Add latest comment timestamp, number of comments, and number of editors in Discussion Tools API
Closed, ResolvedPublic
Actions

Assigned To

Authored By

	• Scardenasmolinar
	Sep 19 2025, 3:12 AM

Project Tags

Referenced Files

None

Subscribers

Description

In T402822: [SPIKE] How can we use DiscussionTools to retrieve the most active discussions on certain noticeboards? [8H], we investigated the feasibility of creating a feed of the most recently commented discussions from 2-5 different Wikipedia namespace pages. To achieve this, we would need to call the discussiontoolspageinfo API to parse and recursively go through every reply to count editors, comments, and determine the latest comment date.

This could be a performance bottleneck if there are many discussions per page with many replies. However, this information is already being calculated when DiscussionTools parses the page. If this information can be surfaced in an API call, it would make it easier for the Moderator Tools team to sort and filter the relevant discussions we want to surface in a dashboard module.

Details

Related Changes in Gerrit:

	Subject	Author	Repo	Branch	Lines +/-
	Include thread metadata in API response	Esanders	mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools	master	+1 K -418

Customize query in gerrit

Related Objects

Mentioned In: T402781: Dashboard module: Active discussions
Mentioned Here: T402822: [SPIKE] How can we use DiscussionTools to retrieve the most active discussions on certain noticeboards? [8H]

Event Timeline

• Scardenasmolinar created this task.Sep 19 2025, 3:12 AM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptSep 19 2025, 3:12 AM

This could be a performance bottleneck if there are many discussions per page with many replies.

I don't think iterating over the replies would be a performance bottleneck, it's just counting elements in a simple JSON structure. I think the main benefit here is just to prevent users from re-implementing the logic for calculating these things, which is still worthwhile.

Change #1189828 had a related patch set uploaded (by Esanders; author: Esanders):

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Include thread metadata in API response

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1189828

gerritbot added a project: Patch-For-Review.Sep 19 2025, 10:54 AM

Esanders claimed this task.Sep 19 2025, 10:55 AM

Esanders added a project: Editing-team (Kanban Board).

Esanders moved this task from Inbox to Code Review on the Editing-team (Kanban Board) board.

jsn.sherman moved this task from Inbox to Radar / Tracking on the Moderator-Tools-Team board.Sep 24 2025, 6:49 PM

Change #1189828 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Include thread metadata in API response

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1189828

ReleaseTaggerBot added a project: MW-1.45-notes (1.45.0-wmf.21; 2025-09-30).Sep 29 2025, 4:00 PM

Maintenance_bot removed a project: Patch-For-Review.Sep 29 2025, 4:31 PM

DLynch moved this task from Code Review to QA on the Editing-team (Kanban Board) board.Sep 30 2025, 4:14 PM

DLynch added a project: Editing QA.

Samwalton9-WMF moved this task from Backlog to Q3 planning on the PersonalDashboard board.Nov 3 2025, 10:50 AM

Tested against https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page

Topics without comments return null for latestReplyTimestamp

{
                        "headingLevel": 2,
                        "name": "h-",
                        "type": "heading",
                        "level": 0,
                        "id": "h-Errors_with_\"In_the_news\"-Main_Page_error_reports",
                        "replies": [],
                        "html": "<span id=\"Errors_with_.22In_the_news.22\" typeof=\"mw:FallbackId\"></span>Errors with \"<a rel=\"mw:WikiLink\" href=\"./Template:In_the_news\" title=\"Template:In the news\" id=\"mwKQ\">In the news</a>\"",
                        "commentCount": 0,
                        "authorCount": 0,
                        "latestReplyTimestamp": null
}

For a topic with comments

...
"html": "The short description is Wikimedia template",
"commentCount": 3,
 "authorCount": 2,
"latestReplyTimestamp": "2025-11-15T23:02:00Z"

VPuffetMichel added a project: Essential-Work.Dec 8 2025, 10:09 PM

Samwalton9-WMF mentioned this in T402781: Dashboard module: Active discussions.Feb 3 2026, 11:47 AM

Add latest comment timestamp, number of comments, and number of editors in Discussion Tools APIClosed, ResolvedPublicActions

Description

Details

Related Objects

Event Timeline

Add latest comment timestamp, number of comments, and number of editors in Discussion Tools API
Closed, ResolvedPublic
Actions