Posted under Bugs & Features
The current default behavior when clicking Notes in the main menu is that it shows all posts in the order they were commented. This seems a waste to me as order:note already exists.
Whenever I go to Notes, I always go right to Search as that changes it to http://danbooru.donmai.us/notes?group_by=note. This shows the notes instead, which is what I want to see.
Thoughts about this? Personally, I'd like to just get rid of "group_by" and have it always act as if "group_by=note" is set.
issue #2989 would do this. Defaulting /notes.json to group_by=note instead of group_by=post would be a change in the API, but I don't think anyone using /notes.json really wants posts from it anyway.
As for order:note, right now it's significantly slower than /notes?group_by=post because of a couple bugs. One is that calculating the related tags for the sidebar is slow for single metatag searches. The other is that order:note isn't using the last_noted_at index because of how the query is written. Those problems can be fixed though.
reese said:
So what new information or function was created with this change that wasn't available in the version history?
Yeah, sorry but this change seems really redundant since /note_versions already existed and shows pretty much exactly the same thing.
And I really liked being able to see the thumbnails on the fly for newly translated posts.
Ars said:
Yeah, sorry but this change seems really redundant since /note_versions already existed and shows pretty much exactly the same thing.
As BrokenEagle said, /notes was redundant because order:note already exists. Listing the actual notes is meant to make things easier for translators.
And I really liked being able to see the thumbnails on the fly for newly translated posts.
Use order:note. It's linked in the navbar under "Posts". Even better, use translated order:note to see fully translated posts.
order:note is more functional anyway because it gives you the sidebar and all that it brings (the search box, mode menu, tag list, blacklists in the usual place).
As far as usefulness, it shows the current state of notes instead of just a particular version, including who originally created the note and when they were created. This excludes any noise that may appear due to notes being updated here-and-there, allowing a user to peruse all notes that were created over a certain time period.
Also, since most notes are created at the same time, this tends to group them together, whereas note updates for note versions can come at anytime and could be isolated from other notes for that post. I personally don't want to swim through the mess that is note_versions just to see the recent translation activity.
Using order:note would be fine if it wasn't prone to statement timeouts. Could we at least have the old version as an option?
hylarn said:
Using order:note would be fine if it wasn't prone to statement timeouts. Could we at least have the old version as an option?
This is a good idea. The old way was wasn't redundant so much as it was convenient. Would there be a down side to having both note list versions be available?
I'm still confused; why would normal people want to check out a list of notes rather than thumbnails?
The argument that the old one is redundant because order:note exists is the same as the argument that the new one is redundant because note_version exists. To say the new one is better than note_version because it has less noise is the same as saying the old one is better than order:note because you won't be bombarded by sidebars and tags; especially useful if you're simply bored and just want to see what newly translated stuff are there.
I can see this maybe being useful for people that's going through the posts to fix grammatical error but absolutely useless for translators, since you can't tell whether the translation is legit without going into the post to begin with.
BrokenEagle98 said:
The same could be said of artists and artist_versions, or wiki_pages and wiki_page_versions. They are both "redundant" to a degree. That's just the way the index function works for some of the more textual based items on this site.
I should be more direct with my question instead :v.
What exactly do you (or any other people out there) use the current Notes for? I browse the old Notes daily to look out for interesting looking series that someone starts translating, so I don't really get why would anyone want to see a list of notes instead of thumbnails.
I generally use it for finding new and interesting CSS styles. I also look for any interesting dialogue from the notes, and if I find something, I'll open up that post. I also generally use the tag search function to narrow down the list of notes to those from series I'm interested in.
I'll turn it around on you, if the timeout issue is solved for order:note, what does the old way provide you that the above does not besides saving an extra click or having to type something out?
The thing I miss the most is probably the lack of search bar and tags, so that I can see all the posts without scrolling. I'm currently using a laptop and I usually only keep my chrome at half my screen width so I've to scroll per page now. That, and I don't see the purpose of having general tags when searching stuff, but I digress.
Though I supposed it's mostly for the petty reason that now I have to do an extra click so that someone else can do one less. I mean, why? It's been there for the two years that I'm here.
Edit: If there's some sort of performance impact for using the old notes or there's popular demand for the new one, I would've understood why the change is required. But given that the new change will only ever serves people that likes to look at others' first attempt at translating a post or their fancy CSS, I think there's hardly any demand for it and all this just felt like an arbitrary change.
Updated
it shows the current state[...] including who originally created the note
Could be a little misleading if it lists a respected translator's name next to a subsequently-vandalised note.
Speaking of spotting vandalism: /note_versions could use some highlighting to show what was changed. Similar to the wiki history diffs. Compare note "body" and "position" to the previous version, if there is one. (Basically, I'd expect it to work more like /post_versions and show each user's activity clearly.)
As for a new default view: if /note_versions isn't good enough, I would model it after the comments page: show a thumbnail, then a list of notes (or note versions) that belong to that post, recent changes last. A new note/edit would bump a post to the top of this page. Seems like it might be friendlier for casual browsing. Thumbnails are nice and provide a lot of context.
parasol said:
As for a new default view: if /note_versions isn't good enough, I would model it after the comments page: show a thumbnail, then a list of notes (or note versions) that belong to that post, recent changes last. A new note/edit would bump a post to the top of this page. Seems like it might be friendlier for casual browsing. Thumbnails are nice and provide a lot of context.
+1 I could buy that for a "group_by=post" option...that sounds pretty useful. I never found just having thumbnails to be useful myself, as I had to open the post up to see if there was any interesting dialogue. If the original layout had been the way you described, I would have never have brought up this topic.
I'd even be fine with that going back to the default option.
hylarn said:
Using order:note would be fine if it wasn't prone to statement timeouts. Could we at least have the old version as an option?
Like I said, order:note timing out is a known bug. Actually now that I look, most other order: tags have the same issue. It will be fixed. In the meantime you can narrow your search with translated order:note or age:<1week order:note to keep it from timing out.
Vezral said:
The thing I miss the most is probably the lack of search bar and tags, so that I can see all the posts without scrolling. I'm currently using a laptop and I usually only keep my chrome at half my screen width so I've to scroll per page now. That, and I don't see the purpose of having general tags when searching stuff, but I digress.
I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying the sidebar wastes too much space on narrow screens? If so, that's really a separate problem. I have a userscript (topic #13167) that addresses this by letting you resize or hide the sidebar.
Vezral said:
Though I supposed it's mostly for the petty reason that now I have to do an extra click so that someone else can do one less. I mean, why? It's been there for the two years that I'm here.
I get where you're coming from, but something has to be the default, and whatever it is, it won't make everyone happy. I'd rather err on the side of helping translators, since they're the ones who actually contribute and who need to work with notes the most.
parasol said:
Speaking of spotting vandalism: /note_versions could use some highlighting to show what was changed. Similar to the wiki history diffs. Compare note "body" and "position" to the previous version, if there is one. (Basically, I'd expect it to work more like /post_versions and show each user's activity clearly.)
Agreed. There's a lot that could be improved here.
parasol said:
As for a new default view: if /note_versions isn't good enough, I would model it after the comments page: show a thumbnail, then a list of notes (or note versions) that belong to that post, recent changes last. A new note/edit would bump a post to the top of this page.
That idea occurred to me as well. I agree, that would be a much better presentation.
parasol said:
As for a new default view: if /note_versions isn't good enough, I would model it after the comments page: show a thumbnail, then a list of notes (or note versions) that belong to that post, recent changes last. A new note/edit would bump a post to the top of this page. Seems like it might be friendlier for casual browsing. Thumbnails are nice and provide a lot of context.
Agreed, though I'm not sure how well that would be in implementation.
If we limit the number of notes/edits that are shown per posts, then it won't show all of the notes of said post if, say, a translator has translated 10+ notes for that post in a short period of time (which is likely considering some translator translates sound effects as well). I doubt that would be desirable if you're using it for the same purpose as BrokenEagle.
But if there's no limit, then you'll basically be staring at the note_history of each post, which is rather lengthy.
Otherwise, yeah, I can see this being a better alternative than the current one.
evazion said:
I get where you're coming from, but something has to be the default, and whatever it is, it won't make everyone happy. I'd rather err on the side of helping translators, since they're the ones who actually contribute and who need to work with notes the most.
But that's what I don't get. I'm someone that go through others' translations if I find the thumbnail interesting or if the series looks fun. With the current Notes, I can only based it on someone's else translation, which I will automatically assume is correct as long as it's grammatically acceptable.
Other than helping editors that fix others' grammatical error, I fail to see how the new default helps with translators.
Edit:
evazion said:
I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying the sidebar wastes too much space on narrow screens? If so, that's really a separate problem. I have a userscript (topic #13167) that addresses this by letting you resize or hide the sidebar.
Thanks, but is it possible to have resizable side bar works without the header? It's a little awkward as well since you'll still see the sidebar for a brief moment every time you load a new page.
With that said, is it still possible to generate the old notes somehow so I can just bookmark that instead?
Updated
Vezral said:
If we limit the number of notes/edits that are shown per posts, then it won't show all of the notes of said post...
I'd imagine that it should work the same way as comments as per parasol's recommendation. That is, it should show the N most recent notes made on a post per post, then have a hyperlink "Show all" available to reveal all of the remaining notes via some kind of Javascript. The notes on display would allow enough to be seen to wet the appetite while not overcrowding the page, and the "Show all" function would satisfy those that want to see all notes from the notes page (instead of just going to the post show page).
