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Community Wishlist/Wishes/Fix the issues breaking the Reply tool

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Fix the issues breaking the Reply tool Submitted

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Description

Please fix the issues breaking the DiscussionTools/Reply tool that allows convenient replies without editing section wikitext.

The Reply tool is useful as it allows convenient quick replying as is basically standard on all major websites. If it can't be used one has to edit the wikitext of the whole section which is inconvenient, cumbersome, and one doesn't have a live-preview of what one is writing. There are several issues that cause the Reply tool to either be disabled for some pages or to screw up the reply so that one has to edit it after posting. Please fix these problems:

  • When somebody screwed up indentation, i.e. with the source editor added a reply without indentation (same layer as original post), then it puts the reply above that comment that misses indentation when using the Reply tool instead of putting it at the bottom. I hope it's clear what I mean. It should put the reply in the correct layer at the bottom and maybe it could even fix the indentation of other comments by adding colons before their text.
  • The reply button is missing in empty sections. I think e.g. here there should also be a reply button in those sections that only have a header so one can use the Reply tool for replying instead of the source editor.
  • People often if not usually use a bullet point in deletion discussions. With the reply tool it moves the signature to a new line (example). Please enable that the signature can also be put into the same line somehow. Example solution: if a comment only has one bullet point but not multiple it should not add a newline at the end.
  • When using <gallery> it shows correctly in the preview but screws it up when publishing due to the indentation. See e.g. c:Special:Diff/949550947. The gallery disappears.
  • When using templates it can add double dots : example (here is the change to how the reply should have looked like).
  • When replying many times to one another, it doesn't add linebreaks / {{outdent}} in long comment chains which can result in the comment being squished to a very small width on the side. (example)
  • Sometimes it the reply tool can't be used on pages where it usually works. (I'll see if I can find an example; if anybody has one, please link it.)
  • The reply tool still can't be used in various pages like en:Template talk:Did you know where it displays error (I think that one is also often displayed for the above issue) The "reply" link cannot be used to reply to this comment. To reply, please use the full page editor by clicking "Edit source". More information about this error.

Also it seems like on various projects one has to enable "Discussion tools" in the preferences under Beta features. I hope this Reply tool could be moved from beta to become the default standard way people reply on talk pages with few exceptions. That it apparently needs to be enabled first is especially problematic since it is most useful for new users.

Additionally, the following feature would improve things a lot:

  • Adding a button beneath threads to mark a section as solved (see c:Template:Section resolved). This was available in the deprecated DiscussionTools but it's not available with the Reply tool. See also related wish Community Wishlist/Wishes/Do not fully archive unsolved issues on Talk pages. Marking things as solved enables contributors to see more (/any) still open issues and to focus on these and see them on a glance etc. It's basically for the same reason that open source projects do not show all the issues without a way to separate solved (which could be many) and open issues. It's basically required for efficiency and for having talk pages that aren't overflowing with long-solved threads, causing many people to e.g. not read any of them or to not work on addressing these.

I previously described these at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Replying#Issues (0 replies and no phab issue that I know of). If you know of phabricator issues for these, please link these.

Assigned focus area

Unassigned.

Type of wish

Bug report

All projects

Affected users

new Wikipedians, Wikimedians involved in discussions or interested/potential discussion participants

Other details

  • Created: 15:31, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
  • Last updated: 15:31, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
  • Author: Prototyperspective (talk)
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