User blog comment:Zane T 69/Wiki Improvements/@comment-778071-20160626023744/@comment-34326521-20160626095626

Yeah, I misread what you said, but now consider the following semi-hypothetical scenario:

There are 100 topics of discussion in a talk page, ordered from oldest to newest. The oldest are sometimes years old, but the newest pertain to topics that are relevant to the wiki in its present state. Does a user really need to read about how user X was blocked or reports of vandalism or inane discussions? Or does he/she need to read about the current state of the wiki? What's the point of making them scroll through tens of discussions that are utterly irrelevant to what's going on?

On the other hand, you have a message wall, where newer topics of discussion - the ones most likely to be relevant - are at the top, but replies are still ordered from oldest to newest.

I say this scenario is semi-hypothetical because if you look at an old admin's talk page, this is exactly what happens. Before my wiki switched to message walls, I had already archived my talk page twice (we archived them when they reached 100 topics) and was about to do it a third time. Now, any user who wants to leave me a message can do it cleanly and easily, without having to worry about signing their posts (I do not reply to unsigned posts; it's not my responsibility to make up for other people's errors, and if they want to be understood and replied to, they're the ones who should make an effort toward that) and without having to worry that their message will be flooded underneath a mountain of old topics.