So what you are saying is that if anyone ever links externally to post #17 and we take them to post #78 cause a bunch of posts got deleted - no problems - better design?
What is the point of half changing this?
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right, but this is not a software problem with Discourse, just reassure your users that it’s normal and carry on. There is 0.0% chance we will be changing this behavior.
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No. I’m not asking for the URL to change. I’m asking for just the displayed post number to be consistent between the time line and the popup box which displays ‘post #x’ where X is a count including deleted posts and whispers.
The screenshots I posted up topic should make this clear.
So show 78/12 in the timeline, really not following here
@sam - in the following picture, where it says ‘post #580’ (circled in pink), it should say ‘post #256’ to match the timeline (circled in pink, far right of the picture):
Removing this inconsistency would be good IMHO.
So given this post right here is #28.
The timeline here should show:
Post number #28 of 26.
Or you are saying the UI should show #26 and link to #28
This is all just going in circles, there is no easy change here and as @codinghorror said we have no plans to change this.
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Yes! The counting in the timeline is correct from the perspective of a member viewing the posts they can see - the ‘25/26’ is what’s expected and makes sense.
So to be consistent, where it shows ‘post #28’ in the box, it could display ‘post #26’ - but still link to 28 all the same.
I don’t think this is going in circles, but I’m having a hard time trying to explain this one point. Sorry for that, but I hope we got there in the end even if nothing is changed.
But then you’re just going to get people asking why this is happening.
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I understand, but this started out about a discussion about “privacy” … eg:
Never reveal posts were deleted or whispered.
And now you have changed the goalposts a bit saying:
Make the UI a bit more obscure so it displays different #s in SOME places.
This would be an enormous change that touches on so many subsystems … including stuff like Whispered replies leak in the post number - #30 by riking which is baked into posts.
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@riking - the numbers in the URL are usually off to the right and not immediately visible unless you scroll (at least in my browsers). This is in contrast to the other UI elements. You are right that someone might still scrutinise the URL, but it’s harder to immediately spot and much more subtle given the topic_id is in there too.
@sam - yes, on hearing that it would be a lot of work to change the URL numbering / linking and such, in post 8 of this topic I suggested it should be simple enough to fix only the most obvious mismatch in the counts and gave up on any other idea.
The post number can already be shown differently in some places e.g. the timeline vs the box as we’ve demonstrated in screenshots above. I’m suggesting to make that consistent, and I guess as a consequence, making the database post_id more obscure.
I’m not sure if you agree, but I don’t feel numbers in the URL are really part of the UI as such - the URL already has the topic_id in it, and that’s already opaque to users. Post_id could be thought of similarly.
The only issue I see with making the post numbering displayed the same in the two suggested places is that a mod/admin may refer to a post number in text (as you did with ‘#30 by riking’), but that’s a different post to a non-mod/admin. That problem already exists now if navigating by the timeline though.
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