On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 10:12 AM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) <
bjorsch(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 8:27 PM, Danny Horn
<dhorn(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
So we've figured out a new reply/indentation
model that separates those
two
functions. We've been testing it out on the flow-tests server [1], and
we're going to release it to Mediawiki soon.
I ran some tests at
http://flow-tests.wmflabs.org/wiki/Topic:Sdrqdcffddyz0jeo. Here are my
observations:
- Posts B, C, and I all reply to A, but the ordering is C, I, B. I'd
expect replies to the same parent to be ordered chronologically (and I'd
personally expect earliest first).
- Posts B and C both reply to A, but are confusingly at different
indentation levels. I'd expect replies to the same parent to be indented
the same.
- Posts I and E are at the same indentation level, despite I being a
direct reply to A while E is at the end of the chain A→C→D→E. Similar
confusion exists elsewhere. I'd expect two posts at the first indentation
level under the same parent to both be replies to that parent.
- Things are even weirder with post J: Even though D and its reply E
are at the same indentation level, J is suddenly indented more because of
an unrelated post I.
- Things go completely wrong once we hit the maximum depth, it's
impossible to have (or only to be seen as having?) "tangents" at all. The
reply box doesn't even show up under the post where I actually clicked
"Reply".
All in all, I personally find the resulting structure to be very confusing
as to what's actually replying to what since the same reply-structure might
be displayed in different ways (depending on the order the replies were
entered) and different reply-structures can give rise to the same
display-structure.
(sorry for the self-reply)
Some of these might be solved by simply abandoning the idea that "first
reply = main thread, all others = tangent" in favor of displaying flat if
this post and its parent both have no "sibling" post.
That /would/ mean, though, that a single reply could result in a major
change to display-structure. For example, a reply-chain A→B→C→D→E→F→G would
be displayed flat, and then when someone posts B2 as a reply to A we'd have
A, then indented under it B and B2, then indented under B we'd have
C→D→E→F→G (which might still be displayed flat).
And there'd still be the case that a chain of replies and a single post
with multiple direct replies (none of which were replied to) could be
displayed the same in some cases, but that seems less likely to be
confusing to a reader.