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votes
Is there any way to move the text box for topic replies to the top of the page rather than after all the comments?
It took me a while to find where to post a reply to a post, and it was a little annoying to scroll past all the comments to write my own.
On the other hand, it does encourage reading the other posts before replying, but I feel like that hopefully won't needed on this site.
Other people have explained why it's at the bottom by default, but it's worth mentioning that I'm considering moving it to the top for certain types of threads. This would probably include ones with the "ask" tag, as well as "introductions" threads (and since those are the other threads you've commented on, that's probably what you were wondering about).
The reasoning is that those types of threads are specifically asking for many different users' input on the thread, where the "correct" place to post would be making new top-level comments. Most other threads should generally be more discussion-oriented though, and having it at the bottom helps encourage that (reading the existing discussion and replying to others, instead of just posting your own new top-level comment).
I'm not sure it'll be good decision, as it'll be very confusing for new users, especially those who see discussion (or ask) thread as their first thread at Tildes. They will see it at top and when they will visit normal threads, they will be confused - why it isn't there?
This could be solved by leaving a message like "reply box is at the bottom" at top of the page.
But there is another issue with bottom reply box position - you are on mobile, you want to post comment, but there are hundreds of comments - it'll be very annoying to scroll all the way to bottom.
However this could be solved by paginating comments.
The way I look at it is, if there are hundreds of comments already then the value of a new top-level comment is negligible and the odds of it even being seen by anyone is extremely low, so I honestly don't see the hurdle of needing to scroll down a fair ways as a particularly bad thing. The exceptions to that are in AMAs and feedback threads where you probably want to encourage as much top-level participation as possible regardless of if they will get seen by anyone but the AMA creator or person looking for feedback. Hence the idea of allowing some threads to also have it at the top.
And with the comment box at the bottom, even on huge comment sections, if a user really wants to make that new top-level comment they are still free to, but it just takes a bit more effort. But if the new top-level comment box is always at the top there tends to be a TON of completely pointless and repetitive top-level comments that get made. E.g. Spend a few minutes on new comments sort on reddit and you will see an endless stream of pointless comment noise / spam.
I know, but it might also end up with 1 top level comment with hundreds of subcomments - and the same problem. I know it'll probably never happen, but as Tildes will grow, there will be pagination anyway - you don't want to download hundreds of comments every thread.
You can easily collapse top-level comments and all their children using the
[-]button, so the comment box being at the bottom isn't exactly an impediment to posting a new one in that case.In the comment sections? That isn't something I have heard about being added. Automatic thread folding is coming eventually and there was talk of potentially adding some sort of automatic folding to the entire comments section to help "refresh" the comment section of ongoing events and megathreads though.
Oh, right
Me neither, but if Tildes attract enough people, I'm sure it'll come. Downloading more than very few hundred comments at once is way too much.
What do you mean? English is not my mother language and I have problems understanding this.
Reddit doesn't have pagination in the comments section and they are at full scale. They use folding instead which is a perfectly viable alternative that is IMO way less annoying than pagination. As for what folding is... from the new documentation I wrote (which is pending approval for inclusion):
If you are familiar with reddit, their comment section folding mechanism uses a "load more comments (# reply)" button in the old design... "# more comments" button in the redesign. E.g. https://screenshots.firefox.com/c4uSQYcUHIu3tMmb/old.reddit.com
Ok, thank you. I agree with you that folding would be better
For future reference, discussion about Tildes and suggestions for Tildes should go in ~tildes: "Meta discussion about Tildes itself, including questions, suggestions, and bug reports".
Thanks
Can you elaborate why you feel that reading the comments before replying won't be needed on this site? I feel like it's very important to read the other comments and see what's been discussed before making your own.
Oh I just felt like users here would be more likely to read others' posts that naturally rather than under influence. I totally get the design choice for having it at the bottom, and now that I know where it is, it's not that big a deal.
There is nothing discussion about the group of people here. We have the same proclivities as all other groups.
The reason people tend to read more here is because of the placement of the reply box, not the intrinsic value of the average reader.
Nope, and I love it.