Talk:Talk pages project/Usability/Prototype/Topic Containers

T306575: Make the last comment metadata within Topic Containers clickable/tappable

I just have some suggestions:

1. The "Last comment" metadata should instead show when the comment was posted relative to the current time. For "Last comment posted X minutes/hours/days ago". This is a lot more informative than a general date as it gives a good idea to the user how "old" the discussion is without requiring looking at a calendar or doing a bit of math.
2. The "Last comment" metadata should be clickable and clicking it should scroll you to and highlight the latest comment.
3. The number of people in the discussion label should be clickable and open a menu that lists everyone involved in the discussion and links to their userpage.

I appreciate you taking the time to review the prototype, @Lectrician1!

A couple of comments/questions in response to the suggestions you are making...

The "Last comment" metadata should instead show when the comment was posted relative to the current time. For "Last comment posted X minutes/hours/days ago".

Understood. Are there any scenarios you can think of where you would find seeing the exact date to be more valuable than seeing the relative date?

For context: the logic that controls when the "last comment" metadata transitions from "Last comment posted 4 minutes ago" to "Last comment posted on 20 April 2022" is set by en external library.

The "Last comment" metadata should be clickable and clicking it should scroll you to and highlight the latest comment.

Great idea. Here's a ticket for this: T306575.

Please let me know if you think there are changes/additions that could make that ticket better represent what you had in mind...

The number of people in the discussion label should be clickable and open a menu that lists everyone involved in the discussion and links to their userpage.

Can you share more about this idea? What would you find having the list you described above being useful for?

Are there any scenarios you can think of where you would find seeing the exact date to be more valuable than seeing the relative date?

I can't think of any. Whether it be a really new or a very old discussion, relative dates are going to be much easier to understand when a discussion took place. In fact, showing relative dates for all replies might be nice too! You might notice, even Structured Discussions here shows all replies and the last reply with relative times!

Can you share more about this idea? What would you find having the list you described above being useful for?

It would just be nice to see everyone who has engaged in a discussion. Also, say you want to bring up a prior discussion again with a new discussion and you need to ping everyone who participated, having a list you can easily copy to ping everyone would be nice (maybe this could even be made into a little script or something).

And just one other feature suggestion, I think you could look to Convenient Discussions to provide even more features regarding usability. For example, I really appreciate the "move section", "add a subsection", and "edit a reply" features and the colored highlighting of your own comments in discussions .

T305286: Metadata within topic containers gets jumbled when switching between languages

I tried the prototype in English, as I don’t speak Arabic, and it said:

Last comment: 16 March – people in discussion 3 – comments 4

It should have said

4 comments – 3 people in discussion – Last comment: 16 March

or

Last comment: 16 March – 3 people in discussion – 4 comments

instead.

I don’t have a strong opinion on the order of the “chips” (both make sense, since the whole should remain to be right-aligned to match the right-aligned section header), but within the “chips”, the text should not be affected by the directionality of the outside content. It’s actually quite easy to fix: just use three <bdi>s inside the div.ext-discussiontools-init-section-wrapper-metadata instead of three <span>s. (P.S. Why is there Flow on this talk page? The topic containers are about changing the look of wikitext talk pages, and then this talk page isn’t wikitext at all…)

Would you look at it again at https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/7eb90cd880/wiki/Talk:DiscussionTools (set up as a left-to-right wiki)? That might be due to the directionality of the wiki's content language. (The link you originally visited is set up as an Arabic-language wiki from creation.)

Yes, the bug manifests exactly because the directionality of the wiki (right-to-left) and the UI (left-to-right) are different. The same would happen on the English wiki using Hebrew interface. (Arabic interface is not broken, because the Arabic language has its own digits, which have strong directionality as opposed to the Western Arabic digits used in English and Hebrew.)

This should not be this way. First because it’s so easy to fix, second because it’s an absolutely realistic scenario. Maybe there are not many people who use LTR UI on Arabic wikis and want to participate in discussions there (many people who don’t speak Arabic set the interface to a language they understand, but they probably won’t take part in discussions on arwiki); however, many people use Hebrew and other affected UI languages on multilingual wikis like Commons or mediawiki.org. (Multilingual wikis’ content language is English.)

@Tacsipacsi can you please read the "Issue" below and share what – if any – adjustments you think need to be made to it before I file a ticket?

Issue

1. Visit a wiki that has been configured to support LTR languages*

2. Navigate to a talk page where Topic Containers are enabled

3. Change the "Display language" to a RTL language

4. Notice the interface elements that used to appear on the left side of the screen now appear on the right (e.g. the site's search field)

Actual

5. ❗️ Notice the numerals that appear within the Topic Container appear after the text labels rather before them (read: "comments 4")

Expected

5. ✅ Notice the numerals that appear within the Topic Container appear before the text labels rather before them (read: "4 comments")

*This also happens if you visit a wiki configured to support RTL languages and change the "Display language" from an RTL to an LTR language.

(P.S. Why is there Flow on this talk page? The topic containers are about changing the look of wikitext talk pages, and then this talk page isn’t wikitext at all…)

There isn't a particularly strong reason for using Flow on this page; it's more so a consequence of not including the step to make it so as part of the process of starting the central notice campaign T302120.

Although, in writing the above, it did lead me to think, "Something I do appreciate about using Flow, particularly on pages where we anticipate receiving feedback, is having the ability to summarize the feedback someone shares by adding links to the tickets we've filed to the topic's 'Summary' section."

The thought above led me to file: T305220.

3. Change the "Display language" to a RTL language that uses Western Arabic numerals (e.g. Hebrew)

[…]

*This also happens if you visit a wiki configured to support RTL languages and change the "Display language" from an RTL language to an LTR language using Western Arabic numerals.

Although it will not manifest itself if the translation puts text before the text (e.g. if the English translation was There are $1 comments instead of $1 comments, it would display correctly), so I’d recommend either testing it with the setup I noticed it with (Arabic site language, English UI language), or using made-up Hebrew translations on a local install that don’t certainly don’t include any text before the number. Otherwise it looks good, thanks!

Excellent – thank you for reviewing, @Tacsipacsi. Ticket filed: T305286.

مرحبا!

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