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List recent discussions (from all wishes) in one place
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Description

For a few years we've had a Wishlist recent changes page that lists recent activity on all talk pages relating to Wishlist projects: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Wishlist/RC

It'd be good to add all wish talk pages to this, so there's a way to see all recent discussions, without having to put every wish on your watchlist.

Details

Related Changes in GitLab:
TitleReferenceAuthorSource BranchDest Branch
Add wish talk template via botrepos/commtech/wishlist-intake!254samtarT370242main
Customize query in GitLab

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The bot could add e.g. {{Community Wishlist/Talk}} to the top of every talk page that gets created (or the gadget could do it, but that seems unnecessary given that some talk pages will never exist). Then, if that template contains a link to e.g. Talk:Community Wishlist/RC we can use {{Special:RecentChangesLinked/Talk:Community Wishlist/RC|enhanced=1|hidebots=1|days=7|showlinkedto=1}} to list all talk page activity.

This is a great problem to solve. Instead, I wonder if the problem is that users don't know when a new comment exists about a wish. Instead, what if we added a comment icon (and counter) on the wish index table, so people can see where the most vibrant conversations are happening?

And, we could add a link on the table for users to subscribe to the wish (a proxy for "support").

Those both sound like good ideas (depending on available space in the table, the width of which might be more constrained once the focus area titles start being displayed).

The problem I'm getting at though is how to stay up to date, more than how to find which wishes have any discussions. How are you keeping track, for instance, of which wishes you need to reply on? Are you adding them all to your watchlist as they come in?

In order to do this, we'd have a template, then make a change to the bot to add a template to a talk page.

nb. using Special:RecentChangesLinked with the actual template (e.g. {{Special:RecentChangesLinked/Template:Community Wishlist/Talk|enhanced=1|hidebots=1|days=7|showlinkedto=1}}) seems to work pretty well too?


Oh ooops, just noticed the preexisting https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Wishlist/RC — guessing we want to keep using that page/link instead.. hmm

I think for the Wishlist, we won't use https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Wishlist/RC as that's specific to Community Tech. I've just moved that template to Talk:Community_Tech/RC and put it in-use at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Tech.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Wishlist/RC is now repurposed for this task. So I think the only work left to do is have the bot add the template to the talk pages after a wish is created. @TheresNoTime Did you need any help there?

Sounds good!

Do we want to add it to every wish's talk page? Or only after someone creates a talk page? I think the latter; no point in creating pages that might otherwise never be created.

So now Talk:Community_Wishlist/RC shows changes to all pages that link to Talk:Community Wishlist, but is the idea that we'll create {{Community Wishlist/Talk}} and show pages that link to that one? (That link to and transclude — does the showlinkedto parameter work like that?)

I think for the Wishlist, we won't use https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Wishlist/RC as that's specific to Community Tech. I've just moved that template to Talk:Community_Tech/RC and put it in-use at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Tech.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Wishlist/RC is now repurposed for this task. So I think the only work left to do is have the bot add the template to the talk pages after a wish is created. @TheresNoTime Did you need any help there?

Back looking at this now, thanks for hashing that out @MusikAnimal / @Samwilson — I should be good to get that in place now :-)

Here's my thinking:

  • Template:Community Wishlist/Talk with content <div style="display: none;">[[Talk:Community Wishlist]]</div>
  • On each run of npm run update-indexes (is this set to be often enough?) or its own standalone, polling command, add Template:Community Wishlist/Talk to the top of any wish talk page which exists and does not yet have the template

Questions

  • I'm not aware of any other content that Template:Community Wishlist/Talk should/will have, hence why its just a hidden link (and why I skipped templatestyles)

That sounds great. The content of the template can be sorted out later, but it could at some point have a message about the existence of [[Talk:Community Wishlist]] and the usefulness of pinging people, but then perhaps that's all assumed knowledge anyway.

It could also be added to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Talk_header_templates

Template:Community Wishlist/Talk with content <div style="display: none;">[[Talk:Community Wishlist]]</div>

What is the intention of the hidden link? This appears to pollute the results with things that aren't wishes because it includes pages that link to [[Talk:Community Wishlist]].

On each run of npm run update-indexes (is this set to be often enough?) or its own standalone, polling command, add Template:Community Wishlist/Talk to the top of any wish talk page which exists and does not yet have the template

The bot goes off of recent changes, so you should be able to listen only to page creation events under Talk:Community Wishlist/Wishes/, read the page to ensure the template wasn't added manually, and if not add it.

Job ran (e.g.) — potential follow-up work on what the template should do

Great work!

I didn't get a reply here or on the MR about T370242#10070016, so I was bold and implemented the talk template with Template:Talk/Foundation as the only content for the time being. Then over at Talk:Community_Wishlist/RC (effectively another template), we're using a Codex-ish accordion that houses the recent changes. This is now being shown atop Talk:Community Wishlist and it seems to work great. Showing the full recent changes without an accordion was a bit too distracting, I thought. Anyway, it's a wiki – please feel free to edit anything mercilessly :)

I also added the template to the focus area talk pages, so those discussions are now surfaced as well.