Confusing/redundant "reply" layout. Anyone else think so?

You can skip the temporary reply. Just open the post you want to edit, scroll back to any reply you want to quote, highlight the portion of text you want to quote, and click the ‘Quote’ popup that appears near your highlighted text.

EDIT: And anyone can click on the open space of a partial quote to see the whole original post.

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I liked discourse at first, except for the scrolling, but I’m slowly coming to hate it… The weird reply mechanism is one reason; if there is an option they can enable to make it automatically quote when writing a reply, that would help. When a popular thread has many participants using reply but not quoting, it just looks like a stream of disconnected & unrelated comments.

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I feel that it could probably be laid out a bit better. But I don’t find it confusing or redundant at all.

Well, the discourse does require getting used to, however, once you do, it’s quite comfortable.

Reply to post. Click on the speech bubble on the toolbar. Done. Quote is now inline with the reply post. Alternatively, highlight the text you want to quote. Hit reply. Now the quoted text is inline

On the inline quote, there is a small toolbar on the upper right corner. One expands the quote for context, the other jumps to the quoted post.

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He speaks truth and wisdom. We must bow and listen.

I know that much, my point is in posts like this one, where myself (or other members) have simply clicked “reply” on an existing post (without any quoting), in order to see the context when reading you must click the little arrow next to the name. You have to do this on every post where users didn’t explicitly quote. There is no “expand all”.

If I could turn on some user setting so that this was always “just done” instead of having to click every time, it would enhance the user experience over 9000 percent. Between this and the ctrl-f/f3 stuff, it’s really becoming rather annoying to use.

I could personally do with a “threading mode” that lined up replies, but the way most WK users seem to reply on these forums, simple topics turn into thousands of replies, and I could imagine my desire to see convos grouped by reply might get confusing with so many levels deep replies.

In short I don’t see a clear/easy win, the present system seems to work, and when threads get to 100+ replies I tend to tune out anyhow, the signal/noise ratio gets pretty broken for me at that point.

Noted. We use Discourse, which is an open source project. If you like to have threading changed or bring up a discussion for it, then it’ll be more effective if you post over on their message board at meta.discourse.org or commit a pull request if you have the know-how.

There are many reasons why it is set up the way it is. @Diomedes presents one of them. Given how this community likes to deeply thread replies (see pre migration posts), the way Discourse handles things is a good compromise.

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I suppose that’s one opinion.

Yes, it is just one opinion. Yours is one opinion as well.

But here is the reality of the situation:

  1. We are not moving away from Discourse. After running our community for the last five years and knowing the posting patterns, we think the way Discourse’s approach to a modern message board is well done. Like anything in life, nothing is perfect, but the pros and cons are taken and then a decision is made. We are open to improvements and new ideas, but not if they aren’t backed by numbers and/or if it doesn’t makes sense given the context.

  2. If you want your idea to be addressed the best way possible, then I recommend heading to the open source project’s message board and start a discussion there.

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I know. The decision has been made. In all seriousness, was the community involved in that decision at all? I didn’t bother with the old forums much because they were an even bigger pain in the neck to understand, navigate, and use, so I really don’t know.

I’ve seen how they deal with suggestions for feature they don’t like, and I know what a jerk Atwood is in general, so no thanks. In all fairness, my complaints are right where they belong. I use (and paid) WK – not discourse – so that’s where I will express my displeasure, when the mood strikes.

Thank you. This is exactly what I was trying to explain to him. I’m so glad the community agrees that dissent is allowed in the forums and is not something to single someone out for. It’s funny that this issue would be addressed in a completely different thread, and I would mistakenly end up its target. Those that have joined the brigade seem to think I am angry that leebo disagrees with my forum post here. I am not. It’s good to know, though, I am not the only one that gets indignant about someone that appears to be chewing someone out for disagreeing. I understand that is how I appear to you all, but it is in fact leebo that was doing this and he happened to show up here. The lack of context combined with my irritation at his passive aggressive behavior managed to fool you all into seeing something other than what was going on. I welcome “no i don’t”. Again. It was his response within the immediately previous context of earlier discussion that made such a response inappropriate and hostile.

That the point I was trying to make to him has now been made by several others is quite satisfying.

@alandsidel
Actually yes. When we first found out it was switching over we created threads discussing the switch and @viet did a very good job of trying to make it the best for everyone. It’s the reason that we have semi private forums instead of completely public. Yes, the decision was made by them, but then again, it’s their decision. I am quite impressed with a company that has gone as far as it has with this switch and doing the best they can to make the most people happy. (You can’t please everyone. Unfortunately.)

But… we didn’t pay to use the forums. You can have a free account and post on all the forums. Technically… the admins could have just made the switch and left us to fend for ourselves. They aren’t against suggestions, but… well… understanding on everyone’s part goes a long way in this regard.

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I like the fact that I can see the number of replies to a particular post. I click on that line and see the actual responses. I do not like re-reading the same posts when I scroll down to see other responses.

I run my own forum on SMF platform. It is nowhere near as attractive as this one. So I’m willing to spend more time with it and get to know it better. With the exception of the aforementioned irritation, I like it.

You’d almost think EskimoJo was agreeing with you. You’re the only one who thinks what I said in the other topic was some kind of egregious attack. It wasn’t, and any playful prodding of you on that account doesn’t rise to the level of egregious either.

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Why would they need to ask us?

No, they are not

You’re right, they should probably start charging you for using this forum.

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I agree with this. 同意する。
I feel the same way. Like if you’re in a rush and really just want to see the replies to one particular post, you can. Otherwise, you can read it all in chronological order. I personally find it handy.
I like options.

Discourse did, for some reason. They seem to think it’s “obvious” that if you’re replying to a person in a thread (even if it’s in response to a post way up in the thread) and that person was also the last poster, then obviously you were responding to the most recent post. Obviously.

Some of us initially reported it as a bug in the forums… but it was pointed out to be a “feature”.

https://meta.discourse.org/t/visual-distinction-between-reply-to-last-comment-and-reply-to-original-post/27501/5

It sucks, I think, but it’s true…