Topic on Talk:Talk pages project/Replying/Flow

task T254208: Revise position and behavior of Reply tool's text input

task T253402: Blank lines in visual mode not stripped

task T253584: Strikethrough in Reply tool adds <s> tags with href attribute

task T254420: Make visual mode's "Remove" text formatting function more clear

task T254366: Add @ mention affordance to visual mode's toolbar

task T252083: Treat links to user pages differently than normal wikilinks.

Version 2.0 testing feedback

TASK #4: What are your initial impressions of the tool? What stands out to you? Do you find something particularly eye-catching? Confusing?

Visual mode should be default. At least for IPs, new accounts and users used to VisualEditor (i.e. for the most of all users).

TASK #5: Could you figure out how to write and style a comment in the tool's visual mode do so? What did you think of this experience?

"..." button in "language" menu is quite disambiguous. I wasn't sure what it does until I clicked it. Direction should be less prominent, users should not have feeling that they must change this setting too. "Remove" button in format menu seems also quite disambiguous, one might think this removes the text.

TASK #6: Could you figure out how to ping someone who has commented in the section you are replying in? What did you think of this experience?

It is not prominent at all, I had to play a minute with the UI only to find out there is no UI feature at all. To novices this might be extremely hidden, I would bet my shoe many of novices never figure it out. I recall my struggles with the same issue in StackOverflow. I would add a ping button, which just adds @ and opens the menu. I also can not ping an IP. I know IPs can't get ping notification, but they can be just mentioned when I want specifically to address some portion of text to them.

TASK #7: Could you figure out how to ping someone who has not commented in the section you are replying in? What did you think of this experience?

Once I found out thanks to my experience with StackOverflow, how to ping someone, it was quite easy to play with it. It seems to me as a matter of getting into the habit.

TASK #8: Could you figure out how to edit a ping so someone different is notified? What did you think of this experience?

It was a bit confusing. I tried to rewrite the text as I would do on StackOverflow, but it rewritten just the text, not the user to be pinged. I know this is wiki code limited, but I would expect the popup to help me figure out, how to change user and edit text. The popup is completely confusing, the worst experience of the 2.0 version. First there is a link header that does nothing. I don't know, why is it there. Then there is a unlink button, which to me is unnecessary. Then there is an edit button. What exactly this edit button edits? After clicking it opens edit link menu. What? Why? Follows red link and question mark image. While this might make sense in terms of Wikipedia, for people with less experience this is completely confusing. Do I have a typo in the name? Does that mean the user does no exist? Don't get me wrong, the text in Visual mode should have red link, but this menu? Again, why? Finally there is this "Text" header, again not editable. I have to click the "change text" button. Which confusingly does nothing noticeable?

My idea of this popup would be much simpler and more clear, just two input elements and a close button:

It also should be obvious if the user does exist or does not to avoid typos. The current design does not reflect this at all.

Similar issue is with the internal links. The same confusing popup sequence with so much superfluous and confusing content, instead of just simple input elements, simple link preview and a close button.

TASK #9: Could you figure out how to see the comment you were writing in the visual mode, in the source mode before posting the comment to the talk page? What – if any – part the wikitext looked different from how you expected?

Yes, everything's clear.

TASK #10: Could you figure out how to post the comment you had written in Tasks #1 - #9 to the talk page?

Yes, everything's fine.

TASK #11: Does the diff you created by posting a comment look as you expected? What – if anything – were you surprised to see?

Empty lines like:

::::

surprised me the most, see . They should be unnecessary at all. Also it added some weird href attribute to the <s> tag, which is super-suspicious. It was not present in the Source mode.

OVERALL: If there are other comments or questions you would like to make the team aware of, please write them here.

I miss the same formatting buttons and functions in the Source mode. I would expect them to be there too.

Task #11 issue filed as T253402

Note: T253402 covers the first issue from task #11 feedback. Should I create a task for the second issue?

Yes please. I've seen those attributes appearing elsewhere.

Done (T253584)

Also I find confusing "Reply" links are disabled if I have Reply window openned in the page. If the page is long enough (Village pump):

1. I hit "Reply" button.
2. I change my mind and scroll the page. I leave the edit window open.
3. I want to reply to some other post.
4. I can't, I have to scroll the whole page back to cancel the first one and scroll the whole page forth again to be able to reply somewhere else.

Thank you for raising this and describing the steps as you did, @Dvorapa – what you are describing is clear.

A question: are you able to repeat the scenario you described above, but instead of scrolling the, ...whole page back to cancel the first one and scroll the whole page forth again to be able to reply somewhere else.can you try pressing the Escape key to close the "original" edit window and comment here what you thought of that experience?

The issue comes much sooner. Once you leave the edit window and scroll away from it, you don't expect it to block you from other work/talk/discussion. So you might never figure out, what's going on and why you can't hit Reply, there is no indication. If you figure out, you left the edit window openned, your instinct is not to hit Escape as you don't see the edit window in your current view. Instead you usually scroll to it to see if your speculation (that you left the edit window openned) is correct. And then with the edit window in the current view, you just either hit Escape or click Cancel, it doesn't matter. But you do not avoid the scrolling part.

One of the suggestions to avoid losing context when there is a large gap between the reply placement and the comment you are replying to, was to always keep an open reply widget visible by floating it. In that situation this issue would also go away.

That's a good idea! (I wrote it ;-)

@Aron Manning, good memory. You represented these issues well here: https://w.wiki/SYx.

If you think the way I've represented these issues in the description of phab: T254208 could be made more clear and/or exhaustive, please comment as much on the ticket.

As you alluded to in the original comment you posted about this, we are going to consider these issues holistically.

The issue comes much sooner. Once you leave the edit window and scroll away from it, you don't expect it to block you from other work/talk/discussion...

Ah, I see. Thank you for helping me to see what you are describing more clearly, @Dvorapa. Here is the task where we will address the issues you raised: phab:T254208.

...if you think changes should be made to the task description to more accurately and exhaustively describe what you experienced, please comment as much on the ticket.

I reported this same confusion in the feedback of version 1. This is also why Enterprisey's reply tool turns all 'reply' buttons into 'cancel' buttons once you have a reply editor open, so that you at least know why your reply button isn't available.

@TheDJ you did.[1]

As I mentioned to Aron Manning and Dvorapa above, we are going to think about this collection of issues together in phab:T254208.

From there, we'll decide on an initial approach for addressing those issues. Please comment there if you think anything could be made more clear or exhaustive.

---

1. For reference, we initially tracked this issue in phab:T235923

We have tried to avoid changing the width on the reply button after the initial load as that can lead to the text wrapping changing and therefore things jumping vertically.

@Dvorapa there were a few other issues you raised that I want to make sure we have documented. I also had a few follow up questions. Both of these are below.

Before that: thank you for all of the effort you've put into trying the feature, sharing the feedback you have and filing tickets...we appreciate it :)

Documenting issues raised

"Remove" button in format menu seems also quite disambiguous, one might think this removes the text.

Task filed: phab: T254420

It [the @ mention feature] is not prominent at all, I had to play a minute with the UI only to find out there is no UI feature at all. To novices this might be extremely hidden, I would bet my shoe many of novices never figure it out.

Task filed: T254366

The popup is completely confusing, the worst experience of the 2.0 version. First there is a link header that does nothing. I don't know, why is it there. Then there is a unlink button, which to me is unnecessary. Then there is an edit button. What exactly this edit button edits? After clicking it opens edit link menu. What? Why? Follows red link and question mark image. While this might make sense in terms of Wikipedia, for people with less experience this is completely confusing. Do I have a typo in the name? Does that mean the user does no exist? Don't get me wrong, the text in Visual mode should have red link, but this menu? Again, why? Finally there is this "Text" header, again not editable. I have to click the "change text" button. Which confusingly does nothing noticeable?

The way you've described this particular part of the tool wonderfully captures the confusion it can cause. In response to what you, and others like @Aron Manning have shared, we will be revising this behavior in the next couple of weeks.

You can track this work here: phab:T252083.

Follow up questions

Visual mode should be default. At least for IPs, new accounts and users used to VisualEditor (i.e. for the most of all users).

Can you share what leads you to say this?

"..." button in "language" menu is quite disambiguous. I wasn't sure what it does until I clicked it. Direction should be less prominent, users should not have feeling that they must change this setting too.

Before getting into the entirety of the feedback you shared here, two questions:

1. Is the "..." button you are referring to the one pictured below?
2. What led you to try the "Language" function? Is it a feature you use regularly and you were wanting to see how it would behave in this tool? Something else?

What do you think others at cs.wiki would understand the @ sign to mean if it were used as the icon for the mentioning/pinging feature within the visual mode's editing toolbar?

Picture of Reply tool's language switching dialog

Can you share what leads you to say this?

If I remember this correctly, after hitting "Reply" Source mode opens. Source mode currently does not provide formatting buttons (as I also mentioned in my feedback). Also novices and IPs might be used to use VisualEditor for articles. These two arguments makes me feel Visual mode should be the one that opens after hitting "Reply".

Is the "..." button you are referring to the one pictured below?

Yes.

What led you to try the "Language" function? Is it a feature you use regularly and you were wanting to see how it would behave in this tool? Something else?

No, I just tested everything that the tool offers :) On cswiki we have/use templates for marking text as different-language. I don't know if this feature is needed on cswiki as we don't much switch between ltr and rtl in talk pages.

What do you think others at cs.wiki would understand the @ sign to mean if it were used as the icon for the mentioning/pinging feature within the visual mode's editing toolbar?

As our ping template uses @ (Czech dictionary defines @ as a person prefix/suffix), experienced users on cswiki should be pretty used to it. From their point of view it would definitely be better than Flow's "+person" icon. But I'm not sure about novices. @ is quite disambiguous, can also make people think it means "send this reply as an e-mail instead of publishing here" (which could be a wonderful feature for cswiki's arguing community). Anyway if I search google for "mention user icon" it is @ most of the time so @ might be ok. One another option would be to combine Flow's "+person" icon and @ icon into one: "@person"