Example: Let’s assume I want to post an announcement of some kind, so I push the “New Topic” button, and open the Category selector. But clicking the “News & Announcements” category selector doesn’t select it - it does nothing, with zero feedback (no indication why - the item is not even grayed-out or something to indicate that this is not a valid choice - this appears to be a bug?).
Going to the Category view, I see that “This category is moderated.” Since I can’t select the Category when creating a new post, I go on to assume that this means I cannot post to it, which would explain why I can’t select that Category.
But “This category is moderated” doesn’t tell me 1) who would be allowed to post there, or 2) if I had an announcement to post, what steps would I need to take to get it there? The category being “moderated” implies that there is a moderation queue (at least that’s what I would expect, coming from mailing lists). How do I get something into that queue?
It would be very helpful if instead of just “This category is moderated.” it would also say “Only members of these groups can post to this category: Foo, Bar, Baz.” or maybe even “If you have an announcement that you would like to get posted here, you can do (step 1) and (step 2).”
And this is just one example of very non-descriptive and unactionable UI copy …
We are working on identifying and solving issues that make people from engineering etc struggle to use Discourse. This is on the list, and something we might change.
Not sure if we should file this upstream or if a site admin can change that?
Also, might be worth to consider adding the Discourse group FESCo to the privileged group to create announcements.
It’s 2 different issues. On one hand, its not clear to users why they cannot create announcements → message needs to be adjusted. On the other hand, the question if we want to add FESCo to be able to do so. I focus on the first though
This section brings from different systems we do have a copy of announcements/news into Discourse, so we can read it comfortable from one UI. As mentioned in the description below, by default it shows allays just the newest entry of a specific section.
If you dislike the the default config you can make your own (click on your avatar > preferences):
The picture just shows a small section of the preferences we can set.
We get messages from Community Blog, Podcast, and Announce List into it.
As soon as we move the blog into discourse anyway, this forward would not be necessary anymore.
I think “This category is moderated.” already tells you that there are not enough rights to post in this category. That on some places can be selected but nothing happens, could also bee that you as a FESCO member already have higher level of rights.
The membership of groups you can see when you go over the “People” link in the menu.
Unfortunately there is no specific group for Announcements. This means it is something from @mattdm when he introduced this Category in discourse.
Maybe @amoloney also knows more how this section works, as she normally helps with the release information of Fedora.
I have not experienced this myself (obviously), but I think this actually can be interpreted in different ways. After being here for many years, I guess it feels easy and clear if one is used to our discourse, but otherwise, I think I can understand that this can feel very confusing and interpreted in different ways, depending on the reasoning and experiences people bring when they start in Discourse and become exposed to such generic messages.
Yeah, the biggest issue with “This category is moderated” is probably that it has a quite different (?) meaning than what “moderated” means for Fedora mailing lists (“you can post to the list but somebody has to approve your post before it’s published”).
The thing I learned the hard way some years ago - it is that your engineering leads do not just automagically learn all of your operational rules. So giving them too much admin rights, without ensuring that they know how to use them and what to use them for, might cause mistakes and problems. I would prefer that News category stays closed for people who don’t necessarily need/want to know about the process behind it. And stays open for people who want to help with the process even when they are not members of the leadership groups.
For example - I should not really have a permissions to post there without someone else’s review. But a News Editor/Moderator is a role which any contributor should be able to apply for.
Ideally we should have a process for how people can propose posts there, similar how you can send messages to the moderation queue in devel-announce.
Explaining How to propose a message for the category and who will have the ability to review and approve it might help.
They have the rights in certain categories, e.g., to process flags That’s what I had in mind → the Discourse group FESCo has already assigned certain mod privileges. Posting in News would be a “lesser” one imho, as it neither leads to additional functions on the UI nor can it impact others. That said, it was just a thought, and surely not a game changer.
Yes. Fabios example above would be one possibility. But anything that does not presume the reader has knowledge of how such terms are used on Discourse and how Discourse is organized would be an improvement I think.
menu.