User blog comment:Zane T 69/Wiki Improvements/@comment-79.115.76.72-20160613173720/@comment-34326521-20160613175428

@Zane T 69: Have you used Message Walls? For starters, users don't need to sign their own posts, editing is marked on the post (and you can view edits to individual comments, rather than having to scroll through every edit made on a talk page), and topics of conversation are neatly organized in easy-to-close threads. Threads can be followed at your discretion, so you don't need to follow an entire talk page and get bombarded by comments you don't care about until the one you want finally arrives.

Those are just a few of the benefits. As far as I know, the only thing talk pages have that beats message walls is the TOC.