Turns out that "[reply]" thing is programmed to be near signatures, isn't it? If that's the case, it also appears in signatures that don't make messages but rather signatures indicating especially attendance planning. For example, meta:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/Global Conversations has "[reply]" near signatures lacking messages, inviting possible vandalism or something like that.
Topic on Talk:Talk pages project
It detects most signatures that are followed by a timestamp. I haven't seen anyone replying in inappropriate places yet. I suppose that someone might think it's a way to send a w:Personal message to the people listed there. If you are concerned about it, then removing any or all of the timestamp will make the signatures undetectable.
Not concerned for now. We'll wait for diffs then. I just opted-in the beta feature.
One workaround is to add __nosectionedit__ to the page, that deactivates Discussion tools for a page. You would then probably want to add an explicit link in the text of that section, directly to section-edit that section:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transition/Global_Conversations&action=edit§ion=2
__nosectionedit__ doesn't work properly, but __TOC__ still does.
Valid is __NOEDITSECTION__
It probably disabled the "[reply]" tool, but it also disabled editing a section. I reverted the insertion.
For an update, the list of attendees have been moved to a subpage. I added the code, but turns out I was incorrect about the tool disabling "[reply]". Instead, the DiscussionTool is still there, but seems that Phab crew has been working on disabling the tool in some or many pages.
hi @George Ho! We appreciate trying the Reply Tool and sharing this feedback.
It sounds like over the past couple of weeks you've encountered a couple cases where [ reply ] links are appearing in places you don't expect.
In response, I thought it might be helpful to share two things:
- What determines where
[ reply ]links appear - How we are thinking about making sure
[ reply ]links appear just where people expect them to
More details about both of these things below...
What determines where [ reply ] links appear
[ reply ] links will appear on pages in talk namespace and pages in namespaces which have been configured to show the 'add signature' tool ($wgExtraSignatureNamespaces). For most Wikimedia wikis this is the project and help namespaces.
On Meta, the main namespace has been configured to enable the 'add signature' tool, this explains why you are seeing Reply Links on both of the pages you shared links to:
- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transition/Global_Conversations/Attendees
- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia%20movement/2018-20/Transition/Global%20Conversations
You can read more about the logic that determines how/where reply links appear on the DiscussionTools help page here: Help:DiscussionTools.
How we are thinking about making sure [ reply ] links appear just where people expect them to?
We are currently gathering cases where [ reply ] links are appearing in places people do not expect so we can determine what might be a sustainable way for accommodating all of them.
The ticket where this "gathering" will happen is: phab:T249293.
Note: last week I aded the cases you shared here to that ticket. See: phab:T249293#6604678.