I always used it and loved the feature. I was very surprised when suddenly it was gone earlier this week/last week. I’m a user of WaniKani’s forums, and some of those threads are exceptionally long (including the helpful ones).
I never noticed a problem with it, it always seemed to work for me.
I would really appreciate it if the option would return to user settings.
Thanks for asking for and considering our feedback.
EDIT: Well, I see that nothing is going to be done about this for 6 months… If @sam’s reply button idea gets implemented, would it be when you press reply at the bottom of the post, or in the top left of the compose box as shown in the posts you’ve made? Personally, I would prefer the former, hidden under the “…” next to reply and edit. I tend to forget the button on the compose box even exists, and don’t even know where to access that on mobile.
Although it seems like @codinghorror has his mind made up anyway, and doesn’t care about Japanese learning resources, or grammar help. (But yes, 80% of the insane posts at WaniKani is chatter by your definition; the WaniKani community is a strange beast… Which thrives on it’s strangeness.)
I agree with this. I have no stake in the “jump to reply” discussion, but I wanted to support that there are some legitimate usages of mega topics. I’m a member of a language learning forum, where we have (for example) a mega topic for asking short grammar questions. Without that we’d get a ton of small topics, which are then hard to navigate. By having this one mega topic where people ask most grammar-related questions, everything is organized in one place, which is convenient for both the people asking the questions and the people answering the questions.
Just a minor suggestion on top of that: Since Ctrl + Enter submits the post, could Ctrl + Shift + Enter submit the post in this "expert reply mode”?
The thing is that none of these things are ‘bad habits’, they are simply things you don’t agree with. Not washing hands after going to the loo is a bad habit because you endanger others with germs; having topics where posts can be replied to without the need to read the rest of the posts in the topic is simply a different situation to one you prefer.
One of the useful things about this site is that you get the link down to replies to a post. This means you can immediately see if a given specifically targeted post has been addressed. There might be 300 posts below the one I’m reading but if there’s no
under it then I can safely reply knowing I don’t need to read the rest of it.
While it might be nice to assume that all Topics can work in the same way, be narrow and specific, it’s simply not practical to assume that is the way all communities will work. DrownedInSound has a morning thread and an evening thread every day that generate several 100 posts of chat between members. Essentially they are miscellaneous topics and they work well as a sort of cowcatcher for posts that might otherwise not fit in existing topics.
I think that this is a great feature for Discourse. If an exception can be said to prove the rule then, for me, this is it.
I will enable this on my forums because it has so much potential for topic types. I provide some concepts further below which you can get to by skipping til after the two quotes below.
I honestly couldn’t work out what this feature would do for people because it is so anti the way I work. Normally I fully read a topic before responding, draft a reply and fill it while I keep reading, use bookmarks to remember where I was up to.
Six months later, it was still a mystery until I read this comment:
But hold on, there’s no obvious attempt at systematic organisation of topics apart from organizing a box for all the topics to be thrown together. We could more accurately describe it as a topic where everything is disorganized in one place. It seems that the effort required to organize the discussion is perceived to be greater than the benefits.
That’s exactly why this feature is not consistent with what I’d call Discourse’s discussion by design:
So while I agree with the critics that this feature allows bad habits, instead of opposing it, I argue for this sort of desultory engagement to be allowed.
What this feature will allow me to do is to:
provide another feature I can use to promote Discourse …
… and engage desultory users more easily
but most importantly operate with some new topic types where reading and responding are asynchronous or out of step and where topics are more reflexive in other ways than usual:
Logs where the reading is a journey but I need to be able to interact with the latest status report. I both want to read everything and interact with the latest notification.
E.g. in a travelog where the author is writing it and I am reading it but never up-to-date. I can personalise this one because I want to setup a family forum where our family members can post their travel notes. My wife wants to reply to those updates or request an update without losing her reading place.
Diagnostics where there is a payoff to getting an early solution
E.g. problem solving where Windows has crashed with certain error codes then I’d always suggest checking drivers are updated even without reading the entire. I remember many times where I’ve seen a reported problem and only had time to dash off a quick reply before heading off to another commitment.
Spoilers as already discussed.
Mystery games where being first to guess the result is the goal. This is kind of opposite to avoiding spoilers because there is one spoiler we’re all seeking to reveal.
E.g. a competition where each user only gets three replies or guesses - a plug-in would help enforce this the limit.
Adaptations where replies are designed to suggest a new path for the topic. Again the opposite of spoilers but there is no limit to the number of accepted suggestions.
E.g. Writing a serial story where readers can introduce keywords or themes that affect the story as it is serialized. This is like the movie of the same name Adaptation
E.g. a live interview where I can follow the interview and ask questions at the same time. It may be tidier to have questions in a separate topic or via PM but this way everyone can see what other readers are interested in, can catch the mood of the crowd.
There are some practical issues so go ahead and suggest more uses and improvements.
So, the feature was there, and our community were using it.
Now it’s gone just because it is not useful to other communities?
Following this approach, more features can be removed. I don’t think it makes sense.
My community and I miss this feature, and if it’s back, we’ll definitely use it. And as it can be seen in this thread (and other linked ones), look like I’m not alone. So should be enough at least not to remove the existing feature to which people got used and which they love?
I personally may comment on different ideas while reading a 500+ posts topic from its start. It always worked like a charm. Now I just feel lost after it jumps to the very end and there is no way back.
Another good case is as follows:
If I reply in a very active topic, 2-3 replies may appear while I type mine. As soon as it jumps, I have no idea how many new replies I missed.
I was very busy with my main job and had no time to deal with it. Others were struggling all that time.
So it’s nowhere being supporting the idea that I don’t need it. I still need it and I miss it.
Okay, you don’t see the logic, but I do. It worked well for me (and our moderators, and many members) for years. Means they see the logic in it and they use it and they like it. Everyone is different.
Plus, trying to be constructive and give examples, I described a few examples above that make a lot of logic to me. Those cases do not need to be logical to everyone though.
This is just how software development works. If companies kept every feature that < 5% of users used, eventually their software would become buggy and it would become difficult to add features that 90% of users might benefit from.
I think for starters we just implement shift click on “Reply”, if you hit shift while clicking we don’t jump you to the bottom.
Super :ninja: feature, only desktop, but will be useful for the very super rare cases people want it.
An alternative for “high traffic” topics longer term would be to track “highest post number” when you open the composer and if tons has changed … pop a modal prior to posting with options.
