Clarify/revise Account-Display style=mine option

[kaigou]

Title:
Clarify/revise Account-Display style=mine option

Area:
backend, user account area

Summary:
Revise the Account-Display option to clarify its use in overlaying one's journal style *on *all* journals* and not just your own.

Description:
The option currently says: "View comment pages from your Reading Page in your own style." This isn't clear, but especially for users coming from journaling sites where a basic/free account means you see a fancy style on everything but the "read post and view comments" page, which left as a generic unstyled plain page. Even if you are LJ CSS-savvy, "comments page" isn't even a class (as opposed to page-reply, page-read, etc), so I doubt I'm alone in figuring that the "comments page" is shorthand for the "view single entry and read/reply to all comments page".

The result is that the option reads as though it's actually saying, "View your single-entry-and-comments page in your own style instead of that really ugly generic unstyled plain-font page that just screams you've got an unpaid account." (And the "from your Reading Page" part doesn't even make sense, given that assumption of what "comments page" means, because it sounds like this won't apply if you open the post from, say, your Archive page or your list-of-tagged-entries page.)

I'm sure discussion will provide the best phrasing, but here's two ideas as starting points. (Secondary help text on 2nd line.)

- View *all* post pages in your own style, including other journals.
// Select this to apply 'style=mine' when reading individual entries in other people's journals.

- Overlay your style when reading other people's posts.
// This option does not affect your own journal's presentation.

Attempt #2's help text is a mangled try at reassuring the unfamiliar user that "Turning this option off will NOT remove or nullify your style in any way", which was the impression I'd gotten when first setting up my account -- that to *deselect* meant I was actively choosing that ugly de-styled post+comments page.

(If help-text isn't possible, then at very least insert a [?] icon that links to a FAQ page about the style=mine option, because that's still better than no explanation at all.)

Poll #1749 Clarify/revise Account-Display style=mine option

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 21

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
5 (23.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
4 (19.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
6 (28.6%)

(I have no opinion)
2 (9.5%)

(Other: please comment)
4 (19.0%)

Comments

[ninetydegrees]

But this only works when you click on a link from your Reading page, not when you directly go to someone's journal then read individual entries. I think the original sentence describes what it does better actually.

[cheyinka]

How about "When I click on entries from my reading page, show those entries to me in the same style I'd see if I clicked on entries from my recent entries or archive page."?

It's longer, but it's the clearest way I can think of to get across "If you don't like seeing other people's styled comment pages, this is the option for you. If you don't want to see a styled comment page at all, there's a different option for that. If you want your journal's comment pages to be site-schemed instead of cluttered and styled, set that in the Customize Style area." (Is there a FAQ for this?)

[cimorene]

If you don't want to see a styled comment page at all, there's a different option for that.

There is? It was my impression that it was only possible to turn off the custom-style comment pages when accessed from your reading list.

[cheyinka]

Indeed there is! On http://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/options, there's an option marked "Show entry pages in my journal style rather than the app style"; if it is unchecked, entry pages are shown in "the app style", i.e. site-schemed, for your journal. (Presumably, then, someone who wants to see user-styled pages will get site-schemed on your journal.)

[kaigou]

"Show entry pages in my journal style rather than the app style"

*dryly* Yeah, that one's on my list, as well.

(It completely tripped me up when I first got on DW. What the hell is an "app style", I asked myself, and yet there was no little question-icon nor help-text to tell me whether this was supposed to mean the backend style, the style=light thing I'd seen around, or my own style, or what. Not to mention begging the question of which entry pages -- all of them? or just mine? or only other people's? Maybe it's like a foreign language, where you just learn to roll with the idioms, but it's really not intuitively kind at all to newcomers.)

[instantramen]

The option's current phrasing seems perfectly clear to me.

[kaigou]

In which case, I'd think one wouldn't have an issue with adding help-text to explain it for those of us for whom it's not clear: I mean, more info won't confuse those who understand, but less info certainly doesn't help those who don't.

[instantramen]

The way I'm reading it, the confusion in the original suggestion hinges largely on not understanding the term "Reading Page", which is already explained multiple times in the FAQ. To explain the concept yet again would be beating a dead horse.

[kaigou]

hinges largely on not understanding the term "Reading Page"

No, the confusion over "reading pages" hinges on a confusion with the term "comments page" (as opposed to "single post" or "entry" or "post" or "journal entry" or whatever), and what the first and by extension the second, have to do with one's style and the limitations of its application per the option.

Regardless, for the new user, your reply is akin to telling someone to look up that unknown word in the dictionary: awful hard to find what you can't spell.

However, I suppose one's perspective depends on one's objectives. Mine are to use applications designed well and clearly from the get-go, such that I don't need to go laboring through the FAQ except for really obscure questions, and I wouldn't consider the Accounts tabs -- a mainstay of one's basic features for selection, as a new user -- to be something that should qualify as so obscure.

Like I said above, if help-text is absolutely anathema or programatically impossible, then use an icon and link the user to those multiple-times-in-the-FAQ. But like the dictionary, a user won't go looking for information in the FAQ if their interpretation seems reasonable to them: they won't even realize that their assumption is wrong. At absolute minimum, an icon would let them know where to go if they want to check.

[msilverstar]

I find it completely confusing, even in this discussion.

Many people will not know what "comments page" means, because it also applies to posts with comments turned off. And sometimes clicking the comment link brings up a page with just a comment field and the post, no previous comments (mode=reply, I think). Proper labeling is hard.

[cheyinka]

"Single-entry page"?

[instantramen]

I don't really know how to respond to this because when you put it that way I can see where it might be confusing on its own, but on the other hand when I actually look at different journal layouts, all the potentially affected links (except for cut tags) are grouped pretty close together, which makes it easy to draw a connection between # Comments and Reply and Link.

If it helps any, I tend to read instruction booklets cover to cover before I even think about trying to put something together or turn it on. *sighs*

[zvi]

I selected shouldn't be implemented not because I thought the current wording is impeccable, but because I found not only the proposed solution but also the description of the problem completely opaque.

[starlady]

Regardless of any other changes made or not made, I definitely endorse adding a [?] link to the FAQ page after the text at issue.

[cheyinka]

I would definitely like more links to the FAQ!

[msilverstar]

Creating a consistent vocabulary for the system might be the right approach. The developers and documentarians (haven't used that word in ages) are already making real progress with the "read" and "subscribe" vs "access" labels. Having one term to describe what's now the "comment page" across the interface would be pretty useful.

[cimorene]

Entry page, perhaps?

[msilverstar]

If they're called "Entries" all over, then that might work, though it has some ambiguity, people might think that entry is nounish, and that's where you go first...

[stasha2g]

Better yet, the Single Entry Page?

[susanreads]

OK, I'm officially confused. I've voted "with changes" because something needs to be changed, but I don't think the OP will work.

I originally had problems with those options, and (with help) got set up the way I want, but the way they're being described here doesn't match what I thought I did.

Are "comment pages" and "entry pages" not both those pages with an entry and its comments on? I've seen pages when linked to a comment thread that only had comments and not the original entry, but only on LJ, and I didn't think that was something that could happen here.

As long as I'm logged in, I thought I'd see entry pages in the same way, which is the way the journal owner has styled them (with their journal style or the site scheme, depending on the other option). Then if I find it unreadable, I can click "my style" or "light style" on the navbar. Until you're going via a link that has ?style=something in it, why would it make a difference whether you're going there from your reading page or not?

Those options need revision anyway imo, and I can never find them both (which is one of the things I hope to get out of that card sort that was done recently).

[cheyinka]

"Comment pages" and "entry pages" are the same thing - people have found "comment pages" an unclear term (and that's what's used on the settings page) so there's been mention of using "entry pages" there instead.

There is an option to, when you when you click on comments links from your reading page, see these pages that we're talking about (like http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/193707.html) in your own style, no navbar clicking or link modification required. (It also modifies the link created by <cut>.)
That option is at http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/settings/?cat=display, right below the option that lets you choose whether or not to add the comment count to comments links and right above the option that lets you choose where the navbar will display for you.

It makes sense to me for it to be completely separate from the one that decides whether or not "your own style" for this kind of page is the one that goes with the rest of your journal's style or whether those pages are site-schemed (i.e. "in app style", "don't have custom comment pages"), because the decision about that might be different depending on journal style (I can imagine someone saying "I normally like custom comment pages but this style makes them intolerable, so I'll turn them off for as long as I'm using this style" after they go to a completely different style from their last one.)

[kaigou]

above the option that lets you choose where the navbar will display for you.

A lot of the answers here have seemed to imply that one can do this or that simply by clicking the navbar, but I never use the navbar, and in fact loathe it with the loathing of a thousand fiery baby suns, and I get a little grumpy at the notion that it's okay if something isn't all that clear in the user's management-area since there's this other feature that compensates for the unclearness by letting you change something easily. They're two separate processes, so if we could set aside the question of whether or not a work-around exists elsewhere, that would be really great, because that's really independent of whether or not the description in the Account-Display page is obvious and clear to all users...

...and given the amt of traffic on this suggestion, it seems like a lot of people are confused, though what we're all confused about seems to vary enough that I'm confused as to what we're all confused about, but we're definitely confused. I think.

[azurelunatic]

For the record, I adore the site-scheme comment pages. They're restfully unstyled, and no-one else's design choices are stabbing me in the eyeballs.

[kaigou]

I actually have no problem with that, and changing what it does isn't the issue; I just think the way it's expressed could be clearer. That's all. Like the way that in some places you see "site-schemed" and other places it's "app-style" that's confusing to new users -- the option is a good one, but it's the terminology's execution that could use some work.

[azurelunatic]

"app style" is confusing to me too, and I've been an LJ volunteer since before DW was a curl of steam rising up from D's head.