The Foundation's Editing Team uses the DiscussionTools tag and workboard to plan and organize work related to the DiscussionTools extension.

Frequently Asked Questions

When should I use the DiscussionTools tag?

Please use the the DiscussionTools tag if you would like to propose new talk page functionality, or improve or fix an issue related to the following:

• Replying to a specific comment using the Reply Tool
• Starting a new discussion topic using the New Topic Tool
• Getting notified about new comments in discussions you are interested in using Topic Subscriptions
• Understanding discussions and participating in them using the new talk page layout
• Using the DiscussionTools API for a tool/experience you are building

The ticket I created was moved, what does that mean?

By default, all new tickets tagged with DiscussionTools end up in the workboard's "Backlog" column. You can think of this column like an inbox.

Every ~2 weeks, members of the Editing Team review the tickets in the "Backlog" column and decide if and when we will work on a given issue.

If we know we will work on an issue in the future, albeit with no specified timeframe, we will move the ticket to the Editing-team workboard. If we know we will work on an issue in the next couple of weeks, we will move the ticket to the FY2021-22 Kanban Board.

If we do not know when we will work on a given issue, the ticket will remain on the DiscussionTools board and be added to one of the following columns:

• Triaged: all bugs/issues are stored in this column
• Strategic Initiatives: high level objectives we think could be impactful to work on in the future are stored here.
• New Features: ideas for new talk page features are stored here.
• Existing Feature Improvements: ideas for how existing DiscussionTools features could be revised and/or added to to make them more useful are stored here.

Hold on, what is DiscussionTools?

DiscussionTools is a set of features designed to help people, across experience levels, communicate more easily on Wikipedia's mobile and desktop website. The extension also introduces a new underlying data structure that enables developers to build new communication capabilities for wikitext-based talk pages.

You can learn more about how the various DiscussionTools features were developed, where they are deployed, and the impact they have had by visiting mw:Talk pages project.