User blog comment:ThatDevilGuy/Message Wall Final Vote/@comment-26850787-20120211063311/@comment-1788742-20120211134338

Yes, we cannot pretend it doesn't have some pros. If it just looked like a social network, but actually functioned better, than I'd feel better about giving it a chance.But since these cons outweigh the pros, this should not be present on the wiki until it actually is better than the regular talk pages. Currently, it is not their equal, and until/unless the staff makes improvements to it and the community is sure that it is a better way to discuss things, then we should give it a chance.

Just replying to several of your points about the pros. It may be easy to carry on two conversations at once, but we have the blogs for that. The same reason for "it's easier for the community to discuss things together". The community has blogs for this reason, and they work just fine. Also, the presence of avatars in WikiActivity is annoying.

And as for the other pro, organization. I'm sorry, but to me it looks exceedingly disorganized. The most obvious fact is the preference for user's "real name" over their username, but also, as Lio points out, they encourage disorganized discussion threads, rather than page-to-page replies. Already my wall has been mistaken by another new user for his own talkpage. I can't see this happening with the "old style talk pages", nor do I see how this is more organized.

As far as "getting over that it looks like a social network", while I think if the pros outweighed the cons we should give this more thought, after the one-week test, I can say with certainty that this isn't something we want to keep on CBW as of now.

Also, it spams your inbox by default. I know this can be turned off in Preferences, but how many new users know how to do that, or even that it's possible? It shouldn't spam by default. Unless the staff makes some radical changes to the wall, so that the pros outweigh the cons heavily, and the community is sure that they're better than talk pages, than I don't think we should keep the Wall long-term.