I think we need to have an open ended discussion about "Talk" pages and
what we could do to improve them. I see primarily the following
problems:
- It tends to be cumbersome to search for the right place to insert a
comment in a huge thread with sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly
indented comments.
- Many users, newbies or not, tend to quote, indent etc. in uncommon
ways. It's a bit like email in that respect: Give people too many
options to make mistakes, and they will do so.
- Edit conflicts are very likely especially in near-realtime-talk. This
is *very* distracting and one of our biggest usability issues.
Here's what I think we can do:
- Auto-merge after edit conflicts. Do a paragraph-wise comparison, merge
when paras are the same or new, trigger conflict when paras are
different. Show warning when another user has recently started editing a
page.
- Make better use of existing comment demarcation. When a user inserts a
sig --~~~ this could be used to also render a "reply to this comment"
link. This link could lead to a blank edit form, the content of which
would be automatically inserted in indented form after the comment in
question.
- Have better context-sensitive help. Our current editing screen is nice
and all, but it could use some refinements to direct users to pertinent
information.
The alternative would be to replace the talk page with threaded
discussions a la Kuro5hin/Slashdot. Individual comments should still
have all wiki capabilities, but users would not be allowed to edit other
users' comments, and there would be a clear thread structure. Also,
stuff like signing etc. would no longer be necessary.
Issues with this idea:
- editing other users' comments is sometimes desirable
- archival? perhaps thread creator and sysops could have
"archive this thread" link
- being able to write wherever you want can be good to alert users, e.g.
put important notices at the top - this requires advanced features like
"sticky" posts in a discussion forum
- should deletion of one's own comments be possible?
- revision history?
- having two different "modes" of writing can be a usability
problem, too
Weighing the different arguments against each other, I think we should
concentrate on the edit conflict issues, and perhaps try to somewhat
streamline the reply process. Having a threaded forum seems to be too
different from the existing wiki process to work well, although I am
still somewhat undecided here. The edit conflict issue is relevant to
all pages, not just talk pages.
What do you all think?
Regards,
Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de
what we could do to improve them. I see primarily the following
problems:
- It tends to be cumbersome to search for the right place to insert a
comment in a huge thread with sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly
indented comments.
- Many users, newbies or not, tend to quote, indent etc. in uncommon
ways. It's a bit like email in that respect: Give people too many
options to make mistakes, and they will do so.
- Edit conflicts are very likely especially in near-realtime-talk. This
is *very* distracting and one of our biggest usability issues.
Here's what I think we can do:
- Auto-merge after edit conflicts. Do a paragraph-wise comparison, merge
when paras are the same or new, trigger conflict when paras are
different. Show warning when another user has recently started editing a
page.
- Make better use of existing comment demarcation. When a user inserts a
sig --~~~ this could be used to also render a "reply to this comment"
link. This link could lead to a blank edit form, the content of which
would be automatically inserted in indented form after the comment in
question.
- Have better context-sensitive help. Our current editing screen is nice
and all, but it could use some refinements to direct users to pertinent
information.
The alternative would be to replace the talk page with threaded
discussions a la Kuro5hin/Slashdot. Individual comments should still
have all wiki capabilities, but users would not be allowed to edit other
users' comments, and there would be a clear thread structure. Also,
stuff like signing etc. would no longer be necessary.
Issues with this idea:
- editing other users' comments is sometimes desirable
- archival? perhaps thread creator and sysops could have
"archive this thread" link
- being able to write wherever you want can be good to alert users, e.g.
put important notices at the top - this requires advanced features like
"sticky" posts in a discussion forum
- should deletion of one's own comments be possible?
- revision history?
- having two different "modes" of writing can be a usability
problem, too
Weighing the different arguments against each other, I think we should
concentrate on the edit conflict issues, and perhaps try to somewhat
streamline the reply process. Having a threaded forum seems to be too
different from the existing wiki process to work well, although I am
still somewhat undecided here. The edit conflict issue is relevant to
all pages, not just talk pages.
What do you all think?
Regards,
Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de