On 12/14/2014 07:17 AM, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
On 12/06/2014 01:43 PM, Hhhippo wrote:
What do you mean by "the actual reply"?
Is there a special notification
for a direct reply to one of my posts?
I think it refers to "the post that triggered the notification" vs.
"things that have happened since I visited the board", or something
along those lines.
OK. I wonder if a dedicated notification for a direct reply to own posts
is something we should have. But then, the whole Echo and watchlist
integration is something to think more about at some point anyway.
I'm not
sure that makes too much
sense at the moment: as long as structured discussions are largely
disabled, and many of the reply 'buttons' seem to be functionally
equivalent, we can't rely on users pressing the right 'reply', so we're
not sure what they're replying to.
What do you mean by "structured discussions are largely disabled"?
Are you referring to the 3-post depth limit?
As far as the reply links, they are functionally different (replying
to the topic, vs. replying to a post). However, we will soon collect
information to determine if users make use of both of them regularly,
and thus whether to keep both in the UI.
Yes, I mean the depth limit and the way it's implemented: while you can
technically reply to any post individually (and the database probably
keeps track of that structure), all posts that are logically on level 4
or more will be displayed as if they were level 3 replies to the same
level 2 ancestor. That is, from a user perspective, the "reply" !button
on a level 2 post and those on all its descendants seem to do the same
thing.
I think this is one of the bigger reasons why Flow is rather unpopular
in the audible part of the community, at least at enwiki, and often
called a "Chatboard" rather than an improved discussion system. While I
strongly disagree with the tone and implied conspiracy theories in many
of those comments, I do think that the restricted nesting will be a
serious problem for many of the use cases Flow will eventually have to
support. And since I don't like the idea of having many different,
specialized Flow modules for the various use cases, and would prefer a
powerful general purpose discussion system that covers all current and
future use cases, I think this problem should be solved rather early in
the process, not just when preparing for roll-out to one of the more
demanding discussion spaces. I assume you've seen my ideas regarding
unlimited nesting within limited space.
This is also an example for what I call a "Collateral change", a change
in functionality that is bundled with Flow, but not required for Flow to
work, and maybe something that would benefit from a separate discussion.
There's several other examples, and I'm still meaning to write them up,
but that's unlikely to happen before mid January, I'm preparing for
vacation right now.
Best,
Hhhippo