Topic on Talk:Structured Discussions

Top-posting. I love the fact that new comments appear at the top!

4
Ocaasi (talkcontribs)

This is how the internet works :)

Or more fairly I should say, this encourages people to post rather than read, which may increase participation. It's more inviting and intuitive, though it's against our traditions and culture of read first, comment second perhaps.

MPinchuk (WMF) (usurped) (talkcontribs)

Ocaasi: Well, within topics, new things go to the bottom, and the most prominent reply box is at the bottom, too (we did this intentionally to make sure people read or at least skim the whole discussion before replying).

Fram (talkcontribs)

New TOPICS appear at the top, new COMMENTS appear at the bottom of whatever topic they appear in, and the topic stays at its position as well. No idea why this encourages people to post rather than read, everyone could add topics at the top already if they wanted to, and you could just use the "new section" button as well obviously. The prominent "reply" and the permanent "start a new topic" at the top" may encourage people to post instead of reading, but not the fact that topics now appear the top...

And of course, do we really prefer that people post instead of checking that the topic is already open or the question already asked and answered? That remains to be seen...

Klipe (talkcontribs)

Fram: I fully agree with your last sentence.

Maryana: For me, the big reason why people would post quicker instead of first reading, is because of the lack of overview, which encompasses

  • no ToC for topic-level browsing,
  • too much scrolling required to read within topics content,
  • only one indent level.

At least that's my experience. I find it painful to browse all those comments almost one by one due to the lack of structure, and I hate scrolling while seeing so much white space around (not just vertically, by the way: most of the unused space is located on the right side. Actually, fixed width is exasperating: please allow us to let window content adapt to the window size so that we can choose our own preferred width by simply resizing one's window... which is possibly done already for reading pages in the main namespaces such as Wikipedia articles anyway).

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