Consideration: "Wikipedians" is a difficult thing to have in the copy. After all, this extension is going to be running on non-Wikipedia projects; should we call someone on Wikitionary a "Wikipedian"? (It can also be run on entirely non-Wikimedia projects -- if someone installs it on the wiki for their knitting community, they're not a Wikipedian.)

This doesn't apply to using the name of the project, because there's a config variable for that. I can stick {{SITENAME}} into a message and it'll be whatever's appropriate for the wiki it's running on.

Also, since the doc is restricted...

Default copy:

User talk pages:

Your own user talk page: no changes.

Ah great point @DLynch, I'm going to go back in and edit.

My primary copy goal here is to communicate that:

1. these are discussions on how to improve the page on the subject and not the subject itself.
2. these are PUBLIC conversations
3. you are creating the page with this action
4. (if relevant) you will receive notifications as a result of this action

Some of the tweaks are in reaction to light touch internal testing. @cmadeo described:

"The copy feels a bit ambiguous about how it should be used in the context of Wikipedia (discuss the subject or discuss improving encyclopedic entries about the subject?)"

Also: I find it quite challenging to read the phrase talk pages within a sentence because it feels like poor grammar so I try to avoid that.

I took out the word "Wikipedian" and added a learn more link.

@DLynch : @ppelberg reviewed the copy with me and here are the final changes that you should go ahead and implement

You can view all the changes in the copy document.

Change 714821 had a related patch set uploaded (by DLynch; author: DLynch):

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Empty state copy changes

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/714821

@iamjessklein @DLynch The changes in the patch look weird to me, I think there might have been a mistake somewhere in the process.

Looking at the comparison: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools/+/714821/1/i18n/en.json

• Both "discussiontools-emptystate-desc" and "discussiontools-emptystate-desc-user" (descriptions for normal talk pages and user talk pages) start with the same text: "Talk pages are where people discuss how to make content on {{SITENAME}} the best that it can be." The latter also doesn't mention that the messages are public, which was stated as a primary goal.
• In "discussiontools-emptystate-title" and "discussiontools-emptystate-title-user" (headers for normal talk pages and user talk pages) the links are inconsistent. The former doesn't have a link to the subject page, but the latter has a link to the user page.

Please check and confirm that this is intended.

The doc is really difficult to read for me, with multiple copies of every message spread across four sheets, each of which has to be scrolled both horizontally and vertically to see everything, so I worry that at some point someone edited the wrong cell. (The en.json file diff has a lot of drawbacks as well, but at least it shows everything on one screen.)

Can't speak for the spelling-out-that-it's-public part, but I know that the link in the article-talk's title was deliberately removed because I asked about it as well. The desc and desc-user messages starting with similar text seems reasonable to me, and they do split into being page/user specific after that opening blurb.

The user normal version of the title didn't say to remove the link, but it does seem reasonable to do so to be consistent. @iamjessklein?

Thanks for the review @matmarex and feedback on the doc. Let's chat about what format would be best for engineering moving forward, I don't want to create any obstacles.

1. The link from the user-talk-page-heading should be removed.
2. Both pieces of copy should have the bit about being public. I'm pasting here to avoid any confusion:

User Talk

Header: Start a discussion with Snoopy
Description: Talk pages are where people discuss how to make content on Wikipedia the best that it can be. Start a new discussion to connect and collaborate with [Popeye]. What you say here will be public for others to see. [Learn more]
Button: Start a discussion

User Anon Talk

Header: Welcome to this talk page
Description: Talk pages are where people discuss how to make content on Wikipedia the best that it can be. Use this page to start a discussion about the edits made from this IP address. What you say here will be public for others to see. Many IP addresses change periodically, and are often shared by several people. [Learn more]
Button: Start a discussion

Thanks!

Change 714821 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Empty state copy changes

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/714821

I assumed it was intentional, and that it was meant to make the "Learn more" call-to-action similar to a de-emphasized button, rather than a normal link in text.

Similar examples:

• Newcomer home page https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciální:Domovská_stránka?uselang=en
  
• Wiki Loves Monuments banners (currently live on all sites) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
  

My assumption was the same as @matmarex -- but I admit I didn't confirm it before implementing.

Thanks for bringing that up @ppelberg - I'm going to propose integrating the link into the sentence as it is actually more accessible to be descriptive about what you are linking to compared to saying "learn more" (and that will remove the punctuation concern that you've identified).

User:
Talk pages are where people discuss how to make content on Wikipedia the best that it can be. Start a new discussion to connect and collaborate with [Popeye]. What you say here will be public for others to see.

User Anon:
Talk pages are where people discuss how to make content on Wikipedia the best that it can be. Use this page to start a discussion about the edits made from this IP address. What you say here will be public for others to see. Many IP addresses change periodically, and are often shared by several people.

Self:
People on Wikipedia can use this Talk page to post a public message for you and you will be notified when they do.

Default:
Talk pages are where people discuss how to make content on Wikipedia the best that it can be. You can use this page to start a discussion with others about how to improve Asian palm clivet.

The only issue that I have with this proposal is for the default link, it is still going to go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_pages which feels not quite applicable for all pages (some which are user pages and others which might be article).

In T288741#7337556, @iamjessklein wrote:

The only issue that I have with this proposal is for the default link, it is still going to go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_pages which feels not quite applicable for all pages (some which are user pages and others which might be article).

Currently, we have a different link on article talk pages (on English Wikipedia, it goes to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Introduction_to_talk_pages/1). We can just keep that, right? I'll submit a patch that does this.

Also, we have a separate message for the "Self Anon" case as well (which currently doesn't have a "Learn more" link; I'm not sure if we forgot, or if we decided that it was already too long), I'll add a link to it following this pattern.

Change 721392 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Replace \"Learn more\" links with descriptive links in talk page empty states

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/721392

(Also, I think we should write "talk page" in lower case, except at the start of sentence.)

Not sure what we should do next here. I guess… @iamjessklein @ppelberg please confirm that these changes look right to you: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools/+/721392/1/i18n/en.json. You could also create a Patchdemo wiki with this patch to try it out in practice.

Test wiki created on Patch Demo by PPelberg (WMF) using patch(es) linked to this task:

https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/5db753a0d1/w/

@ppelberg Any objections?

In T288741#7279167, @DLynch wrote:

This doesn't apply to using the name of the project, because there's a config variable for that. I can stick {{SITENAME}} into a message and it'll be whatever's appropriate for the wiki it's running on.

This works in English, but many languages have case endings:

"Wikipedia" becomes "Wikipediju" in "Welcome to Wikipedia"

We should avoid using {{SITENAME}} except as a standalone label.

... for example on Croatian Wikipedia the translators were forced to restructure the sentence in a convoluted way, to keep Wikipedia into the correct case:

Talk pages are where people discuss how to make content on Wikipedia the best that it can be.

became

On the talk pages, we discuss how Wikipedia can be improved.

(https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Discussiontools-emptystate-desc)

In T288741#7485078, @Esanders wrote:

In T288741#7279167, @DLynch wrote:

This doesn't apply to using the name of the project, because there's a config variable for that. I can stick {{SITENAME}} into a message and it'll be whatever's appropriate for the wiki it's running on.

This works in English, but many languages have case endings:

"Wikipedia" becomes "Wikipediju" in "Welcome to Wikipedia"

We should avoid using {{SITENAME}} except as a standalone label.

... for example on Croatian Wikipedia the translators were forced to restructure the sentence in a convoluted way, to keep Wikipedia into the correct case:

Talk pages are where people discuss how to make content on Wikipedia the best that it can be.

became

On the talk pages, we discuss how Wikipedia can be improved.

(https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Discussiontools-emptystate-desc)

We actually have a solution for this, translators can use syntax like this: {{GRAMMAR:xxx|{{SITENAME}}}}, where xxx is a language-specific name of the desired grammatical case.

For example, the Polish translation uses {{GRAMMAR:D.lp|{{SITENAME}}}} to output "Wikipedii" on Wikipedia (https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Discussiontools-emptystate-desc).

(This is implemented for most languages using a huge list of the cases for all of our site names: see WikimediaMessages extension, and a few languages have more generic implementations: see convertGrammar() in MediaWiki core. Unfortunately Croatian has neither, but it could be added.)

I guess that means we have a workaround for the WMF in some languages, but we should probably still avoid it when possible.

Change 721392 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Replace \"Learn more\" links with descriptive links in talk page empty states

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/721392

@matmarex: can you share what – if anything – was changed since we last talked about this in T288741#7463925?

(Nothing changed, we just finally merged the patch with the changes we discussed here, after forgetting about it for a while.)

Test wiki on Patch demo by PPelberg (WMF) using patch(es) linked to this task was deleted:

https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/5db753a0d1/w/