Discuss removing "check spelling" from quick-reply commenting form

[denise]

Title:
Discuss removing "check spelling" from quick-reply commenting form

Area:
commenting

Summary:
This suggestion is for informational purposes: we're in the first steps of redesigning the commenting form to make a bunch of things possible that would be VERY HARD right now, and we're trying to figure out which bits are utterly useful and which can safely be removed.

Description:
So, we want to add a few things to the quick-reply comment form (the inline one that shows up when you hit "comment to this entry", NOT the one that you get when you hit "more options" that's a separate page). Because it's been years since the commenting workflow has been touched -- I think the last time it got any attention was when the inline quick-reply form was first introduced and I'm pretty sure that was in like 2004 -- and we've tried to shoehorn in a few things since then, the existing inline commenting form is kind of dire.

(The big thing we're aiming at is working up some way that will let you comment as one of your other accounts without logging out of the account you're in now and having to log into that one, and allow you to specify icons other than the default, the way you can't if you use the "comment as other user" on the More Options page. But there are a few other things we could do if we did a redesign.)

Fu and I are in the very very very first stages of sketching possibilities and discussing what the revision should look like, but one of the things we're sticking on is that it's hard to add the "check spelling" option logically: it doesn't quite fit no matter where we put it, and task-wise, it's pretty isolated (it's the only thing that brings you to a separate screen other than the "More Options" button). So, I figured I would toss up this suggestion, and float the idea, and if people hate it that will tell us something. :)

The proposal, to be clear: remove the "Check spelling" checkbox from the inline commenting form, NOT from the full form that shows up when you hit "More Options", to give us room to redesign the inline commenting form in some more radical (and radically useful!) ways. At the time the inline comment form was designed, browser-based spellcheck was not as good as it is now, and people felt that having to visit the More Options page to spellcheck was really inconvenient, but these days I think it's at the point where browser-based spellcheck is so much better that I think it would be less of a concern now.

I could be entirely wrong, mind you! Hence running it by suggestions to see what people's quick gut reaction is.

Poll #11699 Discuss removing "check spelling" from quick-reply commenting form

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 87

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This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
66 (75.9%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
2 (2.3%)

(I have no opinion)
19 (21.8%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[denise]

We did fix the apostrophe thing -- it was one of the first things we did, actually. (And I won't bore you with details of how annoying it was to fix, heh.)

But yeah, it's super hard for us to update the dictionary with more words and stuff -- we started out with best intentions of keeping it regularly updated, but ugh, the process is so damn annoying.