Improving usability of wiki post editing?

I think it would still be useful to write Edit Wiki, since it’s the current spelling for wiki posts, and when you refer to it to users, they will actually look for ‘wiki’ somewhere.

“- I turned the post into a wiki: you can edit it.”
“- I can’t find the wiki, where is it?”

:blush:

A single word is more consistent, and editing is the actual activity.

Then it needs to be differentiated in some way, maybe with color (‘wiki green’) to highlight the fact it’s not just a normal post, and probably a tooltip as well saying “Edit Wiki”. The current green marker on the top-right is way too small an indication for most users I’ve seen.

@hellekin, you should be able to customize that already. Using the following class gives you the whole post to work with.

.topic-post.wiki {

}
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We use the pencil in a square for editing wiki, maybe if we just use that glyph instead (plus a tooltip) it will be clear enough that its a wiki edit

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Yes, good idea, part of the fix here is to add a word, make the button more prominent and akin to reply, the primary action. Because I agree with this change in spirit, the primary action of a wiki is indeed editing, not replying.

That changed recently. That (green) icon means “view past (wiki) revisions” now. I see that we’re still using the (red) pencil icon for normal edits, which I disagree with. It should be consistent:

  • Pencil = click to edit
  • Pencil-in-a-square = see revision history
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Well sort of. The pencil means view edits as well on a normal post. At any rate I agree the key action is edit and that is the pencil!

That’s what I’m saying. It shouldn’t be used for that. We should use a red pencil-in-a-square icon for that, so that the plain pencil icon always without exception means “click here to edit this thing”

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This commit moves the Edit out to where reply was, and hides reply behind the ellipsis:

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/4f27259e275a15093a550f8bca0956706cec8885

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I made the first post here a wiki for testing.

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I find the OP confusing: luckily there are already some responses so I can quickly respond hitting a ‘reply’ button. But if I look at a wiki post, I have no visual clue of why that post is different than other posts. I can see new users being confused by the non immediate visibility of the Reply button.

I disagree with this assessment, too. Even in Wikipedia, for each page there is a Talk page. @codinghorror I agreed with you more when you said that edits to a wiki page are a lot rarer than visitors. I’d argue that questions and conversations around a wiki page are more popular than edits.

I’d rather have a visible clue that a post is a wiki, like a changed color or a new, separate call to action (like @Tom_Newsom suggested) and keep the Reply button where it is, consistent with other types of posts.

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Small tweak: I’m no longer hiding the reply button by default. It’ll show up outside of the ellipsis area.

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/10358811a10668cdcf8e20055c6f20873b6d56d8

8 Likes