If new users do the discobot tutorial, one of the most important things they learn is oneboxing. Unfortunately, few users actually embark on that journey and so I am often editing user posts to turn their links into oneboxes.
I’m assuming that I’m not alone with this and so I’m curious to hear how others are dealing with this. I have this idea of adding some hint to the editor modal for links, but won’t be able to test this before I’m back to my desktop computer next month. Adding an education message could be another option (it could show whenever a user who has never posted a onebox adds a uri to a post).
But maybe people have come up with less technical solutions?
This point needs more emphasis. I, for one, am a sponge for learning things called out in that manner.
It is:
A real world usage
A way to improve that situation
Presented right next the problem
I’ve also done the opposite version to people, wherein I defang their unintended onebox by putting whitespace before it and explain what I did and how it helps.
My users and I love Onebox. However, we also miss the count number that showed on the individual links to indicate how many people have actually clicked on the link. Very few of the links posted now are not Oneboxed. I’d say about 95% of are. Thanks!
The count for links not Oneboxed are showing now, at least on those that I’ve just seen, but there are still no counts showing for those links which get Oneboxed. I just clicked on the Onebox link in the below screenshot and no number came up. And I do know for a fact that several users have also clicked on the link. It works okay here on Meta, but not on our forum (Discourse hosted). As of yet, no one has complained at all. I don’t even think they realize there is supposed to be a counter to show the number of clicks a link gets.
