Thread: "flat" links in mail archives are badly named
Over in the issue-tracker thread,
Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
> Evidently, the "flat" link is easy to miss. Give it a try.
I submit that the reason people miss what that's for is that it's very
unintuitively named. What about using "whole thread" instead of "flat"?
("flat" is fine as a component of the resulting URL. Just not as the
button label.)
regards, tom lane
On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 2:51 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> I submit that the reason people miss what that's for is that it's very
> unintuitively named. What about using "whole thread" instead of "flat"?
>
> ("flat" is fine as a component of the resulting URL. Just not as the
> button label.)
+1.
I would like to see the archive web interface configurable to accept
"flat" (or whatever it is renamed to) as a default. I understand that
a number of people have made this request, and work is pending on it.
--
Peter Geoghegan
On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 11:51 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
Over in the issue-tracker thread,
Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
> Evidently, the "flat" link is easy to miss. Give it a try.
I submit that the reason people miss what that's for is that it's very
unintuitively named. What about using "whole thread" instead of "flat"?
("flat" is fine as a component of the resulting URL. Just not as the
button label.)
That's easy enough to change. Another option might be "linear"? But I'm guessing what you're trying to convey is especially the whole thread part, rather than the "orientation"?
Magnus Hagander wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 11:51 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>
> > Over in the issue-tracker thread,
> > Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
> > > Evidently, the "flat" link is easy to miss. Give it a try.
> >
> > I submit that the reason people miss what that's for is that it's very
> > unintuitively named. What about using "whole thread" instead of "flat"?
> >
> > ("flat" is fine as a component of the resulting URL. Just not as the
> > button label.)
>
> That's easy enough to change. Another option might be "linear"? But I'm
> guessing what you're trying to convey is especially the whole thread part,
> rather than the "orientation"?
I think "whole thread" is easier to catch for newcomers, so +1 for that
(but keep "flat" as the URL itself.)
--
Álvaro Herrera http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services
On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 2:54 PM, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
Magnus Hagander wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 11:51 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>
> > Over in the issue-tracker thread,
> > Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
> > > Evidently, the "flat" link is easy to miss. Give it a try.
> >
> > I submit that the reason people miss what that's for is that it's very
> > unintuitively named. What about using "whole thread" instead of "flat"?
> >
> > ("flat" is fine as a component of the resulting URL. Just not as the
> > button label.)
>
> That's easy enough to change. Another option might be "linear"? But I'm
> guessing what you're trying to convey is especially the whole thread part,
> rather than the "orientation"?
I think "whole thread" is easier to catch for newcomers, so +1 for that
(but keep "flat" as the URL itself.)
I've deployed this change on the system. It will trickle out to the different threads as they expire from the cache.
On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 7:36 PM, Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> wrote:
+1
May be move the link to some more visible place than end of header line, which people usually ignore. I suggest to replace "Thread:" by "Whole Thread:" and make it linkable. Also, add explanation text into ALT tag.
On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 2:54 PM, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:Magnus Hagander wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 11:51 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>
> > Over in the issue-tracker thread,
> > Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
> > > Evidently, the "flat" link is easy to miss. Give it a try.
> >
> > I submit that the reason people miss what that's for is that it's very
> > unintuitively named. What about using "whole thread" instead of "flat"?
> >
> > ("flat" is fine as a component of the resulting URL. Just not as the
> > button label.)
>
> That's easy enough to change. Another option might be "linear"? But I'm
> guessing what you're trying to convey is especially the whole thread part,
> rather than the "orientation"?
I think "whole thread" is easier to catch for newcomers, so +1 for that
(but keep "flat" as the URL itself.)I've deployed this change on the system. It will trickle out to the different threads as they expire from the cache.
+1
May be move the link to some more visible place than end of header line, which people usually ignore. I suggest to replace "Thread:" by "Whole Thread:" and make it linkable. Also, add explanation text into ALT tag.
--
On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 7:05 PM, Oleg Bartunov <obartunov@gmail.com> wrote:
That said, I'm not saying it shouldn't be made more visible, I just don't think that is a good way of doing it.
On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 7:36 PM, Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> wrote:On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 2:54 PM, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:Magnus Hagander wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 11:51 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>
> > Over in the issue-tracker thread,
> > Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
> > > Evidently, the "flat" link is easy to miss. Give it a try.
> >
> > I submit that the reason people miss what that's for is that it's very
> > unintuitively named. What about using "whole thread" instead of "flat"?
> >
> > ("flat" is fine as a component of the resulting URL. Just not as the
> > button label.)
>
> That's easy enough to change. Another option might be "linear"? But I'm
> guessing what you're trying to convey is especially the whole thread part,
> rather than the "orientation"?
I think "whole thread" is easier to catch for newcomers, so +1 for that
(but keep "flat" as the URL itself.)I've deployed this change on the system. It will trickle out to the different threads as they expire from the cache.
+1
May be move the link to some more visible place than end of header line, which people usually ignore. I suggest to replace "Thread:" by "Whole Thread:" and make it linkable. Also, add explanation text into ALT tag.
I'm not sure that's a good idea. That seems to overload a lot of meaning into that field which if anything would be more confusing. Many people will probably just think it's another header.
That said, I'm not saying it shouldn't be made more visible, I just don't think that is a good way of doing it.
Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> writes:
> On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 7:05 PM, Oleg Bartunov <obartunov@gmail.com> wrote:
>> May be move the link to some more visible place than end of header line,
>> which people usually ignore. I suggest to replace "Thread:" by "Whole
>> Thread:" and make it linkable. Also, add explanation text into ALT tag.
> I'm not sure that's a good idea. That seems to overload a lot of meaning
> into that field which if anything would be more confusing. Many people will
> probably just think it's another header.
> That said, I'm not saying it shouldn't be made more visible, I just don't
> think that is a good way of doing it.
We already made one change to make this functionality more visible.
Let's wait and see if that seems to solve the problem before making
more-invasive changes.
(Do we have any way of tracking how many visits to the "flat" URLs
there are? If there's a spike since we changed that, it would suggest
that more people are picking up on what the link is for.)
regards, tom lane
On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 3:22 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> writes:
> On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 7:05 PM, Oleg Bartunov <obartunov@gmail.com> wrote:
>> May be move the link to some more visible place than end of header line,
>> which people usually ignore. I suggest to replace "Thread:" by "Whole
>> Thread:" and make it linkable. Also, add explanation text into ALT tag.
> I'm not sure that's a good idea. That seems to overload a lot of meaning
> into that field which if anything would be more confusing. Many people will
> probably just think it's another header.
> That said, I'm not saying it shouldn't be made more visible, I just don't
> think that is a good way of doing it.
We already made one change to make this functionality more visible.
Let's wait and see if that seems to solve the problem before making
more-invasive changes.
(Do we have any way of tracking how many visits to the "flat" URLs
there are? If there's a spike since we changed that, it would suggest
that more people are picking up on what the link is for.)
Nothing easy, I think.
We have Google Analytics on the site, and it's possible to search for flat. As some examples, I can see that during September, we had about 715,000 views of messages, of which about 2,800 hit the flatpages, so about 0.39%. If I set it to just the last week, the value is 0.41%. Pretty sure that so far it's within the margin of error, but we need some more time to determine it.