Following a discussion about discussion pages (sorry ) I've implemented a trial Discussion Tab on the pages of the main site.

The idea is to provide a page where visitors and users can add comments (or generally discuss) the subject or content of the parent page without altering the page itself, which seems to be a possible worry.

It's up for trial and comment, just click the Discuss tab when it can be seen, and it will offer you the option of creating or beginning a discussion page if one does not exist already. If it does exist, then it just opens it.

It's mainly for evaluation, the coding a bit ropey (on the writer's admission) and there are one or two aspects that need more work, but if it's not there, you can't play with it, so as usual, fire in.

If you find it does something naughty, or that you don't like, then please give some feedback and let me know.

Don't all rush at once now (hand), I don't think I could cope.

Seriously, it looks as if it has merit, so by way of a definition for reference, the Discussion Tab would seem to be appropriate for anything factually or objectively related to, or arising from the subject page, but that wouldn't really be appropriate for inclusion on the page.

This could be things like unsubstantiated rumours or anecdotes, or background comments regarding related subjects.

The Forum then becomes a place where opinions about the page or its content can be discussed, since they have no direct contribution or relevance to the material content of the page.

There don't seen to be any technical issues with leaving the option in place, and it's very easy for it all to be deleted later, if necessary.

I might need to add some documentation or instruction later, but for the moment, it looks as if the only important thing to be noted is that each discussion entry should have a Header, and that's made in the normal way by preceding the subject title with two exclamation marks thus:

!!Actual location of hidden base

Then the discussion text would follow.

As always, there's no point in re-inventing the wheel, and to see the Discussion Tab in action, have a look at some Wikipedia pages. They have a bit of extra sophistication, in that the Discussion Tab is red if no discussion exists, and blue blue when it does.

I suspect that easy to add here, but it's not my code, so I'll have to see how the conditional controls can be used on tab content (I may be stuffed since all links are blue by default, but we'll see).

More ToDo

Quoted from bootneck

I wasn't aware of this addition either.

My apologies to all.

I don't know if you are all aware of / have noticed / or even use the Recent Changes link at the foot of nearly every page on the Main Site, or of the All Recent Changes link. They just do what they say on the box.

Unfortunately, for security reasons, I was obliged to place the All Recent Changes link behind an Admin password some time back, and the downside is that you can no longer get a list of ALL pages that have been changed, which would include the Discussion pages.

I don't know how easy it is for me to stop this option listing ALL changed pages (which is the security issue) and limiting it to those made in Secrets and Discussion, so am not promising any change.

I'm now seriously considering the option of removing the Discussion option, which is modelled after Wikipedia's similar feature, and am really at 49.99% in favour of ditching it.

The problem is that although it MAY attract the odd piece of info, there is a confusion as we have the Forum (which Wikipedia does not), so there are 2 places to discuss, which is a design no-no, as there is no differentiation between them.

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Ardrishaig, wonderful place. Fascinating the way the canal runs just behind the main street too.

I'm afraid my lasting memory of it is that of being where I picked up my first tick. The little swine had buried itself so deep when I noticed it, that it couldn't be dealt with in any way. Really yucky looking at the last 0.1 mm of all those legs wiggling just above the surface of the skin, and the body waaaaaaaaay deep down below  

I always wonder where it went after it was done and decided to leave  

Having slept on the Discussion Tab, and arrived refreshed on a new day, I think I have the solution, which I will probably put in place during the next week.

On reflection, I should have thought of this before, but was probably too wrapped up getting the Tab to work, rather than considering how the Discussion option could be best incorporated, and swayed by the Wikipedia model.

Thinking of Wikipedia really provided the solution, and that springs from their lack of a forum. While the Discussion Tab model works there, it is also difficult to follow, as you can see of you look at some pages with big discussion pages. There's no real order to the content, means of searching, or maintaining a single, contiguous thread on a specific item within the discussion. items largely get tacked on the end in time order, rather than subject order. It works there, but probably only because it has become the accepted method.

What I intend to to is leave the Discussion Tab visible, but instead of being a normal site/wiki page that can be edited, it will either show a link to this forum, together with an invitation to to start a thread on the subject (or search for it in the forum), or it may just take the user straight to the forum when clicked, and not bother with the intermediate introductory page.

Either way, it is the correct way to deal with discussions, as having discussions already catered for through the medium of a proper forum means that it's silly having ANOTHER place for discussions in the main site, where one could exist without knowldege of the other, or equally daft, where the same discussion could be taking place in both at the same time.

Sounds like a good solution to me, particularly as I rarely look at that tab anyway.

I've changed the Discussion Tab to present a link page to the Forum.

Unfortunately, it breaks the link that used to lead back to the original page, and I've had to add an instruction to use the Browser Back button.

I can't see any way around this (it takes too long to write out why, but the solutions to this create yet more problems! ).

I toyed with the idea of keeping a form of the previous discussion tab, not editable by users, but by an Admin who could add a link to the discussion thread in the forum, if one was started.

But...

While it would work, because the forum link to the thread concerned is basically generated at random within the forum code, there's no way to place the link automatically, that means it only works if someone does it by hand, and that's silly. Ok if there's only one or two, but obviously is impractical as it depends on somebody doing something (and doing it forever to keep it up to date), so isn't even a little bit automatic or practical.

That said, I don't know if it will work in our site, but I do have an add-in that adds a list of the last few pages visited, making it easy for a user to go back to any of those pages just by clicking on the name in the list.

That might be handy anyway, and would make it easy to return to a desired page, so I might give it a try sometime.

See what you think so far.

I started to have a play with some of the ideas, then got trapped in a spot of 'Bad English', whereby the description of what the supplied code suggested it did, and expected me to do with it, differed from my understanding. The result being a rather extended period of frustration and keyboard bashing, and doing more than I'd intended (and getting less done   ).

Anyway, here's the summary (or story) so far...

Clicking on the Discussion Tab at the top of a page now takes you to a standard page that invites you to join the Forum and share your Comments or Discussion topic.

If you don't want to join the Forum, it reminds you that you are free to edit the page concerned, and that the edit will be reviewed (that's just to discourage vandals) at some point.

At the bottom of the page, the last 5 pages you visited are listed as live links, so you can click on the last one to go back to the page you just came from when you clicked the Discussion Tab, or an earlier one.

What do you think?

Also...

As an extra, and actually unrelated to that list of the last 5 pages shown on the Discussion Tab page, I also added the same Page Trail to the foot of all the pages that appear on the Main Site, as I think I'd find it handy to be able to pop back to a recent page, or even just to see the names of those 5 pages.

What to you think?

Do you like it?

Should I leave it in?

Or ditch it?

I think this is a useful modification and it should be much easier to manage.

I've been fiddling around with the Discussion page wording...

http://www.secretscotland.org.uk/index.php/Discussion/Discussion

Trying to say enough to make it "friendly" - some people object strongly to being "forced" to join a Forum - but not using so many words as to make it wordy and have anyone that looks at it 'Take One Look' and run away because it's too long for them to be bothered reading.

if anyone has a thought, yay, nay, too long, too short, DUH? or whatever, then let me know, as it's all to easy to stare at this sort of page, chipping away at it until it makes sense to you as you know what you mean, but it has turned into drivel when read by a visitor.

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The Trail listing the last 5 pages visited seems to work ok, and being out of the way at the bottom of the page is also relatively unobtrusive, so I think I will be leaving it in place for the foreseeable future. I can change the number of pages, but 5 seems to be fine.