Topic on Talk:Structured Discussions/Flow

Previously people just used a section title. From all the time I talked to contributors, I never saw them confused about who started a thread or when; this information is readily available in its first message, and is not essential where we want to focus on the message content.

Gryllida: The meta-information in the second row of the titlebar is

• On the left: "$OriginalPoster, $MostRecentPoster, $SecondMostRecent, and X others"
• On the right: timestamp of most-recent-activity

If only a single person has posted to the topic, it currently reads "$OriginalPoster started this topic" - I believe this is the aspect you're concerned about.

Keep in mind that it is possible to start a topic without an accompanying post. That's the equivalent to just leaving an empty ==header== on a page. Hence clear attribution is useful for that situation.

Also, the hypothetical situation where User:A starts a new topic and posts in it. Then User:B makes a top-level post in the topic. Then User:C deletes/suppresses User:A's 1st post. We'd still want attribution for User:A having started the topic, even though their post is no longer visible (to most editors).

It gets complicated. :/

Suggestions welcome! (For wording changes, or other options to consider).

Quiddity (WMF): I like the current way of displaying the posters. In my opinion, this bit of Flow is well thought !

Off topic... I had [[User:Gryllida|Gryllida]] mentioned automatically instead of [[User:Quiddity (WMF)|Quiddity (WMF)]] in this comment, although I clicked Reply just below Quiddity's comment. I was better before, with a mention of the poster of the comment being replied to instead of the poster of the top-level comment in which I'm participating. With just one level of indent, not even mentioning the right poster means totally loosing any sense of discussion... flow.

Klipe: Re: off topic. It was no conscious choice to change this: it is still supposed to prefix the username of the exact post you clicked to reply too, but a bug slipped in. Just submitted a fix, so it shouldn't be broken for too long anymore.

I would show the topic author name only if the topic has no text, then. It's obnoxious, people don't need the name, there has been no single case when people need it.

The focus should be on content of the threads, not on who participates, and I see no benefit from mentioning the list of people who participated in the topic bar.