One thing I'd like a good talk table of contents to do is to note how many different editors have participated in each discussion. This is because, often, when glancing at a large talk page, I'm looking for the discussions that involve a significant change with a realistic likelihood of passing (things like RfCs or major structural changes), and I'm looking to filter out discussions that are just straightforward edit requests, nonstarter ideas, and other cruft. The threads in the former group will often have many participants, whereas those in the latter will have few.

In T299246#7673672, @Sdkb wrote:

One thing I'd like a good talk table of contents to do is to note how many different editors have participated in each discussion. This is because, often, when glancing at a large talk page, I'm looking for the discussions that involve a significant change with a realistic likelihood of passing (things like RfCs or major structural changes), and I'm looking to filter out discussions that are just straightforward edit requests, nonstarter ideas, and other cruft. The threads in the former group will often have many participants, whereas those in the latter will have few.

Agree. That would be very cool.

In T299246#7673672, @Sdkb wrote:

One thing I'd like a good talk table of contents to do is to note how many different editors have participated in each discussion. This is because, often, when glancing at a large talk page, I'm looking for the discussions that involve a significant change with a realistic likelihood of passing (things like RfCs or major structural changes), and I'm looking to filter out discussions that are just straightforward edit requests, nonstarter ideas, and other cruft. The threads in the former group will often have many participants, whereas those in the latter will have few.

I'm glad you dropped by to share the above, @Sdkb.

A couple of follow up questions related to the idea you shared above...

1. On what talk pages do you/can you most clearly envision yourself using the table of contents?
2. As you think about using the table of contents on these talk pages, can you share the range of things you are/would be using the ToC to do [i] and what questions [ii] you are/would be using the ToC to answer?

i. E.g. generate links to specific sections, quickly navigate to a discussion you know you are interested in, review the range of topics people are discussing on a particular talk page, etc.
ii. E.g. "What discussions are active?", How consequential is this discussion?", "How likely is this discussion to result in some kind of significant change to the wiki?" (this is the example you shared above), etc.

1. I'd see myself using it most on large talk pages with a lot of threads. That could be talk pages of controversial topics, e.g. Donald Trump, or user talk pages of active editors. It could also be pages used for discussion that aren't technically talk pages, like the village pumps or Administrators Noticeboard.
2. In some cases I want to discover discussions to join, but in others I want to find a conversation I've checked on (and typically participated in) previously. Something like a highlight in the ToC for discussions where you've commented might be cool. I want it to answer the big question of "what are the issues editors are discussing related to this topic?" The more specific questions you listed are all good ones.

In T299246#7709966, @Sdkb wrote:

1. I'd see myself using it most on large talk pages with a lot of threads. That could be talk pages of controversial topics, e.g. Donald Trump, or user talk pages of active editors. It could also be pages used for discussion that aren't technically talk pages, like the village pumps or Administrators Noticeboard.
2. In some cases I want to discover discussions to join, but in others I want to find a conversation I've checked on (and typically participated in) previously. Something like a highlight in the ToC for discussions where you've commented might be cool. I want it to answer the big question of "what are the issues editors are discussing related to this topic?" The more specific questions you listed are all good ones.

This is helpful context – I appreciate you putting additional thought to this.

I've used what you shared above to help write the stories for the customizations we will make to the new ToC to help people understand and navigate pages that contain discussions. See T303493.

@ppelberg @Esanders I imagine something like this would work:
Code proof of concept: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/core/+/773668
Patch demo: https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/c395122a88/wiki/Talk:Spain?tableofcontents=1&useskin=vector-2022

@Esanders instead of code hardcoded in core this would obviously be a hook in core and some code in DiscussionTools. As the patch alludes, there's an option to do something further up the change in the parser - but if that's the place to do this, we'd need to loop to the parsing team. Lemme know.

In T299246#7805640, @Jdlrobson wrote:

@ppelberg @Esanders I imagine something like this would work:
Code proof of concept: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/core/+/773668
Patch demo: https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/c395122a88/wiki/Talk:Spain?tableofcontents=1&useskin=vector-2022

Wonderful – thank you, @Jdlrobson.

We plan to look at the proof of concept you've shared above next week.

We'll share any questions/feedback here.

@ppelberg - given the above, can we consider the initial deployment of the ToC on talk pages unblocked?

Status update based on discussion with @ppelberg in slack. Seems we're unblocked based on the PoC working across all of this criteria.

1. The Web and Editing Teams agree on the process for how discussion-specific customizations will be made to ToC in the future" <-- I feel like we intuitively know what this looks like and are already doing it? jon put together a PoC, we need to review it and we'll likely talk about emergent issues if/when come up?
   1. Yes, that's my understanding as well. The overall process would be continuous conversation and in terms of the technical process, we'll work off of the feedback from the PoC and see if anything else is necessary
2. "The Web and Editing Teams agree on the process for how discussion-specific customizations will be made to ToC in the future" <-- this is already happening
   1. I think this was supposed to be: The Web Team provides/exposes a way for the Editing Team to write the logic that determines whether the discussion-specific version of the ToC is shown on a given page. This is the PoC we've provided. The next step would be getting approval that this is the way forward
3. "The Web Team shares the rough timeline for when they expect this new ToC to be made available to all people, at all wikis, on desktop by default" <--- i think you and i still need to sync on this, but i'm comfortable deferring this to our next 1:1
   1. Assuming all communities are okay with our timeline, we will be deploying the entirety of the desktop improvements project to all wikis by the end of June 2022. Within the next two weeks, we will be deploying the new ToC to our pilot wikis only to perform an A/B test. If no concerns are raised during the test, we will go to 100% of our pilot wikis immediately
4. "The Web Team confirms the ToC will be able to accommodate the customizations the Editing Team is currently planning. See more in T303634." <--- i think the answer to this is "yes"
   1. Yes, based on the PoC

@ovasileva, the encapsulation you've shared in T299246#7831085 matches up with the Editing Team's understanding.

As such, I think we can consider the initial deployment of the ToC on talk pages to be unblocked.

Meta
I have an instinct to do a bit of organization to better reflect how the the plan (T299246#7770645) is playing out.

@ovasileva: would me doing the following be disruptive/confusing to y'all?

1. Resolve this ticket, now that we've done what this task was originally asking us to do: Decide whether we will introduce the new ToC on talk pages.
2. Create a new SPIKE ticket for the Editing Team to review the PoC Jon shared in T299246#7805640

In T299246#7836989, @ppelberg wrote:

@ovasileva, the encapsulation you've shared in T299246#7831085 matches up with the Editing Team's understanding.

As such, I think we can consider the initial deployment of the ToC on talk pages to be unblocked.

---

Meta
I have an instinct to do a bit of organization to better reflect how the the plan (T299246#7770645) is playing out.

@ovasileva: would me doing the following be disruptive/confusing to y'all?

1. Resolve this ticket, now that we've done what this task was originally asking us to do: Decide whether we will introduce the new ToC on talk pages.
2. Create a new SPIKE ticket for the Editing Team to review the PoC Jon shared in T299246#7805640

@ppelberg - that sounds good to me in terms of next steps, go for it

In T299246#7837466, @ovasileva wrote:

In T299246#7836989, @ppelberg wrote:

@ovasileva: would me doing the following be disruptive/confusing to y'all?

1. Resolve this ticket, now that we've done what this task was originally asking us to do: Decide whether we will introduce the new ToC on talk pages.

Done

2. Create a new SPIKE ticket for the Editing Team to review the PoC Jon shared in T299246#7805640

Here's the ticket for doing the above: T305663.