Allow condensing of multiple icon keywords to one icon keyword

[wyntarvox]

Title:
Allow condensing of multiple icon keywords to one icon keyword

Area:
icon keywords

Summary:
At the moment, when you rename keywords, you have to rename to the same number of keywords to avoid ambiguity. However, there's no ambiguity if you're renaming to one keyword.

Description:
It makes sense to require that you rename to the same number of keywords when you're trying to rename to more than one keyword. It's impossible for the system to know which of the existing keywords should be matched to the new keywords. For example, if an icon has the keywords 'one, two, three' and you try to rename to 'four, five', the system has no way to know whether 'three' should be renamed to 'four' or 'five'.

When you're renaming to one keyword, though, it's obvious where the missing keywords go; they all just get renamed to the only new keyword. Renaming from 'one, two, three' to 'four', all three original keywords obviously get renamed to 'four'.

It's currently possible to achieve this by renaming from 'one, two, three' to 'four, four, four', but it adds a level of complexity and lack of intuitiveness that's unnecessary.

Poll #1870 Allow condensing of multiple icon keywords to one icon keyword

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 37

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This suggestion:

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Should be implemented as-is.
26 (70.3%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
4 (10.8%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
0 (0.0%)

(I have no opinion)
5 (13.5%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (5.4%)

Comments

[yvi]

*lol* I guess that means I will get a notification from D in my inbox that my suggestion, which was the same, has been rejected?

\o/

[denise]

You will indeed! Great minds think alike. *g*

[yvi]

Or saw the same support request

Got it already. Hey, one out of three made it through :)

[aedifica]

Yes please, especially if that means I can effectively condense keywords. I currently have one icon with two keywords (because I named it wrong when I first came over to Dreamwidth) but don't want to just delete one of the keywords because then that icon wouldn't show up on the posts and comments where I selected it with that keyword.

[sofiaviolet]

There's a workaround for this.

Rename keywords "right, wrong" to "right-ish, right-ish" (in other words, rename them both to the same thing, but make sure it's not an existing keyword). This merges the two keywords into one.

The page will display an error at the top when it reloads - something about trying to use the same keyword for more than one icon. Ignore this - you tried to use the same keyword twice, but on the same picture.

Then rename "right-ish" back to "right" and everything should be as you want.

[allen]

Actually, the workaround is slightly easier than that. Just change the keywords on the icon from "right, wrong" to "wrong". Then do a rename of "wrong" to "right".

[aedifica]

Meaning from "right, wrong" to "wrong2"? Because if I could rename one keyword to an existing keyword, I could just rename them from "right, wrong" to "right."

[allen]

No, just remove the "right" keyword from the icon with a normal, non-rename save. Then the icon only has one keyword, "wrong", and no icon has "right". So a rename from "wrong" to "right" will work just fine.

...That still doesn't quite seem clear enough. Let me try a step-by-step:

First:
Icon A has keywords "right, wrong"
Post A has keyword "right", displays Icon A
Post B has keyword "wrong", displays Icon A.


Change: Save (no rename) Icon A with keywords "wrong"
Icon A now has keyword "wrong" only
Post A still has keyword "right", but would display your default icon, since no icon currently has keyword "right"
Post B still has keyword "wrong", and still displays Icon A


Change: Rename Icon A keywords from "wrong" to "right"
Icon A now has keyword "right" only.
Post A still has keyword "right", and now once again displays Icon A
Post B gets its keyword changed as part of the rename from "wrong" to "right", so also displays Icon A


Does that make sense?

I just tried it out, and it worked for me. Though I should mention that there was about a 30 second delay for the rename to take effect.

[aedifica]

I am still confused about how that should work (because if it works that way, I am not understanding why I couldn't just rename "wrong" to "right" at step 2 and skip step 3), but I went ahead and did the other workaround and it worked, so I'm happy now. Disclaimer: it is possible that what you wrote makes perfect sense, I have slightly less of my brain working today than usual.

[yvi]

This gets *really* clunk with anything more than 2 keywords, of course.

[aedifica]

I'll give that a try--thanks!

[triadruid]

I clicked 'Other' not because I think this is a bad idea, but beaxcuse I want it to be a separate process than the renaming one. It's very accident-prone, so I want people to specifically be choosing to do this, rather than just leaving one off/hitting a stray Enter key and watching all their precious keywords go *poof*.

[susanreads]

Or have a confirmation message. Collapse keyword distinctions y/n?

[kyrielle]

This would be nice.

Or if the new number of keywords is not equal to the old number, present an interstitial that tells you to link them up....

[allen]

As mentioned above, you can merge keywords just by removing one of the keywords and then renaming the other to the original. It's kind of clunky, but it works.

Then again, the same thing can be said of the rename UI. And just grafting on a merge would probably make it worse. So I'd vote that this only get done after (or as part of) making the rename UI more intuitive in general.

[turlough]

+1

[msilverstar]

+1 maybe invent one nice UI for managing and renaming things - icons, tags, groups, other things I'm not thinking of here...

But it should always be obvious and nearly trivial to rename one thing at a time.

[cesy]

Can you think of a way to improve the UI? Design suggestions would be great.

[kyrielle]

It'd be cool if I could rename from one, two, three and specify (one, two), three -> four, five....

Don't know if that's doable. But it'd be cool to be able to condense.

[triadruid]

At that point I'd really prefer a nice GUI, or making your syntax command-line. It's really easy for newer users to bollix that up, and there's effectively no 'undo' button on it.