[UX] Better label for "allow comment title" option

[alanmels]

We are working on a Backdrop project which intensively deals with comments, so expect lot's of comment-related issues from AltaGrade these days.

Description of the need

Ensure the comment titles are not allowed in content type settings:

Add new comments on a content page and you will see the (No subject) comment titles everywhere like so:

Proposed solution

I believe the whole point of not allowing comment titles in the settings is about not seeing any kind of titles. The (No subject) comment titles would make sense if the comment titles were allowed, but entered empty when comments submitted. Therefore, I suggest to completely remove comment titles in the comments if they were not allowed in the settings.

[indigoxela]

We are working on a Backdrop project which intensively deals with comments, so expect lot's of comment-related issues from AltaGrade these days.

Yes, obviously... 😉

I believe the whole point of not allowing comment titles in the settings is about not seeing any kind of titles.

Interesting question. The setting "Allow comment title" really only handles the ability to set subjects manually. It's not meant to handle the display.
And there's (as far as I know) no option to handle the subject display via UI.

That may be because the comment subject has additional purposes. It also holds the permalink / bookmark feature and the "is new" labelling.

[alanmels]

Maybe the wording "Allow comment title" should be changed to something like "Allow setting subjects manually"?

Semantically when you do not "allow comment titles", then you do not expect to see any titles.

I see the link also has permalink, and it could be easily replaced with something like:

``Permalink #cid```

or just:

#N

Outputting the comment id or the sequential order number of the comment on the page will look much more appealing and nicer than outputting (No subject) when the user actually didn't want to see any subject. What do you think?

[stpaultim]

I am working on the website for Backdrop CMS Live event and I am running into this problem and it seems REALLY weird.

-1) "Allow comment title" is turned off (I see the point, that this might just be mislabeled).
-2) My comments are all being auto populated by a title, which is really just the first line of text from the comment, formatted as a link which really does nothing but take me to the comment I'm already on.

This title and/or link looks really weird and doesn't serve any purpose that I can imagine. Also, I can't find anyway to hide this in the UI.

My screen shot comes from a default installation of Backdrop CMS with no changes to config, except enabling comments on this specific node and adding some comments.

In my view, we definitely need to relabel that configuration option for comments. BUT, we really should provide an option to remove titles completely.

[stpaultim]

So, I created a PR that adds one word. It changes "Allow comment title" to "Allow custom comment title." I believe that this is much more descriptive of what is actually happening, but I am open to better text.

I'm changing this from "Feature Request" to "Bug report" - IMHO it is a UX bug. It does not accurately describe to the user what is happening. I'm also marking this as a milestone candidate.

I will be opening up a new issue to make the title optional as I think that is the more important change.

OPENED: #4569

[klonos]

Thanks @stpaultim 👍 ...this makes way more sense now (and thanks for filing the follow-up as well). Can we also please add another line of code in the PR, to add some help text for that option? Something like:

The default is to automatically add the first x characters of the comment as its title.

[stpaultim]

Is "x characters" sufficient or do I need to figure out what x equals?

If not, I added your text exactly as is.

[klonos]

I meant to figure out what x is 🤣

[klonos]

...alternatively, we can say "the first few characters".

[klonos]

...I also meant to add the description in the form element (as help text).

[stpaultim]

@klonos - How does this look?

[klonos]

Yup, that works fine. Thanks 👍

[ghost]

I'm not happy with the wording here... I'd suggest:

Allow a custom title to be set for each comment
When disabled, the comment title will be automatically generated from the comment text.

[klonos]

Or, we could make this a radio set, with 2 options and no help text:

Comment title behavior

• ( ) Comment authors may customize the titles of their own comments
• ( ) Comment titles are automatically generated from the comment text

[stpaultim]

@BWPanda - I like your text better. Thanks. I was unhappy with the phrase "The default is to ..." I like your solution better.

@klonos - I'm not sure that a radio set is necessary and feels like more clutter, but maybe not?

I will update PR with text by @BWPanda.

[ghost]

@stpaultim I also suggested different text for the label of the checkbox, not just the description text.

[stpaultim]

@BWPanda Sorry, I skimmed and acted too quickly. I'm fine with your change there. I was worried that my suggestion was too long already, I see yours is slightly longer. But, it's also more clear.

[ghost]

Looks good to me. Nice simple change. RTBC.

[ghost]

Thanks everyone! @alanmels for reporting this discrepancy, @stpaultim for the PR, and @indigoxela & @klonos for helping review and give feedback. I've merged backdrop/backdrop#3263 into 1.x and 1.16.x.