I am all for releasing it more broadly immediately, but if we're not doing that then there is a useful thing that beta-feature users can experience and give us feedback about: the overflow menu on talk pages.

I don't actually think this is likely to be controversial, but discovering such things from a wider audience can happen.

It's also worth noting that because this feature is gated behind the reply-button visual enhancements, we can't roll it out to the following wikis right now anyway: cawiki, dawiki, elwiki, enwiki, euwiki, fiwiki, lvwiki, nowiki, plwiki, ruwiki, simplewiki, svwiki. (See: T379264). The beta-feature works around that because turning on the visual enhancements is one of the things it already does.

(And because it's possible to turn off the visual enhancements via a user preference, there's always going to be some users who can't see this.)

In T400849#11054394, @DLynch wrote:

I am all for releasing it more broadly immediately, but if we're not doing that then there is a useful thing that beta-feature users can experience and give us feedback about: the overflow menu on talk pages.

Good point. While I also hope it won’t be controversial, it’s very well possible that it conflicts with some gadgets or user scripts. So my first point (not testable) doesn’t stand. My second point (confusing for the recipient) does stand, but testability probably outweighs it.

(And because it's possible to turn off the visual enhancements via a user preference, there's always going to be some users who can't see this.)

So the confusion I mentioned will remain even after the beta phase. Could the preferences description of visual enhancements (I link translatewiki.net because the thanks feature has long been enabled there) be updated to mention the thanks feature in addition to “discussion activity”? I’d also mention this in Tech News entries about the feature.

For context, the current preferences checkbox controlling this is:

• Show discussion activity

This will enable a new talk page appearance that includes information about the activity within each discussion.

The description does say what's going to happen ("new appearance that includes"), but "show discussion activity" as the top-level label admittedly undersells it.

In T400849#11054765, @DLynch wrote:

The description does say what's going to happen ("new appearance that includes")

I (as a non-native English speaker) understood – and translated – this “includes information” as “adds this information to the page” (“includes this information in the page”), not as “contains, among others, this information”, so the description undersells it just as much as the label does, at least for me and probably for many others. (In fact, I don’t think it undersells it considering what’s currently available on WMF wikis, only after the introduction of thanks.)

Totally agree it's too subtle / ambiguous as-is. Ultimately, it's because we wound up bundling a few other visual change features under the general release we did with the header changes, because those were the most drastic, and it didn't seem worth calling out that we were also changing the display of the reply buttons. It just picked up a functional effect now because the overflow menu was built on the new buttons...

Change #1174569 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Add thanks to the beta feature

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1174569

In T400849#11050377, @Trizek-WMF wrote:

When would this Beta feature be available?

For how long would it be available as a Beta feature?
I'm asking the latter question as we've all seen some features staying for ages as a Beta feature. We should define now when the feature would exit the Beta state (suggestion: one quarter).

I'm glad you're asking the question, @Trizek-WMF; I'm aligned with you in thinking we need to hold ourselves accountable to "Thanks" living in Beta Features indefinitely.

Per what @DLynch shared in T400849#11051403, I'm operating with the expectation that this Beta Feature will exist for at most 3 months (the amount of time I assume we need to complete the deployment phases in T366095).

In T400849#11054710, @Tacsipacsi wrote:

Could the preferences description of visual enhancements (I link translatewiki.net because the thanks feature has long been enabled there) be updated to mention the thanks feature in addition to “discussion activity”?

Updating the description of the existing Show discussion activity preference for the reason you described, @Tacsipacsi
sounds like a wise idea.

Let's handle this in the newly-created: T401980

Thanks for Draft for Tech News! A few notes/questions @ppelberg :

1. IIUC, it's getting released with the train next week, so I will rewrite the lead from "Next week" to "Later this week". Plus I'll include links to both the project-page and the Beta prefs:

Later this week, people who are logged in and have the "Discussion tools" Beta Feature enabled will gain the ability to "Thank" individual comments directly from talk pages, rather than needing to navigate to page history. [Learn more](phab:T400849)

2. For the "Learn more" link, I recommend creating a new section at the bottom of the project page, with the 2 screenshots from the task-Description above, and a few brief sentences. (for long-term documentation, and for translatability). Then we could link to that, instead of this task.
3. I notice that some wikis don't have the Discussion Tools feature within their Beta Features at all, e.g. Meta-wiki's and MediaWiki-wiki's and Enwikisource's. -- I suggest we contextualize this distinction in the TechNews entry by adding (bold for the added bits) "... Beta Feature [available at their wiki and] enabled will gain...". -- Question: Is there a listing that we can link to, of which wikis currently have the Beta Feature (and perhaps the timeline for further rollouts)? [Hmm, I've found the listing at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk_pages_project/Deployment_Status#Deployment_Status but that seems to imply that this Beta Feature will only become available at 14 wikis? If that is true, we should rewrite the TechNews entry a bit more to make that very clear...] - Please clarify. Thanks!

In T400849#11088471, @Quiddity wrote:

3. I notice that some wikis don't have the Discussion Tools feature within their Beta Features at all, e.g. Meta-wiki's and MediaWiki-wiki's and Enwikisource's.

These wikis don’t have the beta feature because all current DiscussionTools tools are out of beta on them. Once Thanks becomes a beta feature, DiscussionTools will re-appear in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures.

Tacsipacsi is right -- technically the DT beta is currently available on every wiki but mediawikiwiki:

'wgDiscussionToolsBeta' => [
	'default' => true,
	'mediawikiwiki' => false, // T310960
],

We just have a hook that hides it from your preferences if every single feature that's bundled into it is available on a given wiki. As soon as we put Thanks in it, it'll show back up everywhere... until the moment we enable it for everyone on that wiki.

In T400849#11090798, @DLynch wrote:

[…] but mediawikiwiki:

So this means that Thanks will be enabled for all logged-in users by default on mediawiki.org next week, without them opting into it? Are you sure you want this? The reasoning of T310960 (almost all talk pages use Flow) doesn’t stand anymore. I don’t have strong concerns about the default-on, but I want you to make an explicit and informed decision.

In T400849#11090918, @Tacsipacsi wrote:

In T400849#11090798, @DLynch wrote:

[…] but mediawikiwiki:

So this means that Thanks will be enabled for all logged-in users by default on mediawiki.org next week, without them opting into it? Are you sure you want this? The reasoning of T310960 (almost all talk pages use Flow) doesn’t stand anymore. I don’t have strong concerns about the default-on, but I want you to make an explicit and informed decision.

@Tacsipacsi, assuming what you're describing above to be accurate [i], I think it's fine for this to happen.

I'm glad you thought to ask and in doing so, hold us accountable (as you said) making this choice intentionally and explicitly.

i. Without adjustment, when we offer "Thanks" as a beta feature next week at all wikis (as currently planned), everyone who is logged in at mediaWiki.org will notice a new ••• menu attached to all comments and within it, the Thanks action.

So this means that Thanks will be enabled for all logged-in users by default on mediawiki.org next week, without them opting into it?

No, nothing will change for them. Putting Thanks into the beta feature when they don't have the beta feature at all won't do anything.

In T400849#11090991, @DLynch wrote:

So this means that Thanks will be enabled for all logged-in users by default on mediawiki.org next week, without them opting into it?

No, nothing will change for them. Putting Thanks into the beta feature when they don't have the beta feature at all won't do anything.

Got it. Thank you for clarifying, @DLynch. Please ignore T400849#11090990 and let's proceed as currently planned.

In T400849#11088471, @Quiddity wrote:

Thanks for Draft for Tech News! A few notes/questions @ppelberg :

1. IIUC, it's getting released with the train next week, so I will rewrite the lead from "Next week" to "Later this week".

Plus I'll include links to both the project-page and the Beta prefs:

Later this week, people who are logged in and have the "Discussion tools" Beta Feature enabled will gain the ability to "Thank" individual comments directly from talk pages, rather than needing to navigate to page history. [Learn more](phab:T400849)

Good spot. All that you described sounds great. So too does the draft quoted above.

2. For the "Learn more" link, I recommend creating a new section at the bottom of the project page, with the 2 screenshots from the task-Description above, and a few brief sentences. (for long-term documentation, and for translatability). Then we could link to that, instead of this task.

Good call. Done: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk_pages_project%2FFeature_summary&diff=7818875&oldid=7210150

3. I notice that some wikis don't have the Discussion Tools feature within their Beta Features at all, e.g. Meta-wiki's and MediaWiki-wiki's and Enwikisource's. -- I suggest we contextualize this distinction in the TechNews entry by adding (bold for the added bits) "... Beta Feature [available at their wiki and] enabled will gain...". -- Question: Is there a listing that we can link to, of which wikis currently have the Beta Feature (and perhaps the timeline for further rollouts)? [Hmm, I've found the listing at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk_pages_project/Deployment_Status#Deployment_Status but that seems to imply that this Beta Feature will only become available at 14 wikis? If that is true, we should rewrite the TechNews entry a bit more to make that very clear...] - Please clarify. Thanks!

I'm glad you ask to clarify this...

Per @Tacsipacsi described in T400849#11090918 and what @DLynch confirmed in T400849#11090798, as soon as "Thanks" becomes added into the DT beta feature (via this deployment on next week's train), the DT beta feature will show up in "Beta Features" for everyone who is logged in on all wikis.

I've updated the task description to include – what I understand to be – the announcement draft that includes all that we clarified here.

Of course, @Quiddity, please boldly edit it as you see fit!

This might have been the point of confusion, because looking at it I can see an interpretation I didn't mean:

We just have a hook that hides it from your preferences if every single feature that's bundled into it is available on a given wiki. As soon as we put Thanks in it, it'll show back up everywhere... until the moment we enable it for everyone on that wiki.

To rephrase: the beta feature reacts to the default state of other DiscussionTools features on a wiki, but it being enabled on a wiki doesn't serve as a shield against otherwise-enabled features. We can turn features on or off for a wiki by default with no relation to whether the beta feature is enabled on that wiki.

In T400849#11088404, @ppelberg wrote:

I'm aligned with you in thinking we need to hold ourselves accountable to "Thanks" living in Beta Features indefinitely.
Per what @DLynch shared in T400849#11051403, I'm operating with the expectation that this Beta Feature will exist for at most 3 months (the amount of time I assume we need to complete the deployment phases in T366095).

Thank you.

Glad that you highlighted T366095: Deploy comment thanking to all wikis, which I forgot about.

Do we plan to add a way to opt-out of the feature, like for other discussions improvements?

There is a Diff post ready for the deployment of in-line Thanks. Let's keep it for the default deployment, in three months from now.

@Trizek-WMF opting out of seeing the overflow menu at all is part of the bottom checkbox there, but we don't plan to offer any way to opt out of just Thanks. (I think that "preference to control whether you even see an individual button in a menu" is a bit excessive. Yes, I'd like to remove that "enable topic subscription" toggle as well on the same logic. 🤩)

In T400849#11094578, @DLynch wrote:

@Trizek-WMF opting out of seeing the overflow menu at all is part of the bottom checkbox there

You mean the "Show discussion activity"?

Yes. See all the discussion above about how this label isn't exactly intuitive. :D (And T401980 for updating it.)

In T400849#11090991, @DLynch wrote:

So this means that Thanks will be enabled for all logged-in users by default on mediawiki.org next week, without them opting into it?

No, nothing will change for them. Putting Thanks into the beta feature when they don't have the beta feature at all won't do anything.

I just checked https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures, and I don’t see DiscussionTools there; but I do see the Thanks buttons. I’m glad @ppelberg said you’re okay with default-enabling it on mediawiki.org, because that’s exactly what happened. (Unlike other wikis, where all features were out of beta before enabling Thanks, on mediawiki.org, the beta feature as a whole is turned off, which is why Thanks didn’t become a beta feature.)

Ahh, interesting. This is a case I didn't consider emerging from the way settings have been handled on mediawikiwiki. It's showing up there because you have the beta feature turned on on mediawiki.org, either because the preference for it is still set from back when the beta was turned on there before mid-2022, or because you have the global override set for it. If you do mw.user.options.get('discussiontools-betaenable') it should say 1.

This is obviously not ideal, just because it's now completely inconsistent between users with no way for them to change it through the UI. I'll submit a patch to make it actually respect whether the beta is specifically turned on for that wiki.

Change #1181230 had a related patch set uploaded (by DLynch; author: DLynch):

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Only enable Thanks when the beta pref is set if the wiki has the beta enabled

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1181230

That patch should get merged regardless, just because it's a bug. That said, in the process I did notice why we removed the beta feature from mediawiki.org in T310960, which was because we'd released absolutely everything there -- and we didn't have this "automatically hide when everything is released" behavior until 2024.

As such, we might want to give the beta feature back to mediawiki.org anyway for consistency with our past reasoning. @ppelberg?

In T400849#11112517, @DLynch wrote:

Ahh, interesting. This is a case I didn't consider emerging from the way settings have been handled on mediawikiwiki. It's showing up there because you have the beta feature turned on on mediawiki.org, either because the preference for it is still set from back when the beta was turned on there before mid-2022, or because you have the global override set for it. If you do mw.user.options.get('discussiontools-betaenable') it should say 1.

Yes, I have the beta feature enabled in my global preferences. I was even thinking about mentioning this, but I considered it not that important.

In T400849#11112531, @DLynch wrote:

That said, in the process I did notice why we removed the beta feature from mediawiki.org in T310960, which was because we'd released absolutely everything there -- and we didn't have this "automatically hide when everything is released" behavior until 2024.

Makes sense.

As such, we might want to give the beta feature back to mediawiki.org anyway for consistency with our past reasoning. @ppelberg?

Yes please – the past reasoning was that everything is available anyway, but this is no longer true. (Preferably turn the beta feature back before the above patch hits production, so that the feature that’s now available to a likely large number of early adopters of DiscussionTools doesn’t become temporarily unavailable.)

We could also just default enable the feature on mediawikiwiki.

That’s also an option. However, that’d keep the odd-one-out state of mediawikiwiki, which is what leads to issues like the current one, and also breaks user expectations (why can’t I find the beta option on mediawiki.org?). Is it worth it?

Change #1181230 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Only enable Thanks when the beta pref is set if the wiki has the beta enabled

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1181230

Great job developing the feature!

What's the easiest but reliable way to tell from a user script if the thanking API is enabled on a wiki? In particular, what could be the best way for Convenient-Discussions to figure out if it can use that API, provided that it knows that DiscussionTools extension itself is enabled?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but looking at rEDTO includes/Hooks/ApiHooks.php, I think the only condition for the API itself to be available is that Thanks is loaded. Looking at https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php, the only WMF wiki on which $wmgUseDiscussionTools is true but $wmgUseThanks is false is https://legalteam.wikimedia.org/, I’m not sure if you want to add a condition just for that one wiki (or third-party wikis, which of course may have different setup).

@Tacsipacsi I think you mean the API of Thanks itself, but I implied that DiscussionTools' thanking API built on top of it. It allows requests like this:

{
	"action": "discussiontoolsthank",
	"format": "json",
	"formatversion": "2",
	"uselang": "en",
	"page": "User_talk:JWBTH",
	"commentid": "c-JWBTH-20241120024200-JWBTH-20241120024100",
}

I do mean DiscussionTools’ thanking API – the code I linked to is in the rEDTO repo, which is DiscussionTools. Of course, the API of Thanks is available if Thanks is installed ­– this so obvious that I’m sure you wouldn’t have asked it.

But then:

I think the only condition for the API itself to be available is that Thanks is loaded

– if the version of DiscussionTools is older, it's not available. Should I check that mw.config.get('wgVersion') is not lower than 1.45.0-wmf.15?

Actually, only if the version of DiscussionTools is much, much older: the feature was created in rEDTOa86897f8903ffb97c8ebdb692abdbfcf750f79eb, over a year ago (MediaWiki 1.43); I successfully used it a few times on translatewiki.net long before it appeared on WMF wikis. The buttons didn’t use to appear on WMF wikis, but as I wrote, I believe the API itself isn’t gated. So if you want to care about third-party wikis, you may check if MediaWiki is 1.43 or newer (the wmf. branch doesn’t really matter at this point, no wiki should run on 1.43 alphas anymore), but if you only care about WMF wikis, you don’t have to check the version.

Yeah, just to confirm, the only thing the beta pref is controlling is the appearance of the buttons in the overflow menu. So long as discussiontools is there, and newer than early 2024, you can use its API. If you need a way to detect it off wmf wikis I could look into that.

Great spot, @Tacsipacsi

It sounds like the options David [i] and Ed [ii] presented are:

1. Turn the Discussion tools beta feature back on at mediawiki.org so that people there can toggle "Thanks" (and by extension, the comment overflow menu) on/off
2. Enable "Thanks" as a default-on feature at mediawiki.org by bundling it into the existing Show discussion activity setting within Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing

Considering a) the sense I get that "Thanks" is working as expected and not disruptive and b) we're planning to enable the feature for everyone (T366095), absent info. that would cause us to reconsider, I'm fine with either "1." or "2." above and would prefer the approach that's going to be least technically cumbersome.

Notes:

1. We'll still need to do T401980 before "Thanks" is enabled by default more widely
2. I think the short-term inconsistency @Tacsipacsi helpfully named in T400849#11113105 is not substantial enough to cause me to think we ought to avoid "2." outright

i. T400849#11112531
ii. T400849#11112975

@Tacsipacsi, @DLynch: Thanks for directing me. Yeah, I care about non-WMF wikis as well. I guess checking for 1.43 would be enough.

Per offline discussion, we're going to move forward with:

2. Enable "Thanks" as a default-on feature at mediawiki.org by bundling it into the existing Show discussion activity setting within Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing

Change #1185991 had a related patch set uploaded (by Esanders; author: Esanders):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Enable DT thanks at mediawikiwiki

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1185991

Change #1185991 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Enable DT thanks at mediawikiwiki

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1185991

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-09-08T20:04:45Z] <kemayo@deploy1003> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1185991|Enable DT thanks at mediawikiwiki (T400849)]], [[gerrit:1185982|Update VE core submodule to master (a5bd08c8b) (T302413 T391521 T397145 T401890 T402392 T397518 T402717 T403741 T403745)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-09-08T20:11:02Z] <kemayo@deploy1003> kemayo, esanders: Backport for [[gerrit:1185991|Enable DT thanks at mediawikiwiki (T400849)]], [[gerrit:1185982|Update VE core submodule to master (a5bd08c8b) (T302413 T391521 T397145 T401890 T402392 T397518 T402717 T403741 T403745)]] synced to the testservers (see https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug). Changes can now be verified there.

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-09-08T20:17:50Z] <kemayo@deploy1003> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1185991|Enable DT thanks at mediawikiwiki (T400849)]], [[gerrit:1185982|Update VE core submodule to master (a5bd08c8b) (T302413 T391521 T397145 T401890 T402392 T397518 T402717 T403741 T403745)]] (duration: 13m 05s)

mediawiki.org now has the DiscussionTools Thanks integration enabled for all.

Thanks! 😉