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"
CommentFileSizeAuthor
#8 forum_help_2.patch603 bytesSteve Dondley
#6 forum_help_1.patch5.81 KBSteve Dondley
#2 forum_help_0.patch5.87 KBSteve Dondley
forum_help.patch5.98 KBSteve Dondley

Comments

morbus iff’s picture

morbus iff
they/them
commented

-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.

Steve Dondley’s picture

Steve Dondley commented
StatusFileSize
new forum_help_0.patch5.87 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".

morbus iff’s picture

morbus iff
they/them
commented

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.

Steve Dondley’s picture

Steve Dondley commented

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.

dries’s picture

dries commented

Patch no longer applies.

Steve Dondley’s picture

Steve Dondley commented
StatusFileSize
new forum_help_1.patch5.81 KB

Posted revision to patch so it can be applied.

dries’s picture

dries commented

Committed to HEAD.

Steve Dondley’s picture

Steve Dondley commented
StatusFileSize
new forum_help_2.patch603 bytes

This patch reverts an accidental change to a line of help text made by the forum_help_1.patch

Steven’s picture

Steven commented

Applied to HEAD.

Anonymous’s picture

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