Why should they be removed? They work on mobile as well, provided that the device has a Ctrl key. While it’s uncommon, it’s not impossible. For example, my Samsung tablet’s virtual keyboard does have a Ctrl key, and I could toggle bold, italic etc. using it.

I clicked in to say what Tacsipacsi did. If you're on a mobile device with a keyboard you can use them. Fairly common example would be an iPad with a keyboard-cover, but you can pair a bluetooth keyboard with basically-anything.

Hmm, well, we hide them in the mobile editor:

Hm, fair point. We should probably be consistent. Given that apparently some actual mobile on-screen keyboards are gaining modifier keys, the argument for being consistent in the other direction isn't a bad one now, though -- stronger than it was back in 2018, anyway.

In T308200#7925842, @DLynch wrote:

Hm, fair point. We should probably be consistent.

Yes, for sure. While I think the best would be to display the shortcuts everywhere, even consistently not showing them is better than the current inconsistency. (People might think that these shortcuts work only in DiscussionTools and not in regular VE because they appear only there. If the shortcuts don’t appear anywhere, the few people who discover them will probably confidently use them across interfaces.)

In T308200#7925842, @DLynch wrote:

stronger than it was back in 2018, anyway.

Actually my tablet is a 2015 model with Android KitKat… (Yes, I know it’s old and unsupported, but I just don’t like throwing away devices that fit my needs. I rarely use it, though.) So I don’t know if such devices got more widespread in the last four years, but this one was certainly not part of any such increase. 🙂

A more-sensible behavior than we have now would probably be to hide the shortcuts on phone screens (which have limited space), but show them on tablets (which have more space, and are more likely to have a keyboard available).

That’s also a good idea. Although not perfect (the perfect would be if we could display them on exactly those devices that have Ctrl key, but that’s impossible), it’s probably the second best solution.

Per the discussion we had as a team offline today, we're going to move forward with removing the keyboard shortcuts from appearing within any mobile DiscussionTools interface, as is already the case for other VE-based mobile interfaces.

I've updated the task description to reflect the above.

Change 793135 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):

[VisualEditor/VisualEditor@master] ve.ui.Toolbar: Always hide keyboard shortcut hints on mobile

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/793135

Change 793137 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] ve.init.mw.MobileArticleTarget: Remove hiding keyboard shortcut hints

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/793137

Change 793138 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] CommentTarget: Attach toolbar popups to local overlay

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/793138

Change 793138 abandoned by Bartosz Dziewoński:

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] CommentTarget: Attach toolbar popups to surface global overlay

Reason:

Not needed after all, https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/793136 makes these changes in VE core

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/793138

Change 793135 merged by jenkins-bot:

[VisualEditor/VisualEditor@master] ve.ui.Toolbar: Always hide keyboard shortcut hints on mobile

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/793135

Change 794559 had a related patch set uploaded (by Esanders; author: Esanders):

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] Update VE core submodule to master (595380444)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/794559

Change 794559 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] Update VE core submodule to master (595380444)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/794559

Change 793137 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] ve.init.mw.MobileArticleTarget: Remove hiding keyboard shortcut hints

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/793137

Can be verified on https://simple.m.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page