23 Jan
2013
23 Jan
'13
3:54 p.m.
Hi,
For the record here's my POV:
* For technical pages that are meant to be seen by users (thus pages that are not hidden
by default), such as Main.Tags, I think we could do 3 things:
** set Page Access Rights on them so that they are not editable by non admin users
** setting #set ($displayDocExtra = false) and doing this should also remove the links at
the top since otherwise it's not very logical (if we keep them it's the same as
saying that bottom tabs are not good anyway and should be removed - which is possibly not
something bad to do but probably goes beyond this proposal)
** I think that #set ($displayDocExtra = false) should be set *only* if the user
doesn't have edit rights on the page, so that users with edit rights can add
attachments, view page information, etc.
* For purely code page (ie pages which are hidden by default), simple users are not
supposed to view them and thus it doesn't really matter if the docextra tabs are
displayed or not. However for consistency, I'd propose to have the same strategy as
for technical pages meant to be seen by users.
* I know of one exception: The home page. It's a technical page meant to be viewed by
end users but it's also meant to be edited by end users. Thus for that page I would
consider it as a normal content page.
Is that compatible with what has been said so far?
Thanks
-Vincent
On Jan 23, 2013, at 7:20 AM, Sergiu Dumitriu <sergiu(a)xwiki.com> wrote:
On 01/20/2013 02:48 PM, Vincent Massol wrote:
On Jan 20, 2013, at 6:54 PM, Sergiu Dumitriu <sergiu(a)xwiki.com> wrote:
ok my bad, I meant edit/comment rights, not view rights.
If the bottom tabs are removed then those links will also need to be removed obviously
since otherwise a user can click on them...
I don't see any WTF. For me any page that is a end user visible page can have
comments without any WTF. For example on the tag dashboard page, someone may comment and
say "how do I get the tag dashboard to display xxx?" or anything else in just
the same way it's done on any other page.
In addition I'm actually finding the removal of the bottom tab a huge WTF. As a user
I know what a page is, and if I see those tabs are not present on some pages, I'll
think "what???? WTF? Why is there not tabs there….
No, I'm not saying that comments are useless in general, I'm saying that
there are certain pages where they shouldn't be displayed. And I thought
I've been clear enough, but apparently not. Let me try again.
There are content documents, and there are actions. Some actions are
implemented in VM templates, some straight in servlets or Struts
actions, some in scripted documents. There are no comments on the
Registration page, even though its code comes from a document. We can
find a valid use case for comments on the registration page (for
example, a user could try to warn others that "Hey, the user name is
case sensitive, make sure you choose one accordingly since you'll have
to respect the case when logging in"), but that doesn't mean that we
should enable comments on the registration page. This an an _action_.
People go to the registration page to _do_ something (create a new
account), they don't go there to _read_ the registration form in case
there's something interesting there.
There are many examples of actions where we don't have comments and
attachments and the other tabs, and nobody ever asked for them (renaming
a document, logging in, editing the page rights, the administration
pages, to name just a few). Speaking of administration pages, they are
all stored as documents in the wiki. But we don't display their comments
and attachments in the administration interface. It is possible to
manage their attachments, though, so it's not like they're completely
disabled for those pages. And I'm not proposing to disable them. They
are valid and have their purpose, but they shouldn't be displayed to
users that just want to _do_ stuff, using the action document as it is
supposed to be used, as a way to perform actions. They would be
cluttering the UI needlessly, and clutter isn't good. A good UI should
be clear and simple. Removing as much distractions as possible is good
way towards simplicity, and thus usability.
Code should be optimized so that the performance is better for the the
most used branches. Similarly, the UI should be optimized for the most
common use cases. How many users really have to add comments on an
action document? How often do administrator really leave important
messages to other administrators on wiki documents? Very rarely. Does it
make sense for this odd use case to keep the UI cluttered? I doubt that
users will be baffled more by the fact that comments are missing on some
actions than by the fact that you can actually have comments on actions.
While you and I know that "everything is a document" in XWiki, normal
users just view actions as actions. Registering is an action, logging in
is an action, searching for documents is an action, browsing documents
by tags is an action. The fact that logging in is done through several
VM templates, Struts actions and internal XWiki components, while
browsing tags is done through a wiki document, has no significance to
the simple user.
For some actions/documents it is clear when the main purpose is for
users to _do_ something or to _read_ something. Sure, there's some
reading involved in every action, and there's some doing involved in
every content read. For some actions it would be debatable in which
category they fit better. It would be hard to come up with a clear and
precise rule. I can't come up with one. Can you?
That's why I'm proposing to just accept that there are documents
intended to be used mostly as action pages, and in that case it is OK to
hide the bottom tabs. That's all I'm asking. Do you agree or not with
this basic choice?
As for the actual decision of which documents fall into this category, I
think that it's OK to trust the opinion of the committers. We don't need
to decide now, we can improve things as we go along.
(I agree that the title of the proposal could have been better, since
"technical pages" isn't a clear enough term)
--
Sergiu Dumitriu
http://purl.org/net/sergiu
On 01/20/2013 11:31 AM, Vincent Massol wrote:
If you're saying that comments are useless then we should remove comments… :)
On Jan 20, 2013, at 5:22 PM, Sergiu Dumitriu <sergiu(a)xwiki.org> wrote:
> 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?
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. 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?
Again if your point is that comments are useless then we should remove comments. I think
there's a place for comments but it seems your discussion is actually asking us to
define more precisely what is the use case/need for comments.
Also I think there's a difference between a Tag Dashboard page which is a technical
page but for end users and a technical page not for end users (i.e. hidden page). Both
will need different solutions I think. So this proposal should address both needs.
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/
It's not because it's been done that it's an accepted strategy/decision.
I've seen those and I've always been uneasy about them and they've been done
without any strategy whatsoever…
All I'm saying is that we need this discussion because we need to know 1) if we want
to remove bottom tabs 2) and if so, on which pages.
ATM it's not clear for me at all.