20 Jan
2013
20 Jan
'13
6:54 p.m.
On 01/20/2013 11:31 AM, Vincent Massol wrote:
On Jan 20, 2013, at 5:22 PM, Sergiu Dumitriu <sergiu(a)xwiki.org> wrote:
Sending a message to another admin should be done by... sending a
message, not by commenting. A direct message will reach a user faster
than hoping that the target user will stumble upon the page and read the
comment.
Hi devs,
For content pages, the bottom tabs (comments, attachments, history,
information) are very useful features. But does it make sense to keep
those active for very technical pages?
For example, when viewing details about a tag, (Main/Tags?do=viewTag),
why should people be allowed to comment? They might wrongly think that
they're commenting on a tag, but that's just one complex page that
handles almost everything about tags, so a comment like "this tag has a
typo" doesn't help at all.
Other pages should have no bottom tabs as well: user directory, blog
category management, the whole scheduler space, share by email...
While the homepage is a technical page (by default), it does make sense
to leave the comments active, since it's the entry point for every user
(although I think that the messaging system is a better way to send
global messages).
IMO, the advantage is that we're hiding actions that are rarely useful,
but could be misused. The disadvantage is that we're breaking the
universality of the UI.
I'm +1 for hiding, fewer mis-usable features is always better.
What if admins want to leave comments on a tech page modified by another admin to ask
some question for example? Said differently, shouldn't bottom tabs (comments,
attachments, etc) be visible to admins for example? This could be achieved by only giving
view rights to non admins by default on tech pages.
Tech pages aren't supposed to be viewed only by admins. They're useful
pages for every user, so they should be visible (view tag cloud, view
documents tagged with a specific tag, view the list of users, browse
blog categories...). And not having view right doesn't mean that the
bottom tabs will be hidden. Just the "add comment", "add attachment"
actions will be unavailable.
And even if adding is disabled, but why should this information be
visible to any user at all? Forbidding edit still means that a user
wanting to see which pages are tagged with "needsreview" will see a "Hey
John, could we have an undo to tag renaming?" comment. What would you
think if you saw that?
Another use case: imagine I'm an admin and I want
to modify a tech page and I'd like to add an attachment to that page… IMO bottom tabs
are still useful for admins on tech pages.
This isn't about disabling attachments and comments. The bottom tabs are
almost an _invitation_ to do stuff. Without them, it is still possible
to go to the attachments page by clicking on the "Attachments (0)" link
below the title. De-contextualizing these actions will reduce the risk
of associating a comment/attachment with a particular view of the
scripted page.
IMO the issue is different. If a tech is not supposed
to be modified by the user then users should have only view rights on the page and NOT
edit rights. This will solve this issue.
It's not just about changing, but also about what's visible on the
screen, and the usefulness of such information vs. the number of WTFs
generated. Forget about admins, they will still be able to add comments
and attachments. Think about simple users searching for stuff and seeing
a comment completely unrelated to what they're searching for.
I forgot to say that this has already been done in a few places, and
nobody complained about the missing things:
http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Tags
http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Search
http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Invitation/
WDYT?
Thanks
-Vincent
--
Sergiu Dumitriu
http://purl.org/net/sergiu