stop turning "lj user=" into a link to a DW account

[kate_nepveu]

Title:
stop turning "lj user=" into a link to a DW account

Area:
markup

Summary:
I have seen at least two people think, quite reasonably, that "lj user" ought to create a link to a livejournal account and been confused and frustrated when it does not.

Remove this source of confusion and frustration by no longer permitting use of "lj user=".

Description:
The syntax "lj user=" is ambiguous. On LJ, it creates a link to (1) an account on that site which (2) happens to be LiveJournal.

Allowing its use on DW permits confusion as to whether it will link to (1) an account on this site (DW) or (2) LiveJournal. Especially since posters can see other people successfully creating LJ account links.

Stop allowing this confusion by removing use of "lj user=".

To help people make the transition to proper syntax, check posts and comments for it as they are submitted. If it appears, return an error message that it is not permitted and provide the correct syntax options.

Poll #725

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 66

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
16 (24.2%)

Should be implemented with changes.
8 (12.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
39 (59.1%)

(Other: please comment)
3 (4.5%)

Comments

[cesy]

It's a good point about the potential confusion. I like the suggestion of checking posts for it when they're submitted and giving an explanation. However, there remains the issue of what to do for posts made by client or email.

I'd suggest that "lj user" should continue with the current link behaviour, but when it is used in a post from update.bml, a message should be displayed on the usual "success" page, explaining where the tag will currently link to (DW) and noting that either "user name=" or "user name= site=livejournal.com" is recommended, depending on where you were trying to link to. There should then also be a link back to edit the entry if you want.

It's also worth noting that on LJ clones such as IJ (and presumably all the other clones), "lj user" will link to the username on that site, rather than on LJ, so people migrating from another clone rather than LJ will be used to that behaviour.

[cheyinka]

It's also worth noting that on LJ clones such as IJ (and presumably all the other clones), "lj user" will link to the username on that site, rather than on LJ, so people migrating from another clone rather than LJ will be used to that behaviour.

And that is why I do not want this to be implemented - better to instruct someone in the correct use of <lj user="whoever"> than have it not work here when it works on all the clones. (As far as I know, anyway. It works on DeadJournal, the only clone I've used at any length.)

I like your modified idea, but not only will it not work for posts made by client or e-mail, it won't work for comments. I guess preview could alert someone, but that could get annoying, and not everyone previews comments, anyway.

[denise]

I really don't like this one, because we specifically aliased <user name> and <lj user> so people wouldn't have to retrain themselves if they didn't want to. (And I still mix-n-match regularly, since I maintain dual netizenship and one works on both LJ and DW, while the other only works on DW, so it behooves me to keep with the one that works in both places.)

What you're saying, though, is that we've got some user-education problems, because <user name=rahaeli site=livejournal.com will get you rahaeli. Can you think of any way to better explain that?

[sara]

Well, for starters, it should be easier to find in the FAQ than it is. Took me multiple tries to find it for Cofax the other day. The user name tagging system should be explained specifically on the page about dw-specific markup, which it isn't right now.

[rho]

With that FAQ, I decided not to include all the different options and permutations, since it could get quite long then, since there are multiple connotations of each of the tags (user name with and without external site, cut with or without text attribute, etc.).

What we're generally doing with the FAQ is trying to keep things short and sweet to make the most pertinent information easier to find. Having absolutely everything potentially relevant written down in each FAQ sounds like a good idea, but in practice it makes the most important parts harder to find.

In the FAQ about Dreamwidth-specific markup, I had each tag also be a link to the FAQ that contains more information about it. So, the <user> tag links to How do I make a link to another account?

Was it not clear to you that that text was a link? If not, what could we do to make it clearer?

[sara]

It's about the third time I'd had to troubleshoot this for someone; every time, it's been this particular piece of information that's been a stumbling block for someone and hard to track down.

I think there should be a FAQ page that calls out all of the DW-specific markup tags (there aren't so many that I think it'd be excessively long, unless there's some vast store of tags of which I'm unaware). If it's not this page, then I think there should be a separate one. I appreciate the desire to keep things simple, but having the list of site-specific tags distributed across multiple FAQ pages isn't making it easier for folks.

[turlough]

I think there should be a FAQ page that calls out all of the DW-specific markup tags

Yes, please!!

[sky]

This. So, so much this.

[phoenixsong]

+1

[red_trillium]

I knew that FAQ was in there but when I went looking for it the other day I couldn't remember how it was worded and glossed right over it. I was looking for a FAQ tht said something like "How do I link to a user on another site?".

But then, I am known to be dense. :) And am very slow at learning codes and things.

[zarhooie]

While I think that trying to keep the FAQs short and sweet is an admirable thing, I also think that they should include more options. Most people go to the FAQ for information on Feature X. If the FAQ for Feature X mentions Option A, but neglects to mention Option B and C and D, they're only going to know about Option A and the other ones might as well not exist.

[ancientsavvy]

ditto

[kate_nepveu]

I fully agree with the comments about the FAQ and about a link to it on web entry & comment posting interfaces.

[matgb]

I'd actually support this, with a slight difference.

Given that an imported post will maintain lj users properly, why not make the code work as if someone had done site=lj.com if they use lj user?

That would be semantically correct, and for a lot of cases wouldn't matter. Cesy's idea about a notification on the success page of update.bml is also good, and a very easy page on all the site specific code (including inherited from LJ code) would be good--I recall it took me ages to learn everything on LJ, and I'm the type that actually reads FAQs and stuff.

[denise]

That's exactly what I was saying I don't like. People who are moving over from LJ or any other clone site are used to using <lj user> instead of <user name> to refer to someone on the local service -- IJ doesn't use <ij user>, for instance -- and changing it to rewrite to <user name=foo site=livejournal.com> would break everyone's habits. Hell, half the time I still use <lj user=foo> to refer to someone over here.

[cheyinka]

Why would it be semantically correct? Every clone site uses <lj user>, just like every clone site uses <lj-cut> - the "lj" means the same thing in both, i.e. "this is code from LiveJournal".

Not to mention a notification on update.bml only helps those who use that page - not anyone who updates with a client or by e-mail - and doesn't do any good for comments, since not everyone can edit comments and not everyone previews comments.

[matgb]

It would be semantically correct because it's referring to a user on LJ. This isn't a clone site, it's a code fork, clone sites have to use LJ code as is, thus "this is how IJ does it" isn't an argument in favour.

[cesy]

"This is how IJ does it" is an argument in favour in terms of usability for those users who are moving here from IJ, GJ, DJ or elsewhere, particularly if they have used more than one of those sites and are very used to that behaviour. If it's going to be changed, it would need to be flagged up clearly for those users.

[matgb]

This is true--Denise's point, that "this is what a lot of users are used to" is a good one, as it'd require re-education.

But "this is what the clone sites do so we should do that" isn't a good one, DW isn't a clone site, it can dump old practices, we've got DW specific markup that'll also be used by sites using the DW code; I'd rather dump LJ user completely than have it work as is TBH, muscle memory can be changed fairly quickly, and the DW codes make a lot more sense semantically.

[cheyinka]

As it happens, I agree with you that the DW codes make more sense. I don't think there's any actual semantic information in "lj user", though - after all, lj-cut does not mean "full post on LiveJournal", lj-poll does not mean "poll hosted on LiveJournal", and so forth.

Because the clones do it this way, this is expected behavior for everyone who doesn't only use LiveJournal. Breaking that without an outstandingly good reason would mean it was harder to get used to Dreamwidth for new users ("what's the equivalent of "lj cut" again?"), and "changing muscle memory" would only happen for someone who only used Dreamwidth.

[triadruid]

I disagree, and strongly. [Bad username or unknown identity: means,]fork seems the only reasonable change, and will encourage use of <user name=.

[triadruid]

Gyeah, stupid coding tricks.

Anyway, that should say something on the order of "I disagree, and strongly. [lj user= means a link to an *LJ* account, to me, and I'm a pretty savvy user. I don't use any clones, but if they've maintained this bad behavior, it's not DW's problem. This is a code fork, and it's already been admitted that we can't capture and reeducate in all instances where [lj user= will be used. Therefore disabling it seems the only reasonable change, and will encourage use of [user name= , the more semantically reasonable version, that much faster.

[kate_nepveu]

You put it better than I did, but it appears that we are fighting a losing battle.

[archangelbeth]

I don't suppose there'd be anyway to do lj user=[livejournal account] and dw user=[dreamwidth account]?

I'm happy that my lj-cut code still works, since I crosspost stuff that needs cutting (hi, 5,000-word chapter for my beta-readers!), but I have had to go back and fix [lj user = livejournal user] stuff because I posted from DW, but meant a LJ account. (I've been getting around that by using the http code, now.)

[denise]

If we did that:

a). any other site using the DW code would have to make their own version, since they wouldn't be 'DW';
b). we'd also have to do versions for every LJ clone out there, and keep it current -- <ij user>, <jf user>, etc, etc;
c). we'd still break people's habits.

To refer to someone on LJ, you don't need to use the HTML manually. You just stick 'site=livejournal.com' into the user tag, or site=whatever into the user tag really, like thus:

<user name=archangelbeth>: archangelbeth
<user name=archangelbeth site=livejournal.com>: archangelbeth

Backwards-compatable, too:

<lj user=archangelbeth>: archangelbeth
<lj user=archangelbeth site=livejournal.com>: archangelbeth

It works for a bunch of sites, too:

<user name=news site=livejournal.com>: news #livejournal
<user name=news site=insanejournal.com>: news #insanejournal
<user name=news site=journalfen.net>: news # journalfen
<user name=news site=deadjournal.com>: news #deadjournal
<user name=news site=inksome.com>: news #inksome

The importer and the crossposter do the the Right Thing with those, too: if you import, your tags get rewritten so that they point at the site you imported from, and if you crosspost, the crossposter changes all your tags to be the expanded HTML and not the tags on the remote entry, so they use the right site.

[archangelbeth]

a) Well, of course they're not DW! DW is cooler! O;>
b) Ugh, yeah.
c) True, I s'pose. I could get used to it pretty quickly, personally, but I suppose that there's been yet another oversight and I'm not Empress of the Universe yet. Y'all still rock.

Hopefully I can break my habits more, er, breakily and remember the "site=" trick this time. (You'd think that for someone who hates learning new HTMLesque tricks as much as I do, I'd use the rich text editor, but nooooooo, I do it in the HTML editor... And when I made web pages, once I figured out what the basic codes were? Did I use HTMLizers? Nooooo, I wrote on bearskins with stone knives!)

Thank you for the reply. O:>

[denise]

I suggest avoiding the RTE like the plague, personally. It's ... sub-optimal. Heh.

[archangelbeth]

I never liked it on LJ, and now I'm set in my ways, so I'll keep avoiding it! *beth breaks out her artificially aged icon*

[denise]

I have a pipe dream of fixing it someday! That day is not today.

[wistfuljane]

I use Semagic to post to Dreamwidth and it recognizes the <lj user=> tag, but not <user=> (no text shows up on preview) so I've been coding user tags with <lj user=> or <lj user= site=>. To stop Dreamwidth from recognizing <lj user=> tag would decrease interoperability not only with third party clients, but with other LJ code based sites, I think.

[melannen]

I would love, love, love to get rid of this, but as long as all the clients and all the clone sites use < lj user= > it will probably have to stay. We should kill it as soon as all the clone sites and clients are using DW markup, though!

Making the documentation clearer would be nice, too. It probably also wouldn't hurt to have a link to a page about DW markup right there on the web posting interface: a lot of message board systems have something similar, and it makes it a lot friendlier for new and casual users.

[turlough]

It probably also wouldn't hurt to have a link to a page about DW markup right there on the web posting interface

Good idea!

[hendrikboom]

Well, one possibility is to have lj user link to LJ, and have dw user link to DW.

[cheyinka]

But then you have a huge pile of something-user tags, and any time there's a new clone, people will be trying to figure out the abbreviation instead of using <user name=x site=the_new_clone.net> which isn't site-specific.

<lj user=x> isn't really site-specific either, at least not any more than <lj-cut> is. Besides, it's what one uses on DeadJournal and InsaneJournal and almost-certainly all the other clones - so it's not just that making the change breaks expected behavior for LiveJournal users, it breaks expected behavior for any user of any other LJ-clone.

[(Anonymous)]

I think would be great, though it sound like there are "official" reasons it can't be done. But there definitely needs to be better documentation on the right way to do this, since finding it in the FAQs is a pain (and frankly, the FAQs are so basic as to be unhelpful an awful lot of the time, which is one reason I gave up using DW!)

[denise]

At this time, there isn't enough support for this suggestion for us to migrate it into Bugzilla for implementation. If you'd like to re-suggest it in six months to see whether opinions have changed, please feel free!

(I will also make sure that the FAQ team knows that the process of user linking isn't as clear as it could be.)