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Following a suggestion of Mike in #33 here, I have now added something at the top of every nLab page which links to the corresponding discussion thread at the nForum (defined to be last active thread with same title as the nLab page) if it exists, and has a slightly different message if not. See cubical set for an example where the thread exists, and homotopy groups of a cubical Kan complex for an example where it does not exist.
Let me know what you think! It may well be that the placement and styling are not optimal, and the wording no doubt can be improved. Just let me know concrete suggestions for how to improve it (or I am completely happy to remove this if it is not felt to be useful).
For the interested, this is implemented in a similar way as the edit announcer: there is an API (fancy jargon for script) written in Python, compiled to C using Cython, and then to a binary, which is called from Instiki. The API is actually independent of the announcer API.
Neat, thanks! It’s exciting to have you implementing so many things that have been “wishlist items” for so long.
I would rather have this link be part of the menu-bar at the top, so as not to use up precious vertical space on the screen. I think it would be sufficient to have just a simple link saying “Talk” (like Wikipedia) or “Discuss this page”.
Was it intentional that the forum link points to the last comment in the thread?
That’s a excellent idea! We are finally getting the analogue of Wikipedia’s “talk page” functionality. And maybe even better than the Wikipedia version, which I always found a bit confusing in its organization.
Currently there is a little glitch in the implementation: When I go to cubical set the link in question displays its HTML source code and clicking on it takes me not to the nForum but to the nLab’s home page.
Re #2: Thanks for the suggestion, I’ve now changed things so that the link is the menu bar, entitled ’Discuss this page’. If there is a corresponding thread, it links to it; if there is no corresponding thread, it links to the nForum home page. For the moment, there is no yellow box if one hovers over it; I’ll look into whether that is possible to get at some point; no time just now.
I think it would be good by the way if we could emphasise quite strongly that if people create a discussion thread for a given page manually, then they should use the same title as the nLab page, because both of the new tools rely on this correspondence. Maybe someone could add this at appropriate places in the nLab where instructions are given for how/when to use the nForum?
(At some point we can add some logic to handle changes in page name).
Was it intentional that the forum link points to the last comment in the thread?
Yes, my feeling was that if people want to ask a question or something, they will probably want to just jump in, without wishing to read the rest of the thread. But I’m happy to change it if people feel it would be better not to have this (and there would then be less code!).
Currently there is a little glitch in the implementation: When I go to cubical set the link in question displays its HTML source code and clicking on it takes me not to the nForum but to the nLab’s home page.
Sorry Urs, you caught me in the middle of testing the change from my original implementation to the latest one where the link is in the menu bar! This glitch only affected cubical set, which I was using to test with.
Thanks, Richard!!
While you are at editing the links on the top of each nLab page. Maybe we could clean that up a bit:
“All pages” seems a rather pointless option for a Wiki of the size of the nLab. I suspect this was meant for private Wiki’s with only a handful of pages. Also, probably related, clicking on it produces a timeout error. I suggest we remove the link “All pages” alltogether.
“Authors” is subject to a similar comment. Maybe it should not be removed, but it need not feature prominently, I’d think.
“Export” leads to the HomePage, hence is a broken link. Also, last I checked we had no decent export functionality to any other format. While this is so, I suggest to also remove the link “Export”.
Sounds good! This will be no problem. No time just now, but I’ll make the changes when I get the chance.
Looks excellent, thanks! I think linking to the last comment is okay; it surprised me at first but then when I thought about it more I saw the logic.
Re #5: I’ve now removed Export from the menu on all webs, and removed All Pages and Authors from the menu on the nLab only (wasn’t sure whether people would like them in place on their own webs). Also swapped the order of ’Discuss this page’ and ’Feeds’.
I think the new menu looks good on most pages. On Latest revisions and Sandbox it maybe looks a bit thin, but maybe that’s just a question of getting used to it.
Authors used to list which pages an author edited, which was sometimes useful in telling how big a contributor one is or what topics the author is involved in. I at one time couldn’t remember or search out what page I edited some idea into and had to look at the pages I edited under Authors.
The “pages edited” listing was taken out in Feb 2018 as a stopgap:
Thus, for the moment, I have turned off pagination, but have also removed the list of pages that the authors have edited. Thus Authors is now probably not very interesting, though it loads tolerably (just about) quickly (I have also streamlined the SQL query to speed it up a bit). I think that what we should have is something which expands the list of pages edited by a given author if one clicks on something.
(I presume that Zoran started that thread because he was trying to find a page he edited)
Maybe Authors should remain as a reminder that it might have it functionality restored, and dropping it should be an “Official” decision.
Hi Rod, thanks for the thoughts! I can certainly put it back if people wish.
I certainly agree that looking up the pages an author has edited is useful. I would suggest though that it might be better to have the list for a particular author be available from that author’s page. Imagine if we have a million authors, say; listing all would not really scale or be useful, even if one divides up the page according to letters of the alphabet or something. The page was indeed already still somewhat slow to load after the simplifying edit I made which you refer to.
Thanks, Richard, for implementing!
With Mike I am delighted how many old dreams about what the nLab could potentially be are now becoming a reality!
With Todd I share the feeling that a last thing we should do now is to remove the requirement of setting up an account for participating in nForum-discussion. I suspect that the requirement to log into the nForum has driven away much potentially beneficial activity in the past. While in general requiring registration might make sense, here it certainly doesn’t as long as there is no analogous requirement for nLab edits: If anyone can edit an nLab page, we don’t want to discourage that anyone from joining the corresponding nForum discussion.
I would suggest though that it might be better to have the list for a particular author be available from that author’s page.
That sounds like a very good idea to me! The author-information would be good to have available, but it need not be advertized on every single nLab page.
You’re welcome, thanks for the feedback!
With Todd I share the feeling that a last thing we should do now is to remove the requirement of setting up an account for participating in nForum-discussion.
OK, I will look into that when I get the chance.
If anyone can edit an nLab page, we want don’t want to discourage that anyone from joining the corresponding nForum discussion.
Agreed.
The only thing I would say is that conversely I think we also need a login mechanism on the nLab. Currently, we have absolutely no way to deal with someone who decides to start deleting content on every page, and who is able to vary their IP address. If we have a login mechanism, we could enforce login when such an attack is noticed, or, say, enforce moderation of changes from non-logged in authors. Individual authors could also choose to enforce login for their name (this was Mike’s original suggestion in #33 here). In summary, by default login is switched off, but individual authors can enforce login for their own name, and we have the ability to switch it on for everyone. All of this should be parallel for the nForum.
In summary, by default login is switched off, but individual authors can enforce login for their own name, and we have the ability to switch it on for everyone. All of this should be parallel for the nForum.
That would be optimal! I agree.
Edit: This comment is really about the announcer, which I guess is actually a separate feature.
This discussion link is handy, and I'll probably make more announcements on the Forum now because of this. I see that a bit of stuff is automatically added at the bottom of the generated Forum comment; it might be nice if that stuff included a human-readable note that the comment was automatically generated. Especially since people might respond to the comment, expecting the original writer to read it, and this note would be a bit of a clue that the original writer might not be following the Forum discussion at all.
Regarding Forum log-in, I'm pretty sure that we've long had a feature that no log-in is required for posts in the Latest Changes category. Is that still correct? And relatedly, when a discussion Forum post is automatically generated, is it automatically put in the Latest Changes category? I would hope so. These features would then complement each other well.
When searching for a preexisting discussion post, it also might be proper to search only for posts in the Latest Changes category. But perhaps not; Forum posts are often miscategorized (and indeed, the proper category can change as the comments progress).
The main All Pages list (don't click on that link, just observe its URL) is too long to be useful, but the category lists (one example is linked) are nice. I would like the All Pages link to work, except that it would only list the categories at the top and the actual list of pages would be omitted. (Which means that it's not actually All Pages but rather All Categorized Pages, consisting of links to the various categories.)
Re #16: As this was needed for the import of the IAS special year 2012 wiki to the nLab, I have now implemented a functionality for All Pages and categories which works, and loads pretty quickly. See github for the code.
In short, one can now click without fear on Toby’s links! The new endpoints are at /all_pages, /all_pages/[category_name], and /page_categories. If you want to go directly, you can use the following examples.
https://ncatlab.org/nlab/all_pages
https://ncatlab.org/nlab/all_pages/people
https://ncatlab.org/nlab/page_categories
My main focus was just on getting something which works and loads quickly, but hopefully also the UI is less cluttered now. As a little bonus, you can use the All pages link to see the current total number of nLab pages!
Just let me know if you have suggestions for improvements.
Awesome, thanks! Would it be okay to add the “All Pages” link back to the header of the main nLab web now?
No problem to add it back if people wish. Is this OK with you, Urs?
Sure. Thanks.
Ok, I’ll add it back some time soon, maybe this evening.
Now done. See github for the code change.
Awesome, thanks!
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