It looks like disable_jump_reply has been removed, as it was apparently “broken”.
This was a useful feature! Do you plan to bring it back, in any form, in the future?
Thanks,
1 Like
My thoughts here are to eventually add
- A keyboard shortcut for “go to first unread” in a topic
- Show the blue back button on the timeline if we scroll you more than 1 page to after posting.
@codinghorror has been waiting here to get more feedback from people who were using this feature, has popped up a few times in the last 2 weeks.
Disable jump reply always worked for me. On Qt3, I’m usually about 300 posts or so behind in a lot of threads, so it was a very useful feature for me.
Let’s say you’re watching a TV show after the season is over. You don’t want to read the replies ahead in the thread, but you want to comment on a post someone made about the first episode. Then after you hit reply, you can go watch the second episode, and come back to the thread, and see what people wrote about that episode, and reply to them, then go watch the third episode, etc.
It was also particularly useful in political threads where the news of the day changes a lot, and if you’re catching up on 3 days of news about the President, you don’t want to skip ahead.
2 Likes
@sam it is almost like this needs to be an advanced function of the reply button itself rather than a global pref. You’d want it for some replies, but not others.
1 Like
There is a big question here of if this needs to even be an option?
-
If you are posting and we know you read all posts up to say N-1, scroll.
-
If you are posting and we know there are a big pile of posts you never read in the interim, do not scroll.
I do struggle with making a strong case why we should scroll across a gap of 200 posts you never read, especially given we have no tooling to take you back to where you left off.
6 Likes
I think there is an exceptionally strong case to be made that it should be an advanced reply button click option.
Sort of like this… but for the reply button:
Imagine a little drop-down arrow next to reply that lets you reply without jumping.
And this way it’s not another pointless, noisy global user pref that only .00001% of people will ever use.
1 Like
I follow that, I am just struggling really really really hard to think of a use case where “fast forwarding” 10+ posts you never read is the right thing ™ to do. We can simply handle this edge case automatically.
With an extra “reply type” users need to remember to click it each time they interact in this mode.
4 Likes
It’s designed to be … instructive … because you’re supposed to read the topic before replying. Not doing so means you are either being kind of rude and talking without fully listening, or you really know what you are doing because You Are An Expert®
So being a mode that requires extra work is kinda the goal here. 99% of the time, you should indeed read the complete topic before replying, and this consistently educates you to do that.
(There is a valid exception in terms of spoiler topics where you’re intentionally avoiding the end of the topic… but that’s about it.)
1 Like
If we really want to be instructive isn’t the right thing to do to pop up a bootbox here?
You are posting in this topic but have not read the last 20 posts, are you sure you want to do it? Please keep reading.
Would you like to make this post anyway?
I guess the issue I have is that the punishment is so high from our end for this mistake. Once you commit it you have to remember exactly where you were in a topic, something that can be super hard on a 600 post topic.
4 Likes
Sunk cost fallacy means it’ll be ignored every time. Humans are amazing at this. I have already composed this amazing post… how dare you deign to question its legitimacy, sir! A fie upon you and your family! (smashes post button)
Yeah that’s a separate discussion, not opposed to a “jump me to highest reading hole” keyboard shortcut but GOOD LUCK explaining to people how that works 
1 Like
This is exactly why I really like this:
Right after posting if there is a gap, show the [back] button in the timeline.
Keyboard shortcut would be ninja’s domain only.
2 Likes
That kinda changes the semantics of back, it is no longer consistently taking you back to your lowest read position, it is now at a weird second location.
I suppose if the code to do this is trivial I can support it … but my gut says it won’t be, because the semantics of back have been radically altered?
Also how do we explain this… the back button takes you back to… what?
-
sometimes it takes you to your lowest read position
-
sometimes it takes you to your 2nd lowest read position
-
sometimes it takes you to other “reading holes”
1 Like
I think my position on this has solidified.
If you want this behavior, opt in at the time of pressing the reply button. Then there’s no “reading holes” created.
You’re An Expert®, after all, so you should be able to take that on. You are in Expert Mode.
It’s also consistent with the above real world user example, because surely as a user you are not posting on TV show spoilery not-caught-up-on-viewing-the-show topics all day, every day… you only selectively want this behavior on those specific topics, not as a global pref.
1 Like
I don’t think it is too tricky to implement, but yeah the big complicating factor here is that this is a compromise solution, in that it always gives people an escape hatch but does not solve the underlying issue.
-
(killed) I am expert leave me alone mode.
-
(Jeff proposed) I am expert, every time I post I shall click the extra expert button, otherwise I will blow off my foot.
-
(Sam proposal 1) If you are not expert and make a mistake here is an “undo button”
-
(Sam proposal 2) If you are an expert here is an “undo” button shortcut you can use anywhere.
-
(Sam proposal 3) stop blowing people’s foots off to teach them a lesson, teach lesson more subtly.
It is clear to me that both my first and second proposal I am simply adding “undo” when what people want is to be “left alone”
I still think, being less punishing is the right thing ™ to do, but can accept that Jeff proposed and Sam proposal 3 are the only solutions here that actually provide a clean alternative.
So the only 3 alternatives I see to solve this for people is:
-
Bring back killed feature
-
Add another ninja feature to post menu
-
Find another less punishing way to nudge people to do the right thing ™
1 Like
All the user examples support my argument, those posted here and in the other closed topic:
- In chatty topics I don’t want to jump to end!
- In spoiler-y topics I don’t want to jump to end!
It’s clearly a per topic decision that users want to make. So let them make it… by clicking reply-but-don’t-jump.
I am not opposed to a keyboard shortcut that jumps you to your topmost reading hole as well. But again… good freaking luck explaining that to people… there may indeed be reading holes but the best solution to holes is to avoid creating them whenever possible. 
I think that is where I am missing something. Per topic is 100% fair.
My concern is that you would have to click this magic button on every reply you make to the topic after you opted for this mode.
You are replying to this topic but have not read all the posts, are you sure you want to do that?
don’t jump me to the bottom
don’t nag me about this topic anymore[Post Reply] [Cancel]
1 Like
That won’t work, for the reasons previously stated
loss aversion is a hell of a drug.
(And if we DID have that dialog my god the complaints would never end. It’s like asking … no, BEGGING … people to actively argue with you.)
Right now the accepted standard behavior is the standard for a reason. Inviting people to actively question that with a popup nag dialog every single time they post would be… deeply and profoundly unwise. If we did that, it might actually be the biggest mistake we’ve made in quite some time.
As long as this “topic reply mode” is captured “per topic” and is not something you have to manually dance through every post you make I guess this can work.
So basically we add:
“Toggle jump to bottom” to here:
I worry though that the actual implementation here is significantly more work than just bringing back the killed feature.
Killing a pref that .00001% of people use is a net win in virtually every case I can think of. Prefs are poison. Drink enough of the poison over time and you die.
But this is just moving a preference from one screen to another screen, with per-topic fidelity.