Topic on Talk:Structured Discussions

In pages like this, where there are a lot of discussions, the previous system is at the moment better of Flow for these reason:

1 - To see all the discussions, you need to go to the bottom and wait that the older discussions are loaded.

2 - While the older discussions are loading, there is nothing that inform the reader about this loading (e.g. balls or an hourglass rotating), so one can think that there no discussions any more.

3 - I don't see any index at the top of the page to check how many discussions are in the page.

Re: Index - They're currently working on a Table of Contents. Details at Flow/Table of Contents spec and throughout https://trello.com/b/lOh4XCy7/flow-sprint-k There will also be a built-in per-Board search, but that's significantly more complicated and will take a while longer.

Re: Spinner - There used to be a spinner-icon. I don't recall why it was removed, but I've collated all the previous work-cards at https://trello.com/c/tMfu5gzS/ and I'll ask the team to re-examine this one.

Thanks!

You are welcome. Thank you for your answer. I hope they will solve this issues soon

I put my "Reply" in the wrong place so the indentation was wrong. Now I realized that I can edit my reply but I can not delete it. I suppose they will solve this issue, too: it can happens that someone do a misclick.

Being able to Refactor - Move posts, as well as Merge and Split topics - are items on the to-do list.

In the meantime, we're all still learning how this system currently works best, and what changes could and/or should be considered. So, feedback like this is appreciated. :)

@Daniele: see phab:T95118.

I used flow for a first time today. First, it takes huge amount of screen estate, please see a whole-screen screenshot at c:File:MediaWiki_extension_Flow_screenshot.png (too large to inline it here).

It is impossible to quickly skim through the discussion - to find out huge threads or small threads. It brings the worst of PhpBB world back here to us.

It is impossible to quickly find (CTRL-F, if nothing else helps) if the subject I want to write about has not been raised already.

The twitter-style loading of "more threads" is annoying, I think I see the page footer already but no, after I click down something loads, it seems endless... how do I know I took a quick glimpse of everything?

Maybe this style is ok for some huge community discussion pages (noticeboards), but is probably not good for talk pages. ~~~~

Thanks for the detailed feedback. The team is currently working on creating a specialized Table of Contents, and also working on a built-in search box. They have some interesting ideas regarding infinite scroll (the twitter-style "loading more"), that require those 2 additional components to function as they see envision it. Once that is all more complete, they'll ask for wide-input on the whole set of components.

Regarding the visual density, there has been discussion about a "width toggle" (between fixed width and full width) because one is easier to read with (particularly on large or wide monitors), and the other is easier to skim with (as you say). There's a new designer working with the team as of last week, and possibly that will bring some further changes to the overall aesthetic, or re-arrangement of the standard elements.

Hope that helps.

@Quiddity (WMF): I didn't find a task for providing a "width toggle", so I created phab:T88114.

Just piling on here. I'm not sure a spinner is necessary, but some indicator that more posts follow would be a big improvement. LinkedIn group discussions work this way. It's worth checking just to see an alternative that's already been implemented elsewhere (and mostly works).