More details for settings

[Jonathan5]

The settings all have a name and a sentence describing them.

Sometimes the sentence isn’t adequate except as a reminder of something already known.

The answer is the to search this forum, eg Automatically removed quote of whole previous post - #19 by rishabh explains remove full quote.

It would be good if there were an additional paragraph and/or link to the forum for settings.

This is more of a generic pipe dream than a specific feature request so I don’t really expect it to be implemented Though maybe the sentences could be a bit more descriptive.

[Moin]

Some settings need better descriptions

Is there any place the description for the settings should be improved? You’ll need to attack this on a setting-by-setting basis. Does the explanation for the setting sufficiently explain it? If not, how can that description be improved? I’m super open to copyedits that make the meaning of the settings clearer.

[Jonathan5]

You haven’t added your own comment, but I guess that it would have been that I should have searched before posting and that if I had I would have found that topic and reply

That is an interesting topic, as what @codinghorror says is a good defence to my position, but it doesn’t really answer @ganncamp’s question which was more about the absence of a manual or an overview of settings overall.

[JammyDodger]

I like the idea of there being a link to Meta/a live guide within the admin settings, so you can zip through and find the latest information, and possibly even a few suggested use cases people may not have considered. Not sure what it would look like in practice, but it’s definitely got me thinking.

[itsbhanusharma (Bhanu Sharma)]

That would actually be a pretty bad UX.
Sending users offsite just to understand what a setting does could just end up making them more confused.

A short description generally does the trick and I agree that discourse needs a QRH for all the settings.

[JammyDodger]

@itsbhanusharma

That would actually be a pretty bad UX.
Sending users offsite just to understand what a setting does could just end up making them more confused.

Yes, I think you’re right. I was idly looking at the settings page thinking about what it could look like, and I think one per setting would be too much. You’d want the best ‘short’ description next to the setting no matter what, and I can’t picture how to put anything extra in that wouldn’t detract from that simplicity.

But a quick reference would be good. Are you thinking inbuilt, or a link to some kind of FAQs set-up here on Meta?

[ganncamp (G Ann Campbell)]

Or how about a description per category/group.

[itsbhanusharma (Bhanu Sharma)]

Should 100% be a link to meta (or an external document) which contains one para description of the setting. Any more literature and nobody bothers to actually read it.

We need it on meta or another external site because it is easier for us to manage any discrepancy. If it is built into discourse package, it will be hard to add the most accurate information due to the reason that the process is long between a pull request being written, tested, reviewed, merged then actually being deployment to every customer running different branches. The info could get out dated pretty quickly.