During today's 17-March meeting, @Esanders noted that in implementing what this task is asking for, people will notice that the username suggestion list will behave differently when using the New Discussion Tool and when using the Reply Tool.

• When using the Reply Tool people will find that the username suggestion list is populated with the username of other people who have commented in the section they are drafting a comment within.
• When using the New Discussion Tool people will find the username suggestion list populated with the username of other people who have commented on the page they are drafting their discussion topic on.

We are comfortable with this inconsistency because we are assuming the use cases of the two tools are distinct enough [i][ii] not to cause confusion.

i. We are assuming that when people are wanting to ping someone while drafting a new topic, they are most likely doing so to bring people into the conversation who have previously spoken on the given page.
ii. We are assuming that when people are wanting to ping someone while drafting a comment, they are most likely doing so to address someone who has previously commented within the conversation they are talking in.

I worry that this might lead to unwanted mentions. If we show a dropdown with usernames to someone adding a new topic on an article talk page, they might assume we're encouraging them to contact these people with questions about the article. However, someone who commented on such talk page might not actually care about the article much or want to be contacted about it.

Change 674928 had a related patch set uploaded (by Esanders; author: Esanders):
[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Populate user mention list in new topic tool

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/674928

In T277357#6928693, @matmarex wrote:

I worry that this might lead to unwanted mentions. If we show a dropdown with usernames to someone adding a new topic on an article talk page, they might assume we're encouraging them to contact these people with questions about the article. However, someone who commented on such talk page might not actually care about the article much or want to be contacted about it.

I think we should keep any eye out for this, but we are only suggesting these names if they actually use the tool or type @ so I'm not overly concerned.

I think this has too much potential for negative interactions between people to add it.

In T277357#6954102, @matmarex wrote:

I think this has too much potential for negative interactions between people to add it.

@matmarex I'm glad you you vocalized this risk. Although, I think we can move forward with implementing what this task is asking for considering :

• People not hearing back about comments they post on talk pages seems to be something people observe frequently enough to suggest something similar to what this ticket is asking for [i]
• I assume the likelihood of people being flooded with unwanted mentions, and subsequently becoming frustrated/distracted/etc. by them to be relatively low [ii]
• Were the above to happen, I assume: A) People would make us aware that this is happening and B) It would be relatively straightforward for us to stem the behavior [by way of reverting this change]

i. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)#Article_talk_pages
ii. While I agree with you in thinking, "...someone who commented on such talk page might not actually care about the article much or want to be contacted about it..." I don't think showing people who have already commented on a talk page within the username suggestion list will significantly impact the likelihood that they will be mentioned when they otherwise would not have been

A few notes about potential problems:

• On very large pages, the names suggested will usually be the 'wrong' ones.
• On low-traffic pages, the names suggested may be inactive editors.
• No matter how you sort/filter the names of active editors, you will introduce some sort of bias (e.g., encouraging editors to ping the dominant voices on that page, or whose names start with letters high in the alphabet, or who have certain user rights).

We are going to de-prioritize work on this task for now.

Primary reason: the benefit from introducing this change is not yet clear enough to warrant the effort that will be required to monitor the risk associated with it. [i]

i. T277357#6928693

Change 674928 abandoned by Esanders:

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Populate user mention list in new topic tool

Reason:

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/674928