Dismiss announced discussion = gone forever

If I Dismiss an announced Discussion, it's just plain gone. It doesn't go back into the sequence of discussions; I can never find it again. This seems undesirable. What if I'm just trying to make it not "stuck" anymore?

oinkfu

I think that's the Unannounce option, right?

Roguefoxx

Yeah I dismissed all the announced discussions while under the impression they would just fall into the place of normal discussions after doing so and was surprised to see they were just gone. Doesn't seem like a good result at all.

Lincoln

@oinkfu - No, that unannounces it for everyone. That's an admin option, not the normal "I read that now go away" option.

oinkfu

oh I see whats going on...

luc

You're able to see it once it unannounced by the admin.

That's, indeed, tricky behavior.

oinkfu

Oh that makes sense though, I rather like that.

Lincoln

@oinkfu You like that the thread disappears for a member between them dismissing it and the admin unannouncing it? What if, like me, you just meant to make it not be at the top of the list and now can no longer refer to it at all?

oinkfu

@Lincoln Just a personal thing, I obviously use the announcements differently. But, I would say there should be some sort of option for this feature to decide how it works on your site.

Lincoln

Eh, I'd rather it stayed the way it is than add an option. I try to make suggestions that I think will be less confusing, not that add complexity.

oinkfu

It's just that, for me, I hate having those sticky+closed threads appear at the top of the page all the time, so if you dismiss it, hiding it until it's un-sticky'd (or unannounced) - that makes a lot of sense to me. Obviously if it's a discussion that I'm interested in, I wouldn't dismiss it, so the system in place would work well imo.

Jakob_Pedersen

Sorry I'm just testing..

garymardell

The problem is that, if you dismiss now it is gone forever, you cant even find it with search.

MatthewAlan

I agree with @Lincoln. For example, if an admin posts new rules or something as an announcement, after a while of seeing the same message on the discussions page, you would most likely dismiss it. Right? So say, you forget part of a rule, and you want to remember what it said, how do you go about finding that rule again if once you dismiss a discussion it disappears forever? You don't.

Just my thoughts on this!

Tex

@mark Why not show a "dismissed" link under Discussions if a user has dismissed some? Or a tab under the users profile.

I had to bookmark an announcement because I wanted to know what the dismiss option does. :-(

Mark

That is a bug that I was hoping no-one would ever notice. We have to make the discussion query much more complicated if we want the behavior everyone is asking for.

Lincoln

I'm not advocating adding options or tabs, just simply re-inserting it into the normal flow of discussions.

//edit: Mark replied while I was sitting here with the Discussion open. Didn't see it until after I'd typed that.

Lincoln

So we're down to ignoring it, mucking up the query (which I assume impacts the site speed), or mucking up the interface with a way of getting to dismissed announcements. I don't like any of the options... so I'll try to think of another.

Lincoln

Further complication: If you Dismiss an Announcement as the admin... you can never Unannounce it because it's gone.

luc

Well, you can create another account with admin rights, and unannounce it there.

It's cumbersome, but it should work.

Bac213

@bean I think that may just work...

Bac213

@lincoln, you can talk to Mark and others about it, though...

Lincoln

@bean That's a terrible workaround. I mean, I could just as easily edit it in phpmyadmin too, but that's a ridiculous solution for a bug.

luc

Indeed, but that's better than nothing, and easier for people without mysql knowledge (I would have gone the mysql way myself).

Something I've seen in a highly customized metaforum (it has not much left from the original metaforum, apart from the way it behaves) is that you can hide (which is basically dismiss is) lots and lots of threads (ie. discussions) but you've got a link to all those hidden threads if you care to go and watch them again.

I'd like something like that, basically it's just what's needed, being able to dismiss any discussion (not just the announcement) and then have some link (like My bookmark/My discussion/My draft) that will displayed those specific discussions.

Lincoln

An interesting solution indeed! Adding a line to the Discussions dropdown menu would be worth it if I could "dismiss/ignore/hide" regular discussions I wanted gone too. Extending it like that would actually make the current behavior make sense and let people have a more enjoyable and customized experience.

Bac213

Yesh....yesh..yesh!! Perfect'o, good one Bean. But I'm bad with Mysql and PHP coding, could you help me out? ...got it! I know do what Bean said but mkae it so when you click someones name you can't see their Dismissed Threads... Huh?!

Karawynn

Oy! I just discovered this problem — now I suddenly understand why my Announcements stopped getting replies. This is terrible behavior. Roguefoxx is right, the expected result is that they'll drop back in line; having them disappear altogether is aieee!

The one bright spot is that an admin account can go in and Unannounce, and those dismissed threads will then show up in the list of normal discussions again. So it's not permanent. But I have to stop using the Announce feature altogether until this is fixed. :(

I agree that Bean's suggestion might be a good solution from a user perspective, if that turns out to be easier than simply having 'dismiss' drop Announcements back into the general flow.

Lincoln

I've filed issue #222 regarding this problem on GitHub.

luc

Thanks Lincoln, thanks to you, we know how to create a search element :): #vanilla2

Lincoln

Haha, yeah I noticed that too. For not tweeting much, @Mark sure is taking pages from their playbook! ;)

Mark

hahaha - I forgot I added that functionality!