Forum .LRN Q&A: Re: Moving threads in a forum

This is a nice feature for admins/moderators!!

Just a few thoughts:

The main issue is it is not obvious you are in the process of moving a post. A secondary issue is that once you clicked 'Move', it is not obvious which post you are moving.
Most other actions on forum posts display the post message at the top of the page, then what you are doing beneath it (e.g. reply, forward); but moving doesn't do this.

The ideal (just my opinion) would be to have the context bar at the top, saying something like "Moving Forum Post from [Forum Name]", then display the post message, then the appropriate step in the process underneath that (i.e. 1st step - pick the target thread, or choose new thread, 2nd step - pick position).

I'm guessing the solution you have implemented involves fairly minimal changes, and I'm aware that my ideal requires new pages, or at least a restructuring with fragments (list of forum threads, post message, thread posts).
It may be possible to effectively turn existing pages into fragments, and have a single 'move' page collate the fragments and drive the process.

Just some ideas of the top of my head - not necessarily the best place to find them :)

<Raad>

thanks for your great feedback.
Yes, being in moving "mode" should be more visible. I will add a move-mode-line in front of each page saying
"You're moving message no. MESSAGE_ID" or better "You're moving message no. X of thread XY", where X is the relativ number in the thread, because absolut no. message_id is not familiar to most users. Also a little sentence, which tells the user what to do would be nice.
In order to keep context bar working for navigation in various levels, i.e. to allow a user to switch between forum-, thread- or message-level, I would avoid presenting the mentioned move-mode-message in there.

Regarding showing the message, which should be moved:
Implementing that the original message is shown in front of the page would not be very time consuming, but I do not know, if it will be a little overhead, presenting the original message and then all other messages, where this message can be appended to, on one page. Sure, this makes sense when you forward or reply to a message, because you can (re-)read the message while writing your own comments on it.

Thanks for sharing your ideas of your head! Maybe, someone else will do the same, so we will find the best thoughts which will hopefully reach cvs head 😊

/Martin