[drupal-devel] [feature] More changes to forum help text

[Anisa]

Ne, this is perhaps nitpicking, but do you need to say parent here?

>You may place your forum inside a parent container or forum.
>
When you put X inside Y, Y is of course the parent...right?

Anisa.

nysus wrote:

> Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/19434
>
> Project:      Drupal
> Version:      cvs
> Component:    forum.module
> Category:     feature requests
> Priority:     normal
> Assigned to:  nysus
> Reported by:  nysus
> Updated by:   nysus
> Status:       patch
> Attachment:   http://drupal.org/files/issues/forum_help_1.patch (5.81 KB)
>
> Posted revision to patch so it can be applied.
>
>
> nysus
>
>
>
> Previous comments:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> March 25, 2005 - 08:16 : nysus
>
> Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/forum_help.patch (5.98 KB)
>
> Here's some more changes to help text in the forum.module by order of
> significance:
>
>
> "Parent" selection help text: Added help description for this form item
> found on "admin/forum/add/container" and "admin/forum/add/forum".  The
> help description is different depending on whether the type of
> component being added is a forum or a container.  This change required
> the modifcation to the argument list passed to an internal function to
> forum.module.
> Removed duplicate help language created by the change above.
> Cut the fat from the help blurb on the "create content" page.
> "Weight" selection help text on "admin/forum/add/container" and
> "admin/forum/add/forum": Improved wording and made it more detailed.
> Help language for "name" and "description" fields on
> "admin/forum/add/container" and "admin/forum/add/forum" pages made more
> consistent and concise.
> Changed instances of "topic discussions" to "discussion topics"
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> March 25, 2005 - 09:03 : Morbus Iff
>
> -1 on parts of this:
>
> I dislike immensely your "Weight" modifications. Not only do you make
> them self-referential ("This setting" - utterly useless text) but you
> also hardcode their implementation ("+10 is the heaviest"). Likewise,
> you've made them, IMO, TOO long and TOO wordy. And "Weight" is used for
> various things throughout Drupal, so if you're gonna "fix" one, you
> should really "fix" them all. Still, I don't like the way you've fixed
> it.
> Your function change is fine with me, but you've got no spaces between
> your "if"/"else if" and the parenthesied text. You need the spaces to
> match up with Drupal style.
>
> Other than that, the other changes are fine with me.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> March 25, 2005 - 10:23 : nysus
>
> Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/forum_help_0.patch (5.87 KB)
>
> I do think the weight help text should be changed across all of 
> drupal. This can be a confusing option for those who only run across 
> negative
> numbers once in a blue moon:  "Oh, that's right, -7 is comes before
> +5".  Also, the fact is that "weight" is not explained anywhere else in
> the help file for forums or even in the Drupal handbook section on
> forums.  This is the only place users get any help for this option so I
> don't see it as a problem if it's a little long.
> As an aside, I think "weight" is a rather unfortunate analogy used by
> Drupal.  Why mess around with an analogy like weight when you can just
> call it "List order" and just have a simple list of positive numbers? 
> Forums, blocks, etc. with a value of  '1' would go to the top of the
> list and those with the value of '20' would go to the bottom.  It does
> the same thing and it's easier for most people to understand.
> The weight analogy is clearly the product of a programmer's mind.  It
> may be clear to the programmer who created it and to most other geeks
> who understand relative density, but the fact is that most people don't
> think like this and don't remember high school physics.  We shouldn't be
> forcing people to clear out the cobwebs in their head to use Drupal.
> All this being said, I changed it per your recommendation.  However, I
> would *highly* recommend creating a sentence with a short example until
> we can get a lengthier help file up somewhere else.  Something like:
> "Example: A forum with a value of -7 is listed before a value of +5".
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> March 25, 2005 - 10:46 : Morbus Iff
>
> Fair enough. Far be it from me to chastise people about negative number
> ignorance (hell, I /suck/ at math - I think I have, what, a tenth grade
> education?). Also note that I wasn't around when "Weight" was decided
> but, in my head, there IS rationale for using weight with negative
> numbers. Currently, the "weight" of an item defaults to 0. Fine, no big
> deal. In your system, however, the weight of an item would HAVE to
> default to "10", which I'm not sure is "better" from a usability
> interface. Why 10? Because if items defaulted to "1" (the first item in
> your revised list, and more understandable from a usability standpoint),
> then ALL items would have to be changed to "2" (or higher) if we ever
> wanted an item to show up before another. This is far far far more
> kludgey, and I don't think that "well, we'll just use 10" is an answer
> ("10" doesn't exactly inspire the "default" analog as 0 or 1 does).
> Actually, you know, no, it's not far from me: I think people DO
> understand negative numbers, and if they don't, they can make the
> visual leap based on the UI implementation of them in Drupal (the
> dropdown box with negatives before positives). Unless, of course, we
> want to challege the assumptions of "before" and "after" or "top of the
> list" and "bottom of the list" ;)
> With that said, I'm fine with your revision.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> March 25, 2005 - 12:14 : nysus
>
> You make a good point.
> Perhaps you could have each item default to a value of "middle."  The
> "middle" word would correspond to the value of 10.  This would get
> around the awkwardness and confusion of a user seeing the a number
> value of '10'.  On the drop down menu, you could still have the 1-9
> values appear before the "middle" value and values 11-20 come after it.
> To make it even more clear for users, you could make the word "top"
> correspond to the value of 1 and the word "bottom" correspond to the
> value of 20.
> Anyway, we digress.  Maybe Drupal version 6.2 will get around to
> addressing this.  There are certainly more pressing issues.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> April 8, 2005 - 07:49 : Dries
>
> Patch no longer applies.
>
>