Make share button public

feature
1

Hi, I noticed that the Facebook, Twitter and other social share buttons are only available to signed up users. Can the “Share” button be made public so that visitors who are not signed up can still share discussion to Facebook, Twitter. Thanks

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2

Hi, we recently removed the share button for anonymous users, in favour of timestamp. Clicking on timestamp will open the same familiar share pop-up:

3

@techAPJ checked it… but it’s not visible and visitors won’t see it or know that it’s there. The share button is better and more visible wondering why you removed it. Can you explain thanks.

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4

How would any casual, not even registered, user ever know to click the (small, greyed out) timestamp to get a share link? :confused:

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5

Echoing statements by @Barnabas20 and @calmh: Why? What is the point of removing the share button for anonymous users?

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6

It’s very noisy. For anons, it’s literally the only “button” on posts, so there was an extra line under every post with a single button dangling there.

At Stack Exchange we found that users shared URLs from the address bar way more than any particular share button. In fact, explicit sharing buttons were removed due to lack of use:

analytics show us that a great many of posts are shared, but nobody uses the share buttons to do so. Note that we always show the question share buttons to everyone, always, and they also get garbage usage. Looks like people would much rather copy/paste links than use those buttons, no matter what the display rules are. This change is testing that hypothesis. link

(tests bore out the hypothesis, by the way)

That’s a good point, though – we should make the share button on the topic visible to anonymous users, since it’s not repeated on every post, and offers another vector.

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7

Ok, but how is an anon user supposed to make sure that the URL is targeting the correct post? If they can see post 25 in a topic, there is every chance that the URL could be pointing to post 23, or even - if posts are short and monitors big - post 21. Then they are using a URL for the wrong post. The share button removes the ambiguity and makes it clear what they are linking to.

What do you mean by “on the topic”?

  • Do you mean on the first post? What good does that do the anon user if they want to share post 30?
  • Do you mean in the header bar? That would be kind of weird, and anon users wouldn’t really know what behavior to expect, but at least it’s always visible.
  • Do you mean the share button at the bottom of the topic? Then what if anon wants to share post 23 of 64?
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8

Pasted image759×285 6.23 KB

I think @codinghorror is referring to this one, at the bottom of the topic.

1 Like
9

Good point, I missed that one. Modifying my post above.

10

[quote=“codinghorror, post:6, topic:19300”]
It’s very noisy. For anons, it’s literally the only “button” on posts, so there was an extra line under every post with a single button dangling there.[/quote]
Agreed. So move the button. Make it a bit smaller, put it to the right of the timestamp.

I don’t know Ember.js well enough, but positioning a button in a div depending on some state like “logged in” can normally be done with CSS and minimal JS.

No. Anonymous user or not, in a lot (if not most) forums, the user will want to share a link to a specific post if that post is important to him/her/it.

Example case: “Ooooh, here’s an awsome image of a double rainbow!!!”. Happy scrolling.

5 Likes
11

I did a mock-up

.topic-meta-data .post-info a.post-date:after {
    color: #aaa;
    content: " ";
    font-family: FontAwesome;
}

Pasted image756×232 8.19 KB

Worth noting this can be put into any site’s customisation now, untilif it gets into master :slight_smile:

Edit: adjusted the CSS so it doesn’t show the icon after the edit pencil.

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12

Hi haiku what exactly does this css you provided do. @codinghorror we will need the share button as our users do you use the share button. I think adding the button at the bottom of topic and the share button on each post will be better.

13

It adds the link icon next to the date/time stamp, making it more obvious where to click for Anonymous users.

1 Like
14

Okay thanks for clarifying.

15

I was able to add the css but @codinghorror can we make the big “Share” button available to anon users, making it optional through the admin settings.

16

There is no big “Share” button, it is the same chain link icon, just slightly larger and in a different position. I think @haiku’s solution is the same one we would deliver.

17

Alright thanks for the update hope it will be more visible.

18

In this case you will always be able to make it as visible as you like by changing some CSS; I changed the CSS I posted before a bit:

.topic-meta-data .post-info a.post-date:after {
    color: #555;
    content: "";
    font-family: FontAwesome;
    font-size: 1.5em;
    padding: 0.5em;
}

notice the font-size and padding rules, and the changed color rule… that gets you this:

What do you have in mind?

19

Okay let me play around with it and see. Thanks

20

Share buttons are mysterious and scary. You’re never sure they won’t add more than you want when sharing things. Sharing links is simple.

In fact, I’d totally be on board with renaming share to “permalink” and removing all the social media icons.

5 Likes