Desired UX for forums, and accompanying user stories
-
Unfortunately during today's ForumWG call, we did not have enough time to fully discuss @[email protected]'s desire to solicit feedback regarding the Fediverse UX for forums.
The next best thing is to collect those user stories via the fediverse and discuss again at the next meeting, so here we are!
@[email protected] will start off the discussion with a reply here.
-
OK, so here's what I've got so far, I'd really appreciate if others could add onto this with their expectations. This is basically the skeleton for what used to be FEP-9988 (which I've put on hold, since it doesn't quite make sense as a FEP in its current state -- maybe later, though!). ---
Glossary
forum : A central hub of discussion bound by an audience user : Someone who makes posts post : An article of discussion topic : A collection of posts grouped by a common title and/or subject category : A collection of topics grouped by a common title and/or subject ---UX for Posts (Objects, Notes, etc) (0th order Collections)
Posts can have titles
Posts can be responding to 0-n other posts
Posts should be viewed in context of the topic
Posts can be moved to other topics
---UX for Topics (Threads, Conversations, Contexts, etc) (1st Order Collections)
Topics contain posts
Topics can be split
Topics can be closed for further posts ("locked")
Topics can have a name, summary, content that is separate from the first post
Topics can be followed for new posts
Topics exist in a category
Topics can be moved between categories
---UX for Categories (Forums/Subforums, etc) (2nd Order Collections)
Categories contain topics
Categories can be followed for new topics
Categories can feature certain topics in a certain order to the top of the list of topics ("pinned")
The "pin" can have an expiry?
Categories can have parent categories and subcategories
---UX for Users
Users can be followed for posts and topics
Users can be messaged directly
-
infinite love ⴳreplied to julian on last edited by [email protected]
@julian For some reason the post on SocialHub didn't federate, so here it is: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/desired-ux-for-forums-and-accompanying-user-stories/4181/2
EDIT: i forgot about the 5 minute delay before publishing, it's out now!
-
A common property of topics in forums are pinned and locked states.
A pinned topic is always shown at the top of the collection, and CAN have an expiry.
A pinned topic CAN be ordered relative to other pinned topics.
A locked topic does not accept new replies to its collection. (
Rejectactivity?) -
This user story deals with expected behaviour when encountering a topic/context/first-order collection.
Perhaps it is discovered when declared as the
contextfor an Object. The collection can then be used as the canonical source for content for that context, and it's members queued for asynchronous processing.A scaling issue exists here in that a collection could be massive and cause an undue delay in processing a new Note if every other member of the collection needs to be processed first. Implementors should take care to not require the full context during processing of an Object.
-
Daniël Klabbersreplied to a on last edited by [email protected]trwnh: Topics can be split In addition to splitting topics, topics or their posts can also be merged into another topic. The UX for this is quite variable; sometimes entire topics can be merged into another, sometimes a certain range of posts within a topic (post 5 .. 10 from 15 posts), and sometimes a selection (post 5 and 10 from 15 posts or just a singular item post 5 from 15 posts). trwnh: Topics exist in a category For #Flarum topics can also not exist in a Category (we call them tags and that extension is optional, like all of our extensions). Even when using a Category, once the Category is deleted, we do not hard delete any topics contained within but unlink them, making them less visible but still existing within the Forum. Regardless, to us, Topics CAN exist in a category, it's not required. trwnh: Users can be followed for posts and topics Users can be messaged directly This sounds as if this is a given, I don't think it's guaranteed in every Forum software. But if can implies optional, then
