So I was perusing the Emby forums the other day and I came across a locked thread. It was very obvious that the thread was locked because instead of the Post Reply button there was a big giant “This Topic is Locked” icon in it’s place. Just wanted to suggest that Discourse consider doing something similar - this is really helpful as an end user so you aren’t spending any time trying to reply to something when you don’t realize it is locked.
Well, the lock icon is on the title of the post:
And, the Reply button is also hidden for non-admins, implying that a post can’t be replied to.
I know! It’s just not very obvious, especially to a new user not familiar with Discourse.
The fact that it is hidden actually exacerbates the issue, because the user can spend considerable time (as much as a minute or two) looking for a reply button thinking that they just aren’t seeing it instead of moving on or creating a linked topic to discuss whatever it is they wanted to talk about.
The example above even goes a step further by giving a second line (Also in the screenshot) that says “No replies to this topic” for the absolute newbie in case they don’t understand what a locked topic is.
I dunno - I just think it would make for a better user experience for the newbie - maybe I’m wrong?
This means that the topic in question didn’t receive a reply.
Probably, but Discourse is very click-everything-you-can-see oriented. The underlying UX tries to remain as simple as possible: if you don’t see it, you can’t do it. If you don’t see a way to reply, then you probably aren’t able to reply.
On that note, maybe it would be a good idea to mention this in the introduction PM that all users get?
What if you made it clickable, but when you click it a lightbox (or similar) pops up explaining what a locked thread is?
I am not a big fan of imagining problems users “might” have, I am a fan of reacting to reports from real users.
I’m not convinced this is unclear, and more significantly, I have never heard a report from any user or site owner that this was a problem.
That said, I am interested in providing a better more condensed set of Staff Messages, perhaps using iconography. But it’d be the same message, in the same place, with the same color just with a lock icon and smaller.
@riking - I was talking about the “vanilla” locked topic. I was referring to the generic discourse theme and not to our own custom CSS work - hence this being on the public forum and not in our private board - Do you really think i’m that lame to complain to you about my own (or my associates) work?
@codinghorror - I actually had a problem myself on some forums where I couldn’t find a reply button for one reason or another (usually a permissions thing or the like) and its incredibly frustrating when you think you should be able to reply to something and can’t. Fair point however - if people aren’t complaining about it no use in spending the effort to resolve.
[quote=“strager, post:8, topic:29826”]
Do you really think i’m that lame to complain to you about my own (or my associates) work?
[/quote]Oops, I misread… Deleted that post.