This task is about introducing the ability for people to be able to link to specific talk page comments.
This surfaced again in the context of T264885.
Stories
- As someone who is wanting to reference a specific thing someone has said now, and at any point in the future, I want to be able to generate a permanent link to any individual comment posted on a wikitext talk page, so that I, and anyone else in the future (including my future self!), can revisit the comment and better understand the context the link to said comment may be embedded within.
Open questions
- 1. What happens in cases where people have expressed a preference for the timestamp in their signature to contain a link?
- See more context in the comment @Tacsipacsi posted in T275729#8181528.
- ES: Timestamps which are already links will be left unmodified, meaning the permalink feature will not be available for them. Our thinking behind this is:
- This is likely to be a rare edge case.
- If this is problematic for communities, it can be fixed by changing policy (disallowing linking of timestamps), or the issue can be re-raised with the Editing team.
Requirements
⚠️ Draft-state. The requirements in this section will finalized, and this disclaimer removed, once the === Mockups below are finalized.
Meta
- Platform(s): Desktop + Mobile
- Skin(s): All
- State of Show discussion activity setting: Enabled and Disabled
- Comment permalinks/URLs should work regardless of how the context around the comment changes
- E.g. the name of the topic/section in which the comment exists changes, the page on which the comment exists changes, etc.
- Comment URLs/permalinks should be human-readable
User Experience
- People for whom the timestamp that appears within their signature is NOT a link will become a permanent link.
- Note: how exactly these linked timestamps appear will be specified in the Mockup(s) section below.
- People for whom the timestamp that appears within their signature is a link...requirement to be completed by way of Open question "1." above.
- Once someone clicks/taps the link requirement "1." introduces, the permalink to said comment should automatically be added to the device the person is using's clipboard without the page reloading
- Said "permalink" ought to take people to the latest version of the page on which said comment exists. <-- via @Tacsipacsi in Topic:Wmredg44lh8v9x9i.
- Upon clicking/tapping the link affordance, people should be made aware that a link to said comment has been added to their clipboard and be shown the specific comment for which the permalink was generated
The requirements above are – in large part – inspired by the permalinking gadget @Esanders implemented which you can experiment with by following these instructions.
Approaches
Approach #1: Show a link/button for copying comment links
This is the approach the first version of the gadget @Esanders wrote and Flow take. Github and Reddit implement this in addition to timestamp linking.
| Gadget | Flow | Github | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile | #todo | #todo | #todo | #todo |
| Desktop |  |  |  |  |
Approach #2: Embed the affordance for copying comment links within each comment's signature/timestamp
Suggested by @nayoub, this is the approach the second version of the gadget @Esanders wrote (see this demo), Twitter, Facebook, Phabricator take. Reddit and Github also implement this in addition to dedicated buttons.
| Gadget | Phabricator | Github | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile | #todo | #todo | #todo | #todo | !!#todo# | !!#todo# |
| Desktop |  |  |  |  |  |  |
Mockup(s)
We will intiailly be using approach #2, so the timestamp becomes a muted link:
