In 2016, the Konkani Wikipedia made Structured Discussions (then known as Flow), the default content model for all discussion pages. The main reason was that our users were finding it difficult to learn the syntax needed to format discussions properly.
Over the past 7 years, Structured Discussions has fallen out of favour due to various reasons, and the code is currently unmaintained, and the extension will eventually be deprecated. Due to this, our request to install Structured Discussions in the Konkani Wiktionary was declined.
In the meanwhile, a feature called Discussion Tools has been developed, which provides many of the functionalities of Structured Discussions that are relevant to our wiki: automatic formatting of discussions, and being able to reply without leaving the page, with a single click.
As a consequence of these developments, it seems that we have to launch the process to switch back from Structured Discussions to using Discussion Tools on normal talk pages. The advantages of this would be:
- Common discussion system on the Konkani Wikipedia and WIktionary.
- Searching posts and moving of topics from one page to another is possible in wikitext, but not in Structured Discussions.
- Discussion Tools is maintained by the developers, but going forward, there will be less and less support for Structured Discussions
A disadvantage that I perceive is that we will have to implement a bot to automatically archive topics when discussion pages get too long.
My proposal is, in the immediate term, to take the following steps:
- Archive this current community discussion page 'Tintto' and start a fresh page in wikitext.
- Turn on Topic Containers for pages that have the magic word NEWSECTIONLINK in the Konkani Wikipedia, so that the Tintto will have Topic Containers.
Please reply with your opinions, comments, support or objections below.