6:29 PM

Description

This task is about introducing functionality for "expanding" and "collapsing" the topics on a talk page to help people more easily and quickly recognize talk pages as containing conversations and get a sense for the level of activity happening within these conversations.

In effect, this task will introduce a "Summary" view for talk pages on desktop.

Requirements

Meta

These changes should be applied to desktop only as this functionality already exists on mobile.
People should be able to decide for themselves whether talk page conversations (read: sections) are in their "expanded" or "collapsed" state by default. This preference should apply to all pages where discussions are happening.
- #TODO: determine what heuristic determines "...all pages wheres discussions are happening."
By default, when people arrive on a talk page, the conversations/topics should be shown in their "collapsed" state

Collapsed state
When a conversation is in its collapsed state, people should be able to:

See the title container (read: the title of the topic, the time when the last comment was posted, the total number of comments posted in the topic, the total number of unique people who have posted a comment in the topic)
Elect to be notified when new comments are posted to the topic
Copy the URL of the topic
Change to/open the topic's "Expanded state" (see below).

Expanded state
When a conversations is in its expanded state, people should be able to see and do everything offered in the "Collapsed state" with the addition of being able to:

See all of the content/comments contained with the given topic, as well as the affordances for responding to specific comments
Change to/open the topic's "Collapsed state" (see above).

Open questions

Is it necessary to introduce a way for people to change the state of all topics on a given talk page from their "collapsed" and "expanded" state and vice versa?

References

@Esanders wrote a proof of concept implementation for section collapsing on talk pages on desktop in https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools/+/647717/6
@Klein raised this idea on mediawiki.org here
@MichaelMaggs raised this on en.wiki here
User:Lollipoplollipoplollipop raised this on mediawiki.org here
@Beland raised this on mediawiki.org here.

Related Objects
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Status	Assigned	Task
Open	None	T249579 [EPIC] Usability improvements: make the actions, activity and content within talk pages easier to understand
Open	None	T269950 [EPIC] Topic Containers
Open	None	T269954 Enable talk page topics to be collapsed and expanded on desktop
Open	None	T303149 Introduce setting to decide whether desktop talk page sections are collapsed/expanded by default

Event Timeline

• ppelberg created this task.Dec 11 2020, 6:29 PM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptDec 11 2020, 6:29 PM

• ppelberg added a parent task: T249579: [EPIC] Usability improvements: make the actions, activity and content within talk pages easier to understand.Dec 11 2020, 6:29 PM

• ppelberg updated the task description. (Show Details)Dec 11 2020, 7:19 PM

• ppelberg moved this task from Backlog to Triaged on the DiscussionTools board.Dec 12 2020, 3:35 AM

MBinder_WMF added a project: Editing-team (Design Backlog).Feb 10 2021, 1:18 AM

• ppelberg edited parent tasks, added: T269950: [EPIC] Topic Containers; removed: T249579: [EPIC] Usability improvements: make the actions, activity and content within talk pages easier to understand.Oct 15 2021, 8:27 PM

Lens0021 subscribed.Nov 21 2021, 5:25 PM

• ppelberg added a subtask: T303149: Introduce setting to decide whether desktop talk page sections are collapsed/expanded by default.Jun 2 2022, 12:18 AM

• ppelberg mentioned this in T303149: Introduce setting to decide whether desktop talk page sections are collapsed/expanded by default.Jun 2 2022, 12:21 AM

• ppelberg updated the task description. (Show Details)Jun 2 2022, 12:23 AM

• ppelberg added subscribers: Klein, Esanders.

I would like to add that the kind of collapsing/expanding I suggested differs with the overall idea explained here. The system I suggest deals with marking topics as resolved or open (which would coincide with their states as collapsed or expanded) not with the readability preference of how one might want to have the talk page topics presented to it. If anything, I'm not very fond of having to interact with collapsed topics (in my suggestion, collapsed topics would be resolved, already "semi-archived", and one would generally have no reason to interact with them). That already happens in the mobile version and it makes following reply emails hard for me.

For a more detailed version + some specific information in regard to my suggestion and tables of content, please read here. I'd appreciate any feedback about the idea.

Jack_who_built_the_house subscribed.Jul 1 2022, 9:25 PM

• ppelberg updated the task description. (Show Details)Jul 30 2022, 12:44 AM

• ppelberg added a subscriber: MichaelMaggs.

• ppelberg updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 4 2022, 12:25 AM

• ppelberg updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 12 2022, 12:28 AM

• ppelberg added a subscriber: Beland.

Esanders renamed this task from Enable talk page topics to be collapsed and expanded to Enable talk page topics to be collapsed and expanded on desktop.Aug 12 2022, 2:04 PM

In T269954#6685340, @ppelberg wrote:

These changes should be applied to desktop only as this functionality already exists on mobile.

In T269954#8147320, @ppelberg wrote:

@Beland raised this on mediawiki.org here.

@Beland raised the issue on mobile, while you previously constrained this task to desktop only. Please either broaden the scope of the task, or open a new task/find another existing open task for @Beland’s issue.

• ppelberg mentioned this in T322628: Ignore "expand all sections" preference on DT enabled talk pages.Nov 11 2022, 5:49 AM

Enable talk page topics to be collapsed and expanded on desktopOpen, Needs TriagePublicActions