This task involves the work of sharing the findings from the A/B test the Editing Team ran to evaluate the impact of the suite of talk page design changes (desktop) with volunteers at the projects that participated in this test [i] and learn what – if anything – concerns them about the prospect of these features being made available to everyone by default.

This message is a combination of test results being announced, along with a deployment date announcement. We also added T331312: [Release Ticket] Offer the Vector (2022) "Add topic" button at all wikis.

Learning objectives

• 1. What – if any – questions/concerns does the proposal bring to mind for volunteers at each of the wikis that participated in the A/B test?
• 2. Verify that the deployment is possible.

Message

Information to share

1. The A/B test wikis agreed to participate in [ii] has concluded
2. The findings are available for people to review [iii]
3. What conclusions the team is drawing from this test [iv]
4. What the team is proposing to do as a result (see === Proposal below)

Draft
Your wiki is part of a test that started last year. We changed the design of talk pages for half of users at 15 wikis and tested how they reacted to it.

• We changed how the talk page's main title, adding a space after “Talk:”, and all section titles look, now using Sans-serif.
• The buttons for replying, subscribing, and starting a new topic appear in a bolder typeface, instead of looking like a regular link.
• For Vector 2022 users, the table of contents shows the number of comments within a topic.
• We added meta-information at the top of the talk page (link and date for the latest comment).

During the test, we measured if users were more successful adding messages on talk pages, in particular new users. We observed that new users, using the new design, are more successful on posting constructive comments at talk pages. The report is available, in English.

The test will end soon. We will deploy the new look to your wikis as the default look for talk pages. This deployment will start on Monday April 29. The deployment is only for Desktop view, as Mobile users already have this new design by default.

If you prefer to keep the old look, you can do it in your preferences, by unchecking the "Show discussion activity" option. (Please note that the "add new topic" button on talk pages won't be affected by this preference.)

Proposal

1. For everyone (logged in and out) who has NOT explicitly disabled the Show discussion activity setting within Special:Preferences viewing a desktop Article or User talk page, show them the version of talk pages where the suite of Usability Improvements are enabled
   • Note: for a detailed explanation of what "suite of Usability Improvements" means in this context, review the "UX Changes" section of T329407.
2. For anyone who is logged in that comes to prefer the legacy desktop talk page experience, they can disable the changes at any point by "unchecking" the Show discussion activity setting within Special:Preferences

Announcement tracking + timing

Timing
We will ask volunteers to have the conversation in the week that follow us posting.

Tracking

i. T332946
ii. T302358 + mw:Talk pages project/Usability/Analysis
iii. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk_pages_project/Usability#Findings
iv. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk_pages_project/Usability#Conclusion