Private beta Feature Requests

Question

Request technical features (e.g. Q2A settings, and Q2A plugins, etc.) here in the answers.     

Comments

It has to be kept in mind that feature requests that require changes too deep in the code of the Q2A software itself (for example extending the voting possibilities), may have the (negative) site effect that we are no longer possible to update the site to the newest developments the Q2A company offers, things discussed on their support Q2A site will potentially no longer work for us, etc ... 

Of course this would be not an issue, if we were able to build a stable enough team of software developpers for PhysicsOverflow in the course of time.

Just a thought ...

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@Dilaton (sorry for the off-topic comment) Have you seen this? : http://www.question2answer.org/qa/32231/update-plugin-edit-history-1-2-1-by-scott  

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Since I think there is definitely a need for an "originality" score for a refereeing, seperate from the general "accuracy" score which is the normal thing you vote on, but since you want to keep compatibility with Q2A, perhaps the solution is to have TWO linked questions to every arxiv paper, one with the accuracy discussion, the other only for people to list missed references, and vote on originality of the paper. I don't like separating it this way, but it is the easiest way to not add anything incompatible to the code that I can think of.

Then the rep can be the product of the originality upvotes plus (an automatic) 1 times the accuracy upvotes. But one should make sure that an unoriginal completely wrong paper doesn't get you a huge amount of rep!

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Yes, I think a more sophisticated voting scheme makes a lot of sense in the refereeing section. In the Q&A part general upvotes and downvotes are maybe good enough, at least for the start...

Answer 1

[DONE]  

Can we install comment rating?   

Answer 2

[DONE] 

Can we have a user inbox?

Notification by email on comments and answers is useful, but I'd still prefer some sort of notification directly from here when we log on.

Comments

Yes, that would be very useful. Related: ./index.php?qa=4593&qa_1=writing-a-message-directed-%40user-by-pinging 

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@Dilaton That comment must be changed to the relative link. As far as I can see, it' is the last one on the  needing to be changed.   ./index.php?qa=search&q=trollsouthere14   

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@Dilaton You forgot to add the link to the URL, I have fixed it now.   

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Yes, but as I used the infinity sign to create the link and set it it the URL with all the stuff before /index replaced by ./indes, the link did know longer work. I obviously dont properly understand how to exchange the links :-/.

Do you really think this was the last one? I have many links to PhysicsOverflow itself in my questions and answers ...
 

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@Dilaton Maybe it's because the search doesn't search the HTML, but only what is being displayed. So even if I search for "trollsouthere", if the link is masked by text, it will not appear in the search results.   

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Aah, yes ...

Polarkernel said he is currently keeping the search engines out of here (not only trolls). So when I point to  ./index etc as Polarkernel did in his call to exchange the links, they may not work now, but it might be ok as soon as we are in our final home at www.physicsoverflow.org and the search engines are let in again?

Masking the links behind text looks sometimes nicer, but if it is more important that things work now I should probably include them directly as you do ...

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@Dilaton: No I meant the site's intrinsic search at the top-right corner. 

Nah, it is better to mask them sometimes, e.g. in the FAQ, because it looks clearer (compare  http://www.physicsoverflow.org/trollsouthere14/index.php?qa=4606&qa_1=can-we-install-comment-rating to Can we install comment rating? ).     

And no, I usually mask the links too, it's only when I am lazy that I think about whether the link really needs to be masked in that case, and not mask the link : )   

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Yep, my inbox with the nice yellow number is quite busy the last days :-)

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@dilaton I have a "my updates" at the top, but no indication of new activity for my answers/questions/comments. Instead I have to click "my updates" and check the dates. Is this expected?

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@physicsnewbie Nope, the "my updates" is different. If you click on your profile page, and click on "History" below the large navigation bar, you will find out what this is. 

However, the plug in should also give a yellow number at the topmost login bar (near your username, "Moderate", "Log Out", etc.), which used to work in the first few days of installation, but is now suddenly broken. This has been reported in the "Bugs" thread already. 

Maybe the plug-in could be reinstalled. 

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When I click "My updates" right to "My accounts" it does give answers, comments, etc to my stuff sorted by date (the newest ones first). Does it not work for you, or is it not what you want?

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@Dilaton Huh, that is not the notification box plug-in.  

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@dilaton yes that's what I want, but in addition it would be nice if a number came up beside accounts, similar to Youtube, telling me how many new notifications I have. I can imagine this will involve the design of a new plugin.

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@physicsnewbie That is exactly what the notification box is supposed to do, but it's broken. 

Answer 3

[DONE]   

Can we make rep gained or lost from votes 0 on META,?    

Comments

Done, see here.

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Yay! 

Answer 4

Where have all the points gone?
Since a moment, all the rep rep gained or lost from votes in Meta is set to zero, as mentioned in this feature request. It took a while to find a suitable place in the Q2A code, but now I think it works. The code sets not only the points to zero, for votes in Meta and all subcategories, but also the count of votes in the user profile. This to prevent questions of users as “why do these votes in my profile not generate points?”.

Answer 5

Can comments be threaded?    

Comments

Seams to be quite difficult, see here. Did not find any other source.

Answer 6

[DONE]  

Can upvotes and downvotes be separately displayed?      

By the way, has anyone realised, that the separate vote counts can actually be seen in the source code for the page?   

Comments

This is really important, because it gives an idea as to how controversial an answer is.  Answers with 0 net votes are often ignored, as "boring".        

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It is enabled now, but in my opinion it looks not pretty: the like/dislike text is too Youtubish, and the now crowded into the first square smaller numbers confuse me and make me dizzy when looking at the question list. The vote numbers being smaller now also reduces their optical importance compared to the number of answers and views, but this is a design issue already mentioned by Ron.

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I agree with you, however, most of the problems can be fixed through simple styling and a short script: ./index.php?qa=4662&qa_1=site-design&show=4684#a4684   

Answer 7

[DONE] 

Can the idea of accepting answers just be removed?

Comments

Or at least, please, please do not display the words that say "Best Answer", see e.g. here                                                                                                           

Answer 8

[DONE]     

Can we have links to suggested edits, close votes, and reopen votes, at the bottom of every question?

Answer 9

Is it possible to exclude the Reviews section from the site statistics of % answered questions etc ?

Concerning the Reviews section, there is as I understand it nothing wrong if the whole physics ArXiv is imported, but most of the questions sit there "unanswered", until somebody interested in discussing the corresponding papers "activates" them. It is not important that all these papers get treated immediately. But if the review questions are included in the site statistics, they could as correctly noted by Polarkernel spoil the external image of PhysicsOverflow...

Comments

Shouldn't these (as I read somewhere else) be 'submissions' and 'reviews' rather than 'questions' and 'answers', and get a separate count anyway?

Answer 10

[DONE because the editor is WYSIWYG]   

We need a preview button

Yes, I know that user polarkernel has given up on the feature for now, but it still needs to be sorted out before the site can go online.

Comments

Yes I usually heavily rely on previews too, in particular when writing LaTex. Concerning feature requests generally, you have to keep in mind that conversely to SE we have not a large team of software developpers that supports us. Polarkernel is currently the only one who can do such things efficiently so we have to improve the software and features step by step. But we do not decline feature requests that are usefull ;-) ... , but certain things need some time.

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I really just don't see the point. The editor is WYSIWYG, so it looks exactly how you will see it when submitted (except for the formatting of the headings, but that doesn't matter.) What's the point of seeing something twice? 

And wasting unnecessary time on it. And making the site slower. And having to scroll more down before posting, unnecessarily.       

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@dimension10 yes, you're right! How do I delete this answer?

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Click "hide", which is the same as "delete". It will continue to be visible to you., but nobody else/ . 

But I think you should let the answer be. It could prevent others from posting the same.