Debiki feature requests
Debiki feature requests.
[Edit: Nowadays please instead post each idea as a separate topic. /KajMagnus]
- UPiotr @user_161
Make it easy to edit one's own comments (including deleting them). For deleting it may be a "soft" delete as on StackExchange.
- UKajMagnus @user_145
I think currently only moderators can delete comments. Of course I should fix this, so anyone can delete his/her own comment.
Soft deletes seems reasonable: When I've deleted my comment, then no one else sees it, except for me and moderators. And we see an abbreviated version of it, marked as deleted. And there would be an Undelete button, + a Purge button (which really truly removes the comment forever).
Isn't it already easy to edit one's comment? (I mean, click and select Improve)
- UPiotr @user_161
@ editing I can improve comment by anyone. But even for my own comments I need to wait for the approval.
- In reply touser_145⬆:
What happens with the repleis to the deleted comment? I suppose the authors will become uppset if they have spent a lot of time to respond.
- UKajMagnus @user_145
The replies wouldn't be deleted. There would be a placeholder comment with text like "Comment deleted by author" in place of the deleted comment, which the replies would then be replying to.
- In reply toKajake⬆:UKajMagnus @user_145
Hmm, even better than deleting the comment, could be to allow the author to disavow the comment, that is, have his/her name removed from the comment. That should be enough in most cases, and won't destroy the context.
- UIn reply touser_161⬆:Piotr @user_161
The need of clicking Preview before posting is counterintuitive (+ require one more click). Could Post as X do Preview automatically?
- UKajMagnus @user_145
Now I think I'd better simply enable the Submit button directly, so one can choose to skip the preview. (Some other people have suggested this as well.)
From the beginning, the system actually worked somewhat in the way I think you suggested — except that the Post as X button was entitled Preview, and after a click on the Preview button, the submit button appeared. But people were confused by this.
- In reply touser_161⬆:UKajMagnus @user_145
I just changed this so that people don't need to click Preview at all.
This is actually how things already works when one posts a new comment, anyway.
- UIn reply touser_161⬆:Piotr @user_161
Full message text (with date and author) in the e-mail notification.
- UKajMagnus @user_145
Fixed now. (But I haven't upgraded the server yet.)
- UIn reply touser_161⬆:Piotr @user_161
Once author gets approved ONCE (s)he is approved ALWAYS.
(Otherwise it is extremely annoying and counterproductive.)
- UKajMagnus @user_145
I've fixed this now. (I'm fairly sure I have fixed it. I've added some test cases as well :-))
(And, if a comment is flagged, additional comments by that user will be put in the moderation queue, until the flag has been reviewed.)
- ULukas @user_177
I registered, posted one comment (which is shown as normal), and then accidentally clicked "Report" on my own comment, but subsequentially selected "Cancel" in the pop-up dialog.
I posted a second comment, which is now shown as "Text pending approval.". Is this the intended behavior?
- UKajMagnus @user_145
The computer preliminarily approves your first comment (or perhaps two first comments). Any further comments are not approved, however, until at least one comment has been manually reviewed and approved.
(It's not related to the accidental clicking of "Report".)
- UIn reply touser_161⬆:Lukas @user_177
Give visitors (even when not logged in) the option to enable/disable the Utterscroll functionality, and (optionally) to change the sensitivity of the mouse for scrolling.
- UKajMagnus @user_145
Would it be okay to instead have and option to toggle horizontal layout on/off? An if it's off, Utterscroll could be disabled.
By the way, do you use a mouse? Or some touchpad?
I suppose you want Utterscroll to scroll slower?
Thanks for the feedback :-)
- ULukas @user_177
I kind of like the horizontal layout, and would not want to disable it.
My major problem with Utterscroll is that the website moves (much) faster than the mouse cursor under it, and thus makes hand-eye coordination much harder (at least for me).
Otherwise, it (Utterscroll) is a great feature for efficiently scrolling a larger page.
- UKajMagnus @user_145
Okay. I've gotten that feedback from someone else too. — Can you think of a nice user interface for changing the scroll speed?
I'm thinking that there could be a tiny CSS-position-fixed scrollbar or checkbox in some corner. (And in that corner there could also be a checkbox for toggling horizontal/vertical layout.)
- UIn reply touser_161⬆:Lukas @user_177
When a user who is not logged in presses "Post as ...", and then subsequently provides his or her account details, do no immediately send the post the user was editing.
Instead, just change the "Post as ..." button to "Post as ", and give the user the ability to press the button themselves again.
This prevents users from accidentally selecting/posting with the wrong accounts, as well as preventing unfinished posts from "escaping".
- UKajMagnus @user_145
But there's a cancel button in the login dialog, which you can use if you accidentally click "Post as...". Isn't that enough :-)
I'm thinking that it would be confusing to have to click "Post as" twice? And that people in general do intend to submit the comment, when they click "Post as...".
- ULukas @user_177
I retried it, and I think I know what my real problem was:
I logged in with Google, so the buttons I had to click were: "Post as ..." (Website) -> "Google" (Login popup) -> "Login" (Google popup)
When I clicked "Login" in Google window, the comment was posted, and the two popups were closed.
My problem was that I didn't expect the "Login" button to directly send the message, mainly because:
- it was labeled "Login" and not "Login & Post", and
- because I didn't expect an action in the Google window to cause an action in the main window, apart from logging in.
- ULukas @user_177
- The 1st login popup window (belonging to your website) only mentioned "Who are you?" and "Login with Google, Open ID, ...", and offered a button called "Login" - which I IMO reasonably expected to log me in, and nothing beside that.
No offense :-)
- UKajMagnus @user_145
Thanks for the explanation! I think that I ought to change the wording.
- In reply touser_177⬆:UKajMagnus @user_145
Okay now I understand. Thanks for explaining. I also think that "Login & Post" (or something like that) is better. (I suppose I cannot do anything about Google's login dialog and text though.)
- In reply touser_177⬆:UKajMagnus @user_145
I've just changed the button title from "Login" to "Login and Submit". — If you have any follow up comments or additional suggestions, I'd be interested.
(I chose "Submit" rather than "Post" since "Submit" perhaps works better when one submits an edit suggestion, not a new comment.)
- UIn reply touser_161⬆:Lukas @user_177
When hiding a comment (by clicking the up-down arrow on the left side of the title), also collapse the comment horizontally, instead of just vertically, to make the best use of the available screen space.
- UKajMagnus @user_145
Yes I've been thinking about that too. I'll try to find time to fix that :-) I don't know when though...
- In reply touser_177⬆:UKajMagnus @user_145
"Fixed" :-) I removed the collapse button.
I'm thinking that if a thread is boring, people can downvote it instead of collapsing it, and in that way it'll get less visibility. Also, the page looks a lot less cluttered without all collapse buttons :-). And... I'm thinking it's a bit tricky to collapsed threads horizontally in a way that looks nice and is easy to understand (?). There could be no "Thread collapsed, click to expand" user friendly message, because then the thread would suddenly be rather wide anyway :-(
- UIn reply touser_161⬆:KajMagnus @user_145
Vertical layout.
Let people toggle between vertical and horizontal layout, and make it possible for admins to specify that vertical layout be the default.
I'm thinking about waiting with implementing this until Angular-Dart is available and I've ported all Javascript to Dart. So I can avoid writing error prone Javascript + jQuery HTML manipulation code.
- UKajMagnus @user_145
Implemented :-) Without AngularDart, only some CSS.
- UIn reply touser_161⬆:KajMagnus @user_145
Swipe gestures.
On my mobile phone, I've noticed that it's rather annoying to scroll back upwards and then to the right, to navigate to the next thread. Fix this by adding swipe gestures. For example, when a user swipes downwards, briefly show a shortcut button that navigates directly upwards-rightwards or to the next thread.
Many more sensible swipe gestures are possible :-)
- UKajMagnus @user_145
I tested with swipe gestures, but it didn't work particularly well. Instead, I'm reverting to a single column layout, for mobile phones.