This task represents the work involving with designing the experiences people who have the New Discussion Tool enabled will have when they attempt to start a new discussion on a talk page, across namespaces, that has not yet been created yet.

Background

As discussed by @matmarex and @DannyS712 on https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools/+/623117, adding new discussions to non-existent pages is a case that will need special handling.

Currently, all links to such pages (red links) will append &action=edit which, when clicked, will take people straight into the full page source editor.[i]

Trouble is, as previous usability tests of the full-page source editor in this context have proven (T243251#5933544), Junior Contributors are likely to be confused by this experience. Specifically, Junior Contributor usability test participants:

• Did not sign the new discussions they posted
• Expressed being uncertain about whether they were taking the right steps to start a new discussion
• Had difficulty locating the new discussion they had just published to a talk page

Use cases

We see there being three distinct use cases/categories of talk pages to design for:

Requirements

• Full-page editing: All empty state designs need to include affordances for opening the full-page source editing interface
  • The full-page source editing interface (e.g. 2010 wikitext editor or 2017 wikitext editor) people see in this context, should be the same full-page source editing interface they see in other contexts (e.g. editing an article, editing a talk page that's already been created, etc.)
• Availability: only people who have the New Discussion Tool enabled should be impacted by this new empty state experience. Read: people who do not have the New Discussion Tool enabled should see no changes in the experiences they have when clicking on a [red] link to a talk page that does not currently exist.
• Points of entry: the empty state experiences we are designing should impact the following workflows/points of entry for people who have the New Discussion Tool enabled:
  • 1. They click on a red linked talk page that is "adjoined" to an article/user/project/etc. page that already exists
  • 2. They click on a red linked talk page that is "adjoined" to an article/user/project/etc. page that does NOT yet exist
    • E.g. Clicking on a red-linked talk page that appears in the signature of a newcomer who's posted on a community help page, for example.
  • 3. They manually enter and navigate to the URL of the not-yet-created talk page; this URL contains ?action=edit. We will not be addressing this point of entry as part of this initial version. This work will instead happen in T283644.
  • 4. They manually enter and navigate to the URL of the not-yet-created talk page; this URL does NOT contain ?action=edit. We will not be addressing this point of entry as part of this initial version. This work will instead happen in T283644.

Open questions

• 1. Does it make most sense to consider the scope of this task as being limited to what happens when people click the New section / Add topic affordance on non-existent talk pages? Meaning: the visual appearance of the empty page itself would be considered separately in T252902.
  • We'll consider the experience holistically and then breakout the work needed to realize this experience after having done so. See: T270323#6767558.

i.

ru.wiki	en.wiki