Proposal: One comment system everywhere

What changes

Agpedia has comments in several places: the forum, discussions about articles and policies, positions on proposals and replies to them, and soon blog posts and the Talk tab on profiles. They all become one comment system, with the same rules, the same look and the same features everywhere.

One page, one discussion

Every page has one discussion, like a talk page on Wikipedia. The discussion of Belt buckle is one page, at one permanent address, and holds every conversation about Belt buckle.

• Threads are sections of that discussion. Each thread starts with a short title, shown as a subheading, like a section heading in an article. It structures the discussion; it is not the title of a separate page.
• Every thread heading has a link icon next to it, always visible. Clicking it puts the thread's permanent link in the address bar, ready to copy or share; opening that link scrolls straight to the thread. Comments have the same with their "Link" action.
• The discussion is also shown under the page itself, so readers see it without leaving the article. The Discuss tab opens the discussion on its own.
• The forum is a list of discussions. Its sections (Articles, Policy, Blog and so on) list the pages whose discussions have recent activity. General topics that are not about one page have their own discussion pages in the forum, such as General and Technology, with threads inside them in the same way.

The rules

• Every thread has a title, written by the person who starts it.
• Replies go one level deep. You can reply to a comment, and the reply is shown indented under it. You cannot reply to a reply: replying again adds to the same list under the first comment, and can mention the person you answer with @username.
• No votes. Comments are not voted up or down, and nothing is sorted by popularity. Threads are listed by latest activity; comments and replies are shown in the order they were written.
• Permanent links. The discussion of a page has a permanent address. Each thread and each comment has a permanent link to its place in that discussion, which always works, including from search engines and from other sites.
• More loads as you scroll. A long discussion shows its most active threads first, and the next ones appear by themselves when you reach the bottom. Nobody has to click "show more" to keep reading.

The same everywhere

Editing your own comment with its history, moderation, @mentions, notifications and following work the same way in all of them.

Commons ↗

Why

Today each place behaves a little differently, and replies to positions live in hidden forum threads whose titles are quotes. One system, with one discussion per page, is easier to use, easier to explain, and much less code to keep working.

Replies one level deep keep conversations readable: deep nesting gets hard to follow, especially on a phone. Without votes, comments are read in order, as a conversation, and nobody is pushed down for disagreeing.

How it works

• For search engines and links: each page's discussion is a normal page at a fixed address, built on the server. It shows the first threads and has plain links to the next pages, which search engines follow. A link to a thread or comment further down opens the right part of the discussion and scrolls to it.
• For readers: in the browser, reaching the bottom loads the next threads in place, and the address bar follows along, so copying it gives a link to where you are. Without JavaScript, the page links still work.
• Existing comments are kept. Today's forum threads become threads in their page's discussion, with their titles. Replies to positions, which today sit in hidden threads, become replies under their position. Old thread and comment links lead to the new place.

What this replaces

This replaces Comments under articles. Its idea of showing the discussion under the article is kept here; its votes, sorting by best and replies several levels deep are dropped.

Technical notes

Every thread belongs to one discussion: a page (article, policy, proposal, blog post, profile) or a forum topic page (General, Technology). The discussion's address is the page's address plus /discussion; threads and comments are anchors in it. Comments get an optional parent comment, limited to one level by a database check. Positions keep their own record (stance and the version they were given on), and are shown and replied to as top-level comments; the hidden attached threads used for position replies go away, and a migration moves those replies under their positions. Discussions are paged by thread, with ?page= links, rel="next" and rel="prev", and a canonical link per page; a small script fetches the next page as you scroll and updates the address with history.replaceState. Old /tool/forum/thread/… links answer with a permanent redirect to the thread's anchor in its discussion.