what's with the comments section getting moved to bottom of profiles?

Question

Just saw on one of my ancestors' profiles that all the comments for it were moved from the right side of the page to the bottom,  What gives?  Not at all handy or useful where it is now.

Comments

I wish that they would work on things that actually improve the website.

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There are some advantages such as replying to the comment directly.

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one could already do that Julie

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I didn't know that.  I was reporting what I'd read.  I thought that before, you could either post a comment replying to a comment, or go to a person's profile and then send them a private message from there.  As I understand it, though I haven't done it, I think now you can just click on the reply and send a reply.  Saves one step.  Some people seem to like that.

Edit was to fix typo.

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We didn't just move the comments to the bottom -- there were a ton of other changes to the commenting system.

Previously you could reply to a comment on the same page, but unless that person was the profile manager, they would get no notification of that comment. You could also reply on their page or send them a message, but without context, they may have no idea what you were replying to. Now you can reply directly to a comment on the same page, and the original commenter and the profile manager can both be notified (depending on their settings). Because replies to comments will be indented (up to 5 levels), the comments were moved to the bottom because otherwise it would be too squished on the sidebar.

An archive feature was added, which allows comments to be hidden once they are no longer relevant, instead of permanently deleted. These archived comments can always be viewed again and un-archived if needed.

We've increased the amount of text that can be left in the comment box. Instead of 800(?) you can now type up to 8000 characters so comments can be longer.

It's also easy to move a discussion that's going on in the comments to G2G. With the click of a button, you can copy the text of a comment to a G2G post if you want feedback from the community.

We also made it easier to flag comments that are spam.

These should all make collaborating on profiles a bit easier, so I'm not sure why you don't think this is an improvement.

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I think it is a HUGE improvement - thanks, all! 

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Why is that Ros? And why do you smugly 'thanks all' as if to say 'and that's it, no more complaining' … 

I haven't seen one argument yet why it was deemed necessary in the first place, and not one of the many (see here) praises on the G2G that actually states why they like it more ...

As I said "[...] the fact that the comments serve as 'drop'-boxes for useful information such as sources and links. They are not 'personal' memories. They are essential to the google-group system as we are using it now. Moving them to less visible places does not make sense." 

I've had it with WikiTree in it's ineffable logic always fixing that which is not broken and then throwing up obstacles in the process of validation of the profiles [and this Enterprise on internet] … though I'm sure it is done with good but empty intentions in mind.

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The biggest improvement I can see is that the 'new' comments section allows for threading.  If you read Jamie's explanation, you will see that the previous comments section meant that you could either reply on the same profile, in which case the original poster probably wouldn't see it, or you could reply on *their* profile, in which case they might think "what? who's this? what's this all about?".  With the 'new' threading, you can follow what the other person is saying.

And I wasn't intending to be smug.  "Thanks, all" was directed at the website team who have facilitated this (to me, at least) wonderful change.  It was not intended to 'close off any complaints'.  It was me saying 'thank you'.  Would you have thought I was being smug if I merely said "Thanks, Jamie"?

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I could follow before, I now can't see the trees for the forest. I am willing to give it a try though, and see how it works out in practice.

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I’m still confused what you mean by “drop boxes for useful information”. Why isn’t that useful information being added to the profile?

As to why this change is useful, here are two things I saw often where comments weren’t as effective as they should have been:

1. I comment on a profile I come across, at some point in the future someone else decides to respond and posts a follow up comment on that profile, I never see it because I’m not the PM and I never get a notification.

2. I post a comment on a profile, someone decides to respond to me on my own profile or in PM. In this case I do get notified, but someone else interested in the conversation would have to switch between two profiles (or more, for example an ancestor profile and the profiles of the commenters) to follow the conversation. Now it’s all in one place.

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Jamie, you make several very good points.  I had not even thought of how hard it would be for a third person to follow an exchange of comments in different places.

When I view a profile, I don't always remember to look at the comments, and that will probably be all the more true now that they are at the bottom.  I completely agree that the useful information posted through comments should be added to the narrative section of the profile, incorporated into the biography and sources.

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There are a couple of reasons why 'useful information' isn't added:
1) the profile is locked for privacy (say, the green Public lock) and the person isn't on the Trusted List;
2) the profile is pre-1500 and the person doesn't have pre-1500 certification.

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Yes, but the PM could follow up, and either refute the information or use it.  I sometimes see comments that have been on profiles for months or even years with no evidence they have been acted on, and it is confusing.

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Philip was talking about the “drop box” for project use, so I’m not sure if locked profiles would apply.

There is the little alert at the top if there is a new comment, and it’s been requested to add some sort of other link up there to make it easy to go down to the comments. That probably won’t be implemented until after New Years, though.

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right, had to search for where to put a comment on a profile that had none before just now, really agggravating getting things changed like this, wasn't broken so why fix it?  They could have done the comment grouping thing without changing everything else.

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Jamie, the answer is simple. Comment-boxes on project profiles (and we are counting 30 000 plus) are used by everyone to add suggestions, possible sources and definite use-full sources. When added to the comment boxes and the projects are co-managers, everyone part of the project(s) will receive the mails [if they choose do do so by their Google-group settings]. When added to the bio, these won't show up; nobody will receive mails. I honestly do not know how you can still not understand how research in projects work. And I do not mean Apps projects, I mean genealogical projects.

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Julie, you are also correct. But research takes time. And in time everything added to the comment boxes will or will not be incorporated into the bio's according to it's validity. We are working in projects with more than 30 000 profiles and counting. This is why the comment boxes are essential to good research communication.

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And July also - the PM = the Project, and many of the validated profiles get Project Profle Protection.

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Philip, the project group can still receive all those emails so I don’t understand what the issue is. (But make sure you log into the project account and go to the settings page to choose the option to receive emails for all comments and replies).

If the info in the comment is added to the bio, then it can be archived so so the comments that still have information that is not yet in the bio are more easily visible.

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Indeed Jamie. That is my whole point.

But I think that you are the one not getting the message here.

B.t.w. - only a few (leaders / research coordinators) can log into the project account.

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Philip, I wasn't arguing against the comment system.  But I do think that ultimately the useful comments should be incorporated into the biography and/or sources.

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"If the info in the comment is added to the bio, then it can be archived so so the comments that still have information that is not yet in the bio are more easily visible." - why should we want to archive it if it is meant to be communicated? As an archivist by vocation I can state that only when information is deemed 'latent' or 'not-actual' any more, it is ready be archived (meaning the value of it's informative properties has been used to the fullest). 

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Can't archived comments be viewed by everyone?

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Yes, for comments that are meant to be temporary — such as comments that come with merges, or comments with sources that should be incorporated into the bio, or questions that are asked and then later fully explained in a research section in the bio — those can be archived as to not distract from the other comments that still need to be seen.

Logging into the project account just has to be done once to make sure the setting is as desired.

And yes, I guess that I don’t see your point — the project will still get emails as before, but there are a lot of new features that other people have requested and think will be helpful.

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Yes, anyone can choose to view archived comments.

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Philip, you say

 When added to the bio, these won't show up; nobody will receive mails. 

Actually, anything added to bio of project managed profiles will get reported in weekly project summary that we get.

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Yes, but working with thousands of profiles per week, I / we only focus on the comments and major stuff such as merge proposals. I for one seldom if ever look at the weekly feeds (never ever). I do follow tagged LN'sAB as well, but we are allowed a limited number of those. 

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Ok, as an example [this is a question besides my point of comments being 'drop-boxes' - it has nothing to do with that], I archived 1 comment on this profile of which an unnecessary duplicate was made today but of which the bio anyway needed collatory bio-integration: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Néel-467 … Now can anyone inform me as to where that comment can now be seen (the archive?) …  

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Click the “view archived comments” button at the bottom of the comments section (it might only show up after a refresh if that is the first archived comment)

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I honestly do not see it anywhere ...

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Correction. I now see it. But I had to look for it. Seriously ...

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Those two feautures should also be at the top of the profile.

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https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Liard-1#comment_4176153 is on my profile, scroll down and take a look at the size of the picture in those comments.  Huge.  I frankly object to that, wasn't anywhere near that size in original format.  And was about another profile entirely, project related.

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@Danielle

We will probably introduce some max-width for photos so they aren't as gigantic. I don't know if I've ever had someone leave me a photo in a comment so I didn't think to test for it.

It's listed here: https://trello.com/c/VgygrD61, but we aren't planning another update until early January.

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ok, meanwhile, ask them to re-think the positioning on these, the bottom of profiles is getting really crowded, pending merges, categories, now this.  Very tired of having to scroll down to the bottom to see these things.

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Indeed Danielle. I also just discovered that I had to re-edit the spaces between headings and pictures on the profile of my progenitor https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Andriesz-6 because since this re-arrangement large tracks of text started moving spatially. There are thousands of profiles out there that I shudder to think what the same consequences are for since this new initiative. Drat! (for keeping it civilised - I don't want to be swearing here ...)

Answer 1

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/957489/did-you-see-the-new-system-for-comments-on-profiles

Comments

thanks Dennis, seems they limit the tags on these ''announcements'', not a happy camper.

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Instead of only looking at G2G for the items that you have tagged, select Questions at the top of the G2G to see 'all' questions.  The one about Comments from Chris is highlighted at the top of the Questions.

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Linda, the problem is that these changes get done and then the ''question'' annoucing them gets only a very few tags, I cannot be following all the tags that exist, there's a limit on those in any case I believe for what you can follow.  I already have enough traffic from the projects I coordinate so that this traffic would get even heavier than it already is.  And I can't be checking ''all questions'' for the same reason, lots of them have no relevance to my part of the world.

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All new features will have the “announcements” tag.

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I try to check all questions every day or so. Many questions are posted with no tags, so it is easy to miss things.

Having announcements for a tag to follow would be good.

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I simply don't have the time to be checking all questions, have added announcements to my existing tags for now.  Never saw any discussion on a proposal for this change.  Don't know if there was one.