Other options for Category Forum - Phrase topic.meta.post.reply?

  • 26 March 2021
  • 6 replies
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DannyPancratz
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Userlevel 6
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We are getting feedback from our users that they are confused by the topic.meta.post.reply phrase behind the user name of the topic author/replier.

They see the author’s name with “40 replies” behind their name and assume that means the post has that many replies. And/or they see “16 replies” behind the user ID of someone who replied and are assuming they’re missing sub-replies to that reply. 

I know I can edit this phrase to hide/eliminate it, or change it to something else. 

What other options have others used here? Are there other codes like the default one below that I might use? 


{n} reply|{n} replies

6 replies

Blastoise186
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It seems as if you’ve got users who are more used to Reddit than a more traditional style of forum software.

I guess you could use something like User has x comments, though it’s worth noting that the overall reply count for a topic is listed at the top of each page. But it’s tricky because you don’t want to make it too long, or it could waste a lot of space on mobile.

Bug blasting absolutely everything... The Blastoise Way
Julian
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Userlevel 2
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Indeed, I am also a bit concerned about the lenght - this could cause issues on smaller mobile devices.

I probably would change it to:

{n} reply posted |{n} replies posted

This is relatively simple and short, but should do the trick in my opinion. I cannot remember hearing this often in the past, so my assumption is that it is just a small fraction that might be confused by this.

Unfortunately it is not possible to replace this with something else, if that was your question. I think it should be possible to “hide” this completely by replacing it with blanks. But as far as I know this would have to be done in HTML, as phrases cannot be empty, so e.g.

<p>&nbsp;</p>

Then this field would not be visible to users and you prevent them from being confused.

However I would recommend to think about this twice, as I feel it might be out of balance to satisfy a smaller, vocal group with the cost of reducing the positive impact this item has on the general user experience.

I follow my nose, it always knows
DannyPancratz
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Userlevel 6
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Thanks, @Julian and @Blastoise186. 

Julian, could you please unpack this a bit more? 

However I would recommend to think about this twice, as I feel it might be out of balance to satisfy a smaller, vocal group with the cost of reducing the positive impact this item has on the general user experience.

I agree with your recommendation to hold off on any changes to see if there’s a stronger signal from the community that it’s an issue. But could you describe the intended positive impact it’s designed to have? 

Is it to provide context as to the the activity level of the person replying? Is it to gamify replying? 

To be honest, I too was confused by this when I first started posting here on InSpired and learning the Insided platform. I quickly deduced what it meant, but I haven't quite understood how this context is intended to help. 

I’d love to understand more, both for myself, as well as to pass along that insight to stakeholders and community members who are confused by its intended value. 

Julian
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Userlevel 2
Badge +3

Thanks for sharing your own experience here, this helps us to evaluate and refine our decisions. This of course also counts for forwarding end user feedback, as this does not always reach us!

In a way I also think the wording could be improved to avoid confusion, I can understand if a first-time visitor might think it is referring to something else. After years of working with the platform, heavy-users like me probably also have gotten so used to it that we see it in a different way.

About your question: you are right, I was mainly referring to the impact this text has on people who are reading or posting in a thread, in a way that it gives some context as to who the author is and how much activity the user already had on the community.

Badges and ranks are surely working in a similar way, they can increase the trustworthiness of the content they are reading. This can give readers more confidence that certain information indeed is correct and helpful, which could motivate some users to spend time to read longer posts and e.g. try out some tips or instructions they have found in a post.

However Badges are not very visible, unless someone hovers over a username. Also, not every user owns a Badge. So the reply counter helps here to further indicate user expertise that is visible in each post of a user, next to their rank title.

@xiaoyu-shen might be able to tell more about this, as she is actually way more into this subject than I am. :)

I follow my nose, it always knows
xiaoyu-shen
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Hi @DannyPancratz, 

They see the author’s name with “40 replies” behind their name and assume that means the post has that many replies. And/or they see “16 replies” behind the user ID of someone who replied and are assuming they’re missing sub-replies to that reply. 

This seems like a data inconsistency to me. Could you please elaborate a bit on the issue? An example would be very helpful. 

Is it to provide context as to the the activity level of the person replying? Is it to gamify replying? 

The main goal of displaying the number of replies in the topic page is to show the activity level of the author indeed. I see that it causes some confusion for you, does it make sense for you now? Or would you like to share some ideas to improve it? 

DannyPancratz
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Userlevel 6
Badge +5

@xiaoyu-shen 

On the first question. It is not a data inconsistency issue. Some of our users have told me that they the number of replies behind the author/replier’s name and they assume it means other users’ replies to that topic/reply, not anything to do with the activity level of the author/replier. As Blastoise said in the first reply, it seems they are more familiar with how Reddit or Facebook’s multi-level threaded comments work, rather than a single topic thread like on Insided. 

On the second question. Thanks for confirming the intent is to show the activity level of the author. No longer confused. It makes sense. 

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