Hello everyone!
I hope this is okay to post here.
I have a suggestion that I feel would benefit everyone, particularly regular contributors to the forum.
When adding a comment to a forum post, you are required to fill in the subject. Not a problem. However it may be easier if the subject was prefilled with something like re followed by the original forum post, similar to what email clients like Apple's Mail app would do when replying to an email. This would save us from not only remembering to fill the subject ourselves; it would make following forum posts easier and more convenient. Of course the subject could be changed when necessary, but the above suggestion would be the default.
I hope the Applevis team would take this into consideration.
Thanks for reading.
Comments
I agree with
I agree with this.
If I remember right, here's why this isn't a thing
From what I remember, the Applevis team posted new forum post guidelines in an effort to make reading the forums easier a while ago. They specifically advised against responding in this way because "Re: <insert subject line here>" doesn't tell you anything about the post below. There's no hint that it may contain information that might be important to a user just scrolling through, who might be looking for something specific. Yes, it's easier for the person who posted the original message, but they can get the same information from a well thought out subject line.
As someone who skims the forums, depending on the topic, I'm really not in favor of this becoming a feature.
I seem to remember that being the reason that we don’t have a fe
I think the Apple this team specifically mentioned not having that as a feature because it would make it harder to find specific topics of a form or something like that. I can’t remember exactly but it was something like that. I think it’s kind of hard to always come up with a subject line, but I kind of know why they want us to have one. I think this website is amazing and I appreciate everybody that works on it all the time to keep it going.
Exactly
Imagine this thread for example, as of this writing there's about 4 comments or replies. Imagine if every single one had this subject line:
Re: Suggestion. When adding a comment prefill subject to re prefixing original forum posts
Re: Suggestion. When adding a comment prefill subject to re prefixing original forum posts
Re: Suggestion. When adding a comment prefill subject to re prefixing original forum posts
Re: Suggestion. When adding a comment prefill subject to re prefixing original forum posts
I do not know about the rest of you, but that would drive me insane.
I think the subject line should be removed completely
This isn't an email exchange. I find myself simply repeating what I've put in the subject line. I suggest AV do away with the subject line completely apart from the OP. It will speed up navigation as well as cut down on headings, and it gets to the meat of the comment faster. I realise they are encouraging us to be more mindful of our content, think before we type, but subject lines for replies, in my view, are useless and repetitive.
Reddit is the example
As I say in the subject line... Reddit is a good example of this. Replies don't have subject lines. It's a more free-flowing discourse.
Why the Subject field should remain
AppleVis is a website that has long been built on Drupal code, starting from Drupal 7 up to the present. One of Drupal’s unique characteristics is its default commenting system, which requires you to fill in a Subject field before entering the actual comment content.
The Subject field serves an important purpose: it allows you to better navigate through comments using heading levels, and at the very least, it gives you a quick summary of each comment depending on what the commenter sets as the subject.
As a Drupal user myself, I know there are solutions to remove the Subject field or even to have it automatically prefilled, as @Christopher Hallsworth mentioned, by using Drupal’s Automatic Entity Labels module. However, as @Brian pointed out, prefilled subjects such as “Re: Suggestion. When adding a comment prefill subject to re prefixing original forum posts” would only repeat endlessly and become more annoying.
Another possible solution would be to remove the Subject field altogether and replace headings with something like “Comment #1, #2, #3,” and so on. But making such changes on AppleVis would be a significant issue, because by now the site already has an enormous number of comments, and changing a large database like this is no small task. Not to mention, long-time members of AppleVis are already familiar with—and even attached to—the Subject field.
So in my view, the Subject field has become a tradition of AppleVis, and it’s probably better to keep it as it is.
keep it as is
Keep it as is.
Dennis just proved my point...
Why double up the information?
I agree subject lines are useful where there is a high amount of informational density, but there usually isn't. Usually. If anything, going through headings, is low information and actually slows navigation whereas if we were to header through each comment, we're straight into the response.
Change can be good. Relax.
Agree Oliver
The initial post obviously needs a subject but after that no. Each heading being the start of the comment makes total sense to me.
comments use to be numbered
I think I remember comments, or the headings at least in the past use to have numbers.
This was in the really early days of Applevis.
But they still had subject fields.
It doesn't matter to me either way, but it does mean I don't have to come up with a title for my comments.
But I can also see the other side.
It's easier to reference a subject, rather than saying something like, to the person talking about incert this topic.
So, subject, no subject, it's just another thing to get use to.
Apple VIS has a good reason for doing whatever they do
The team at Apple VIS has a good reason for doing whatever they do. I think it’s good that they’re open to our ideas and concerns, but I think our time should be spent and you know actually a problem with the website versus the preference of how I want it to be laid out. Then again, that’s just my opinion. I don’t think requiring a subject line is such a bad idea. It makes you have to really think about your comment before you just post things. And yes, I’m talking to myself as much as anybody else on here. I’ve definitely not been so good sometimes about writing a clear comment so I’m working on that. I think we should just leave things as they are right now. But cool_turkey is correct, they did used to be numbered comments. For a while they were. And then for whatever reason Apple VIS team had to do away with this and I don’t remember why. It was something with the updates or something on there and I guess it changed something. You’re probably access the system or something I can’t remember. But yeah, they were definitely numbered comments before. I think right now. I should just leave things as they are and post whatever findings and concerns about you know the latest Apple releases are the other topics we want to talk about I’m here and just leave this as it is for now I think. I’m not against changed obviously, or I wouldn’t be on here. I mean that because of having to dictate my comment. If I could type them out and use the rotor and all that stuff I would be, but I can’t with my CP. I’m trying as best I can to dictate as clearly as I can so these comments actually makes sense. For now, I think we should just leave this website as it is. Specific problems you know accessing the information on the website. I could totally see that. I think this is a fair suggestion at least. I mean, we have the right to make a suggestions to the website. I’m not exactly sure where we post that though. That would be my only question. But I think it’s good the way it is.
Feedback Always Appreciated
Feedback is always appreciated, and I have enjoyed reading all the different perspectives on this topic. Keep them coming.
Our main reason for making the Subject Line a required field was to try and make discussions easier to follow. A great example of where this has worked really well is in our post discussing the VoiceOver and braille bugs in iOS/iPadOS 26 and the "Thoughts on iOS 26" thread, where people discussed the VoiceOver loss-of-speech bug amongst many other issues. As I was researching and rereading those posts to try and get a handle on the VoiceOver loss-of-speech issue and how it presented itself, many of the subject lines really helped me know where to look for potential information.
While I believe we have a good system in place, that does not mean that we cannot make changes down the line if something different would serve us better. We review and consider all feedback we receive.
The Subject echoing the body isn't a bad thing
I honestly don't think the subject line stating exactly what the message does is a bad thing. To the contrary, that is the point of a good, well written subject line. The message body can, and should, expand on it, but if we didn't have a subject line it'd mean everyone would have to do more reading in order to find parts of the conversation they think are more relevant to them. The subject line makes this much easier by directly referencing what's being discussed, if it's applied correctly.