EasyTalk is a suite of tools built to enhance talk pages. It is modeled after the DiscussionTools extension.
On Memory Alpha, EasyTalk is available as a gadget, which you can enable in your user preferences. To enable EasyTalk on another wiki or in your personal JavaScript, follow the instructions given at the Dev Wiki, where the codebase is hosted.
EasyTalk is developed and maintained by User:Mr. Starfleet Command. Bug reports or feature requests may be left at w:c:dev:Talk:EasyTalk.
Reply tool
EasyTalk adds a button labeled "reply" after each comment on a talk page. Clicking on a given comment's reply button opens a text box where you can write a reply to that comment, without having to enter the main editor or force a page reload.
Additional features of the reply tool:
- Your reply will be automatically indented the correct amount and correctly placed within the discussion.
- Your signature and the date and time will be appended to your reply automatically.
- A live preview shows what your message will look like while you are typing it.
The reply tool does not work with multiline templates, multiline code snippets using <pre> or <syntaxhighlight>, or wikitext table syntax.
New topic tool
The new topic tool starts a new discussion topic at the bottom of the page. When you click on the "add topic" button at the top of the page, instead of reloading the page and bringing you to the full editor, it opens a text box at the bottom of the page, similar to the reply tool. Type a subject heading in the "Subject" box, type your message in the main box, and click "add topic".
Additional features of the new topic tool:
- Your signature and the date will be appended to your post automatically.
- A live preview shows what your message will look like while you are typing it.
Unlike the reply tool, the new topic tool can handle multiline templates, multiline code snippets, and wikitext tables.
Talk page information
EasyTalk adds some metadata about each section on a talk page, as well as about the page overall. For each section, it lists the age of the most recent comment, the number of comments, and the number of users who have commented in that section. At the top of the page, it lists the age of the most recent comment, the user who left it, and which section they left it in.
Where it runs
EasyTalk only runs on pages that include at least one valid comment. EasyTalk can detect a comment so long as it includes a recognizable timestamp and at least one link to a user page, user talk page, or user contributions page. Furthermore, EasyTalk only runs on pages in a talk namespace, pages in an extra signature namespace,[note 1] and pages that use the __NEWSECTIONLINK__ magic word.
If a page contains an HTML element with id="archivedPage", EasyTalk will add talk page information as usual but will not add reply buttons next to comments. To produce this behavior for part of a talk page but not the whole page, wrap that part in an HTML element with the mw-archivedtalk class. Text within HTML elements with the mw-notalk class will not be treated as a comment even if it has all the usual requirements (a user link and a timestamp). This means such comments will not have reply buttons added next to them and won't be factored into the talk page information.
Notes
- ↑ An "extra signature namespace" is a namespace configured to show the "add signature" button in the editing toolbar. Only the forum namespace has this setting turned on by default. On Memory Alpha, the project namespace is also configured this way. Only Fandom Staff can change this setting.