Extend icon _keyword capabilities to communities and other areas

[azurelunatic]

Title:
Extend icon _keyword capabilities to communities and other areas

Area:
communities, entries, comments, icons, bells and whistles

Summary:
If you have named an icon "_$communityname", use that icon in place of the default when creating entries or commenting in that community. An icon named "_comment" could be used as a default when commenting.

Description:
There exists a mechanism to have a different default icon for specific areas of the site. This is inherited behavior from LiveJournal. The mechanism is to name the icon with a leading underscore and a specific keyword. For example, "_support" will make that icon behave as your default when you are on the support boards. (So if your own default icon is somewhat inappropriate for support purposes, you can set a "_support" icon to make everyone happy.)

Inspired from http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/234611.html?thread=1563763#cmt1563763

One would have to worry about order of precedence if more than one keyword applies (for example, if I had both a "_dw_suggestions" and a "_comment" icon, and was commenting in dw_suggestions).

Poll #2367 Extend icon _keyword capabilities to communities and other areas

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 30

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
17 (56.7%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
4 (13.3%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
1 (3.3%)

(I have no opinion)
8 (26.7%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[cesy]

Of course, selected as the default doesn't mean you can't change it to something different when commenting or posting if you want.

[azurelunatic]

The existing mechanism is in areas of the site where selection is not an option. It would have to be decided whether to treat it as the default (if "default" is left selected) or actively select that icon from the list.

[pseudomonas]

I like this idea lots but the leading-underscore syntax looks a bit hacky. I'm quite prepared to OK the idea and argue about the syntax some other time, though.

[feathertail]

That's my concern too; this feature is undiscoverable. (At least, this is the first that I'd heard about it.) Maybe we can tweak the icon page to have it be part of the interface there?

[pseudomonas]

Well, we can make it discoverable (whether it's an underscore or not) by putting it on the add-icon page.

I just think something prettier like Special:comment or Community:my_comm_name might be nicer than something that looks too much like a perl special variable.

[azurelunatic]

It may, for all I know, actually be a Perl special variable, given that it's inherited.

[pseudomonas]

I have enormous affection for perl, but it's ugly as sin :)

[cheyinka]

It seems to me that if I specify a _dw_suggestions icon, that should take precedence over the less-specific _comment icon, but that's just me.

Is there a list of existing keywords?

[triadruid]

Good call; specificity/heirarchy will be important.

My only real concern is that it'll drag the server down with extra query/processing calls, but I'll leave that up to the programmers/testers. The other really annoying thing about keywords is that they show up at the top of the list, so if we start getting 20-30 of them, that'll be irritating. Maybe this can be combined with the "don't include this keyword in my dropdown list" suggestion?

[kyrielle]

This would rock.

[pseudomonas]

Could we just sort them to the bottom of the list and not have any extra options?

[triadruid]

Probably not, since I expect the 'sorting' is not done programatically but either determined by perl or the browser. I am happy to be wrong, however, or even to simply discard all _keywords from the box with code.

[pseudomonas]

Perl you can specify sorting order as a piece of code; HTML dropdown lists one can provide an order.

[triadruid]

Well there you are, then. I'm not sure they'd need to stay in the list since they're superinternal keywords, but they could be if that's what people prefer (for instance, if you'd rather type "_sug" than remember what keyword you have for your current sgugestions icon...)

[azurelunatic]

I know that userpic list sorting is something that can be screwed up, because I remember it having been done on LiveJournal: there was one epic fun bug that involved "random userpics" being selected. It turned out to be that the master list of userpics was sorted in X fashion, alphabetically regardless of capitalization, and the list from which people were choosing userpics on I think comments, sorted first by capitalization then by alphabet. I noticed that there was a pattern, and determined that it was that the same userpic was always being selected by the given keyword, and from there it was just a matter of determining what the pattern was; turned out that the pattern was that selecting the Nth userpic on the false list gave you the Nth userpic on the master list. I was very pleased with myself for having figured it out.

[cheyinka]

The way I would like to see it (though I'd still be fine with it if there were a whole bunch stuck at the end) would be with the "_" expanded to "default", e.g. "_support" becomes "default support icon" or "(default for support requests)".

Maybe users should be limited to a certain number of default keywords based on account level? Everybody gets _support and maybe two or three^* others, paid users get ten^*, premium paid users get twenty^*?

* _{I have no particular attachment to these particular numbers.}

[yvi]

There exists a mechanism to have a different default icon for specific areas of the site. This is inherited behavior from LiveJournal. The mechanism is to name the icon with a leading underscore and a specific keyword.

Do you know if this is used anywhere *but* in Support? *is looking at the source code* :)

[azurelunatic]

It was used for schools on LiveJournal, which Dreamwidth does not have.

Tangentially to the suggestion...

[sky]

...uh, wow, how long have we had this? Is this function listed in the FAQ anywhere? Because I've been on LJ since 2000-ish, I know plenty about the fiddly bits like working the admin console, but I've never heard of this function. o_O It would be good to publicize it more and make sure it's added to the FAQ somewhere, if it isn't there already.

Re: Tangentially to the suggestion...

[azurelunatic]

Quite a long time. It's in there now: http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=95

This might be a recent addition to that FAQ, given that I have hazy memories of debating how to best do it with JD, and those memories are linked to their current place.


(But indeed, as Denise said below, the capability for the _support icon has been documented/general knowledge among the regular support volunteers, for about as long as it's existed. It doesn't generally affect non-support people.)

[sky]

Thanks for the link! I don't know how I overlooked that all this time, but then I guess I've never done Support either.

Re: Tangentially to the suggestion...

[denise]

It's documented among the support team on LJ, and I think here on DW too. The _support keyword is the only one that DW has (pardon the pun) support for -- the other one that LJ has is schools directory-related, which we don't offer.

[sky]

I see! I guess it makes sense that it wouldn't be widely-known, then.

[exor674]

Seperate interface, I vote.

Behind an Advanced Options, or the like:

[ ] Use this userpic default for comments
[ ] [In / Comments in] [ dw_suggestions ]
[ ] For [ support ]