Interface design problem: help people distinguish between "answers" and "comments" on questions

[jywarren]

What happened just before the problem occurred

It's not totally clear, as some of these could be legit "answers", but it seems to me that there's simply a threaded discussion happening in this "question" post:

https://publiclab.org/questions/stoft/09-15-2016/what-mechanical-specs-can-and-should-plab-spectrometers-meet

I think some good UI/UX design work could help here. Threaded conversation should be in comments, and proposed answers should be just that -- and not necessarily threaded. It may be worth looking at the UI design for a typical Stack Overflow question, as a reference: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3624927/strange-doublerendererror-in-rails-3

Looking for someone who could try tackling this, potentially doing some sketches or mockups, and I'm happy to help try to get a design in front of people for feedback before trying to code something up.

[Pk13055]

@jywarren I took a look at the post; how do you suggest content should be divided? Maybe a post by a user can be made an answer and all subsequent posts by said user the comments? (also adding posts by other users referencing the first to the comments as well)

[ananyo2012]

I think this will need a complete redesign of the question page. Since there are different types of content present like wikis, research notes, and questions. So we need to differentiate all these contents. These are some points that we need to tackle

• First the answer editor is pretty similar to the comments editor in research notes. So we may need to come up with a different design for that
• Comments for answers show up when the comment button is toggled. When I initially designed the question page I did that keeping in mind the no of comments would increase the page length. But people tend to overlook this and there are fairly less to no comments to answers. So we should remove the toggling feature and just show the comments below the answers. That would prompt people to comment more frequently
• Probably we should use a different font size and style for comments to make it easier to distinguish between answers and comments
• Possibly we should keep comments more simpler and remove markdown for comments in question page. That would emphasize comments are solely used for threaded discussion and no extra feature would be supported. Answers are for actually "answering" a question.
• Lastly some different design for answers can help to keep it different from comments in research notes.

[Pk13055]

I can start working on the comments toggle button; making comment appear immediately after the answer should be fairly easy to do.
How about using a different font size for the comments and answers? That would help differentiate without altering the overall aesthetic of the page.
Also, contrary to what you suggested, how about keeping the answer/comment style the same as the research notes? Definitely making the differences amongst the two prominent, but not entirely different from the other answer/comment sections across the site.

[jywarren]

I think we do need to break this up, yes. I like the idea of remove the toggling feature -- that can be broken into its own issue, please! And I think that if the comment prompt below each answer were shown by default, many people who are reading an answer would just comment there, instead of searching below further for a place to reply, and mistakenly replying in the form of a new answer.

See this screenshot for why people might try to leave a new answer when they really mean to leave a comment:

By contrast, if the comment area is already open:

For the rest, I like the idea of developing more distinct styles.

But what about if the "Answer" form were hidden at first, but there were a big button that said Post an answer which displayed it?

[jywarren]

Also notice how Stack Overflow's interface has the button say Post your answer and not just Publish -- a good reminder that when you're posting in that form, you're supposed to be supplying an answer.

Perhaps that change could make a good first-timers-only issue?

[Pk13055]

@jywarren The idea of showing the open comments box is good; maybe push the "post an answer" part after said comment box, without collapsing? Given an option of commenting and posting a new answer, I think people will obviously choose what they should; something like what you showed here:

[jywarren]

Hi, didn't quite understand the second image, can you articulate further? Thanks!

…

On Dec 28, 2016 1:55 AM, "Pratik Kamble" ***@***.***> wrote: @jywarren <https://github.com/jywarren> The idea of showing the open comments box is good; maybe push the "post an answer" part after said comment box? Something like this: [image: image] <https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/13479308/21517998/c4f18184-ccfc-11e6-953b-d656b126a6e7.png> And after that: [image: image] <https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/13479308/21518012/d921c13c-ccfc-11e6-9c7e-f59f97209e58.png> — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#884 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AABfJ9MFQhg12TRlowgaBxlU0GZbnKVAks5rMiP4gaJpZM4KVVte> .

[Pk13055]

This format seems good:

What I meant to say was that if this format is followed then I don't think we'd need to collapse the "Post an answer section"; people will (hopefully) understand, it'll be verbose enough if we implement the above format, don't you think? Changing the button title to something more precise will definitely help people post in the right place; do you want me to create the issue?

[jywarren]

Yes please do create the issue, thanks! And i think you may be right; let's do the first step, and not yet collapse the answering section until we re-evaluate for a few weeks of letting people use it. Thank you!

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On Wed, Dec 28, 2016 at 3:43 PM, Pratik Kamble ***@***.***> wrote: This format seems good: <https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/13479308/21517998/c4f18184-ccfc-11e6-953b-d656b126a6e7.png> What I meant to say was that if this format is followed then I don't think we'd need to collapse the "Post an answer section"; people will (hopefully) understand, it'll be verbose enough if we implement the above format, don't you think? Changing the button title to something more precise will definitely help people post in the right place; do you want me to create the issue? — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#884 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AABfJ2kOclEQOADKpYWBuyFlRcx1_uE3ks5rMsnsgaJpZM4KVVte> .

[jywarren]

Hey @publiclab/soc -- i have an idea about this but it's a bit of a project... I know folks may be looking for a small project to take on?

What if we decided to

1. make it possible to "reply" to a comment with another comment, like on Reddit.com
2. make a comment type that is "type=answer"
3. make all answers into comments -- actually migrate them to the comment table, and mark them as "answer" type
4. convert comments on answers into sub-comments, and are "responding" to the migrated comments in the migration
5. get rid of the answer system

???

[ebarry]

We have chosen another direction, so closing!! Whoohoo!!!!