Reply to Activity Comments can be Unclear

[junsuijin]

Pasting the #buddypress-dev discussion:

(2:28:39 PM) junsuijin: apeatling: on a related note, i was checking out testbp.org yesterday when fixing some css for one of the minor tickets and i thought the interface for activity shown on apeatling's profile for example, that is in reply to someone else's activity, is a little non-intuitive
(2:28:46 PM) apeatling: that should be okay though, since that occurs far less often
(2:28:58 PM) junsuijin: i didn't think of any better way, but it's a little odd to click view on the in re posts before you can reply
(2:29:22 PM) junsuijin: maybe they should show direct replies to that item, and also allow replying from the current page
(2:29:54 PM) junsuijin: it just seems like a forum item otherwise, where replies are not possible, but then if you know better you click view or # and you can actually reply
(2:31:28 PM) apeatling: junsuijin: you mean activity comments showing on the profile?
(2:31:36 PM) junsuijin: yes
(2:31:41 PM) junsuijin: like if i'm looking at your profile
(2:32:02 PM) junsuijin: anything i could reply to, which did not originate from your profile, i have to click view or # before i know i can reply
(2:33:04 PM) apeatling: It's only comments though
(2:33:18 PM) junsuijin: true, it just struck me as a bit odd
(2:33:21 PM) apeatling: I thought if you allow people to reply to a comment without looking at the entire thread, it would get pretty messy
(2:33:30 PM) junsuijin: i was trying to think of more intuitive ways of handling it but didn't yesterday
(2:33:40 PM) junsuijin: yeah i figured that was the logic
(2:33:48 PM) apeatling: the action is also missing actually
(2:34:00 PM) apeatling: it should say "In reply to: John posted an update: blah blah"
(2:34:04 PM) junsuijin: i was just now contemplating showing any replies to the comment, and then allowing replies from there
(2:34:05 PM) apeatling: but right now it's just saying
(2:34:09 PM) apeatling: "in reply to: blah blah"
(2:34:11 PM) junsuijin: ah
(2:34:37 PM) junsuijin: also, another thing i contemplated was using ajax to unfold the previous posts in the activity back to the first, right on the page
(2:34:38 PM) apeatling: yeh I thought about that, but I think that's even more confusing
(2:34:51 PM) apeatling: you're going to get a bunch of fragmented conversations all based on the same thread then
(2:35:03 PM) junsuijin: that's true
(2:35:10 PM) apeatling: yes, that was actually what I did first of all
(2:35:22 PM) junsuijin: maybe just making a 'participate' or similar button or making view more prominent somehow
(2:35:27 PM) apeatling: you could click "show thread" and it would load the thread in place of the comment, and the highlight the comment
(2:35:40 PM) apeatling: that would probably make a nice plugin thogh
(2:35:50 PM) junsuijin: yeah, why did you ditch that way?
(2:36:00 PM) windhamdavid: you could just change # to <view>
(2:36:06 PM) apeatling: it was a bit clunky
(2:36:08 PM) junsuijin: yeah there are 2 links there
(2:36:21 PM) junsuijin: but like forum activity items, you can't reply to
(2:36:26 PM) junsuijin: so it gets a little confusing for a new user
(2:36:40 PM) junsuijin: they would think they can't reply to the other items either unless they knew to click view or #
(2:37:00 PM) apeatling: I think on the items that you can't comment on
(2:37:06 PM) apeatling: there should be a "View" link in place of "comment"
(2:37:09 PM) apeatling: "reply"
(2:37:21 PM) apeatling: maybe
(2:37:58 PM) junsuijin: looking at your profile quick
(2:38:16 PM) windhamdavid: i think "reply" is more intuitive for the user
(2:38:57 PM) junsuijin: yeah you're right about the "posted a new activity comment" and then it's not exactly clear that it's coming from some other thread aside from the reply to
(2:40:20 PM) junsuijin: i'm not sur about view vs reply, because you can reply on forums too just not the same way of course
(2:41:20 PM) junsuijin: the different avatar sizes do provide a bit more of a clue too i suppose
(2:42:24 PM) junsuijin: maybe if "In reply to" was a link as well and also a pill that would be enough of a clue
(2:42:47 PM) apeatling: yeh that's not a bad idea
(2:42:55 PM) apeatling: can you put this in an enhancement ticket and link me?
(2:42:59 PM) junsuijin: yeah sure
(2:43:00 PM) apeatling: otherwise this stuff is going to get lost
(2:43:02 PM) apeatling: thanks
(2:44:38 PM) jjj: Hm ​http://testbp.org/members/johnjamesjacoby/activity/62968/
(2:44:59 PM) jjj: Interesting side effect; you can't post replies, but you can still narrow down the activity to a single event.
(2:45:26 PM) jjj: I had to type the URL though, since the # is hidden.
(2:45:47 PM) apeatling: anything that hits the activity stream has a permalink
(2:46:00 PM) apeatling: but for forum replies and other items, they are not that useful
(2:46:07 PM) jjj: Right
(2:46:45 PM) jjj: I think we should ditch the :
(2:46:45 PM) apeatling: with a forum reply, you want to see the topic, so you can reply
(2:47:00 PM) apeatling: at the end of the action?
(2:47:08 PM) jjj: Yeah
(2:47:16 PM) apeatling: yeh good call
(2:47:27 PM) jjj: The time-since should probably have a nowrap too

[r-a-y]

Thanks for posting the log, junsuijin, I missed the dev meeting.

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At first, I had the same thoughts as you, junsuijin, about the activity comments.

In my view, a BP user's activiy stream is similar to a user's Twitter stream; I'm slowly getting used to it, of course, there's always room for improvement.

Maybe instead of the "#" or the "View" link in activity comments, the anchor text could say "View entire discussion" or "View in context" or something like that.

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JJJ's link to the forum activity permalink is interesting. Didn't know about that.

Is it possible to add a meta robots tag to nofollow,noindex the forum and blog comment activity permalinks?

[boonebgorges]

I'm having a hard time parsing a specific request out of this ticket, so I'm going to close this one. If there's something worth harvesting out of the above, perhaps someone could reopen with clarification.