General UX, discussion list avatar mismatch

Kulga

Toby that could replace "Last reply"

Response?

Response 4 minutes ago by Kulga

Berlyn

I don't really see any issues with the Last reply terminology.

Dominion

"Updated" works, but sounds a bit jargonish. "Answered" is good too, except it implies that the OP is a question. But I'm wondering what the objective is. In terms of screen real estate, there isn't much difference:

Last reply
Updated

... About half an em is all (if even that). So perhaps the issue is not just length, but the fact that there's no verb? If that's the case, then I think something like this would work:

Updated by Toby 2 hours ago

It does seem a bit more natural to have the time at the end. (You can't do that with "Last reply" because then it sounds like we're talking about the last of several replies made by Toby.) And you could change the "Started by" string to match.

Of course then the username is a bit closer to the avatar... 😉

Toby

I was thinking purely in terms of length – but you're right, "Updated" isn't that much shorter than "Last reply".

I would argue that showing the time before the username is better for another reason too. On a narrow mobile screen, there's a good chance that there won't be room to show the whole "Last reply" string for some discussions (with >1 tag). In that case I'd rather the username get cut off than I would the time.

Dominion Hmmm ... is that 16 months or minutes? 😉

I don't feel the need for it on the desktop layout. Would it be possible to use the long version in the desktop layout and the abbreviated version in the mobile layout? (Probably too much bother, I'm guessing.)

Ideally as you suggested we would use an abbreviated version on mobile, but that introduces a bit of complexity which I'm not sure it's worth. We'll put it on the "nice-to-have-maybe-one-day" list.

Dominion

Toby Ideally as you suggested we would use an abbreviated version on mobile, but that introduces a bit of complexity which I'm not sure it's worth.

Perhaps the not-quite-so-drastic abbreviation would be the way to go, in the meantime?

Updated 27 min ago by Toby

I like that better than a single letter, not only because of the ambiguity of the "m" but also because it seems a bit less user-friendly than how language is used elsewhere. (In the long run, of course, it doesn't matter much to me either way. Japanese time units are all just one or two characters long. 😉 )

Darmawan

@Toby
I don't like the current one: "Last reply X hours ago by AAA".
It feels weird on the discussion list. That sentence is repeated over and over more than 10 times.

How about this one:

Or showing only 1 avatar:

Edit:
I forgot to mention that the timestamp should be thread start time instead of last reply time. I think it makes more sense because generally people don't care about last reply time as long as they know whether there are new unread messages or not.

wizgriz

Darmawan I don't like the current one: "Last reply X hours ago by AAA".
It feels weird on the discussion list. That sentence is repeated over and over more than 10 times.

Agreed. Ideally you could just have it say "time username" to eliminate all static text but oh well 😒

Toby Wild idea: What if usernames aren't bold? The reply icon might still draw unwarranted attention to it, but at least your eyes wouldn't be juggling the icon and username.

Otherwise abbreviating time is probably fine. I'm not sure if this is a 66-post problem, at least not for the beta, so whatever works works.

Franz

What about Darmawan's idea to remove the "Last reply" text? That is intruiging.

wizgriz

Not to harp on it but I feel there's a solution with using icons to indicate activity if the only problem is still that font awesome icons are too bold (correct me if I'm wrong). The most obvious being finding an icon that isn't bold/distracting (like the hollow speech bubble on the right), and as wizgriz suggested before removing bold from usernames. I'd rather see different icons for different types of activity since that's dynamic information without the repetition (good!).

Toby javascript:app.translator.translations.core.discussion_replied = '{ago} by {username}';app.cache.discussionList.refresh();m.redraw()

That to me looks like information about when the discussion started 😔
If "Started" is kept then as soon as a user sees that I guess they'd figure that no prefix = last reply and you sort of get away with it, but not an ideal solution in my opinion.

Toby

Franz But then it looks like it's information about when the discussion was started, not when it was last replied to.

Toby

Sorry to dig this up again, but the repetition of "Last reply" is really getting on my nerves. It's also less than ideal on mobile, because it pushes the important info (time/username) off of the screen in some instances.

I'd like to revisit the idea of removing the "Last reply" text altogether. As Toby mentioned, it could be confused with information about when the discussion was started. However, I feel like people will quickly catch on to what it actually represents (last activity), by virtue of the fact that the discussion list is ordered by it. I do like that it puts the time and the username front and centre, with no distractions. The important thing is that the username isn't immediately next to the avatar.

Anyway, to try it for yourself, paste this into your browser's URL bar and press enter:

javascript:app.translator.translations.core.discussion_replied = '{ago} by {username}';app.cache.discussionList.refresh();m.redraw()

You can try other variations by altering the {ago} by {username} part – let me know what you think!

Darmawan

That's the point

At least for me, last reply time seems unimportant because the "discussion list" page is already sorted by the newest reply. So it's kinda...overkill?

Darmawan

Ok, I just realized that the discussion start time and OP username is already displayed as a tooltip...so my idea is irrelevant.

Fastidious

Toby I pretty much prefer it exactly as you just provided it, that is {ago} by {username}. Short, clean, to the point.

Dominion

That snippet isn't working for me, even after I told Safari to allow JS from the Smart Search field ...

Would you also be removing the "Started" in that case?

Fastidious

Dominion It works for me, Safari, OS X Yosemite. It needs to be used on the topics list.

Toby

Dominion Would you also be removing the "Started" in that case?

Yeah. In both cases it refers to the last activity.

Dominion

Fastidious It needs to be used on the topics list.

Aha! I'll give that a try.

Dominion

Hmm ... I don't really care for the idea of leaving the "when" and "by whom" and removing all indication of exactly what happened. Yes, people will catch on eventually, but it's a bit clunky compared with the rest of the interface. For example, you could remove the word "posts" from the scrubber displayed to the right of this thread. People would be able to figure out what it means ... but why put the user in that position?

Being telegraphic in some places and not in others makes for somewhat uneven presentation.

If the length is the only problem, then perhaps you could get rid of the "Last" and just leave the word "Reply"? (As an alternative, perhaps it would be a good idea to revisit the arrow icon suggestion by wizgriz. It doesn't have to be an arrow. Perhaps we can come up with a pair of icons: one to represent the OP and one to represent replies?)

Failing that, I hope you will at least leave the "Started" and "Last reply" strings as two separate strings, so translators can add in verbs if they feel the need.

Toby

Dominion The problem is not the length, but the repetition. Leaving the word "Reply" doesn't fix that. Removing the word "posts" in the scrubber isn't comparable because it's not repeated for every item in a list.

Maybe you're right that we should leave the word "Started" there – certainly when sorting the discussion list by Newest or Oldest, it would be needed. But when sorting by recent, I think knowing that "something happened 2 minutes ago" is enough. Thoughts?

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