I must say I still don't really understand how yarrr is supposed to
look, and how the user would use it. We've had some discussions on irc
on how "inbox mode" should work/look and some talk about the structure
of messages and topics. However, its all very vague to me.
To try to figure out how this could look I made a quick mockup of inbox
mode. Try the attached glade file to see it.
... waiting for you to test it ...
The mockup contains a list of "followed" (subscribed) topics, topics
being both on the level of a mailing list (e.g. "Nautilus") and a larger
thread in a mailing list ("New external dependency: iso-codes ?"). In
each of the topics we display the messages posted to the topic in the
last 48 hours. Topics can also contain links to other topics, so we
display all the topics that are not already followed that are new, or
has had posts in the last 48 hours. We display the topic name, how many
messages it has, how many you've read, and a list of some of the people
who posted in the topic.
Each user displayed has a public-key icon, and people with cvs access
also has a cvs-access icon next to them. The subject line for a message
uses the first few words from the message.
Does this look/sound like what we want?
Personally I think there are some issues with this.
For instance, the mixing of "topic" as both a mailing list level object
and a thread level object makes it unclear how to post a new message. Do
I create a new topic, or do i post a message in the mailing list topic?
It really seems quite confusing. Are we supposed to always post as
messages, but if the thread grows "big" someone will create a topic for
it? Who will be doing this? Won't it be confusing when your messages
suddenly seems to be gone?
I read:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.html
today, and i sort of agree with him on the threading part. Much like
quoting, the branches of threaded discussion leads to the boring sort of
usenet nit-picking responses. Whereas a non threaded mode forces you to
actually read all the thread before replying. Maybe we shouldn't have
threads?
How does inbox mode help solve one of the big problems we're trying to
solve, namely:
"The same mailing list discussions come up over and over ad nauseum"
It seems to me that it will have the opposite effect, since only the
newest messages are visible.
How should we present summaries of threads, or parts of a thread. I
originally envisioned summaries as a wiki-like page for each "thread"
object that everyone could edit. However, seth was talking about a user
selecting a subset of messages in a thread and writing a summary for
them, perhaps leading to multiple summaries of different parts of a
thread.
I think we should have these sorts of discussions a bit more. If we had
a mockup and a few usecases of how we thing the first version of yarrr
should work I think coding it will be much easier. Right now it feels
like we're coding stuff even though we don't really know how what is
needed. I understand that we need to experiment a bit and see what
works, but we still need *some* idea of the final goal to guide the
programming.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Alexander Larsson Red Hat, Inc
alexl redhat com alla lysator liu se
He's a maverick moralistic vagrant living undercover at Ringling Bros. Circus.
She's a pregnant cigar-chomping Valkyrie with the power to bend men's minds.
They fight crime!
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