Poor distinctiveness of the ham- and spam-links and the confirmation pages

[auge8472]

When I want to classify forum entries as ham or spam it is sometimes hard to distinguish the ham from the spam link (default theme).

Furthermore it is also not easy to distinguish the following comfirmation pages. Yes, the content differs but the pages still look pretty much the same. Please compare the following screnshots

the confirmation page for ham:

the confirmation page for spam:

Yes, there are distinguishing features. "Flag as ham" versus "Report spam", two buttons for ham versus three buttons for spam. But even with these differences it happened, that I accidentally deleted an entry as spam (and all of its replies), that I wanted to flag as ham. IMHO we need stronger distinguishing features. Maybe something with colours, maybe something with different positions of text elements and/or buttons, maybe something else or maybe all of these.

[auge8472]

For the links: each of the links can be selected in CSS with an attribute selector for partial matches.

• selector for the ham link: a.report[href*='flag_ham']
• selector for the spam link: a.report[href*='report_spam']

[loesler]

Hej,

Looking at this screenshot, I think most of the confusion can be solved by using different icons.

Maybe a solution is to join both options to "spam/ham". The decision is then made only on the following page by a group of radio buttons.

/Micha

[auge8472]

Looking at this screenshot, I think most of the confusion can be solved by using different icons.

Using different icons is a good idea. IMHO this shouldn't be the only one additional distinction feature but this would be definitely helpful. Maybe something with a green thumb up for ham and a red or orange thumb down for spam? The only problem in this idea, I see, is the size of our icons. I don't think, icons with a good distinctiveness are possible with 16x16-pixel icons.

It is also a problem to detect the content of the warning image, when one doesn't know the warning triangle sign from the real world. In any case, the exclamation mark in the icon is hardly recognizable, even when zoomed to 300% (see the following screenshot made in Firefox).

[loesler]

Please note that the icons do not look like a vote function like the thumb up/down icons.

What do you think about using a "shield icon" and joining both options to a single decision page?

[auge8472]

Please note that the icons do not look like a vote function like the thumb up/down icons.

I know this. The thumbs-icons came as first into my mind as signs for approval and rejection. This was only a very raw proposal.

What do you think about using a "shield icon" and joining both options to a single decision page?

If we make it very easy to distinct the sections for ham and spam with their button, nothing speaks against this proposal. I will build a mockup first to have a base for discussions about the usability of such a common page.

[auge8472]

I will build a mockup first to have a base for discussions …

Well, that's done. As stated in the project forum, I built a mockup to test order, orientation (in the meaining of responsiveness) and distinctiveness of the ham and spam blocks on a merged confirmation page.

If one saw the mockup shortly after my presentation entry in the project forum, one saw the attention message, that was adopted from the current implementation with two confirmation pages. Meanwhile I overhauled this section. I removed the messages, moved the attention-icon to the heading for the spam section and added the tickmark-icon to the heading of the ham section.