This is getting tiring

[Claudio González]

Can something be done to prevent newcomers from writing their messages in the Title window?

[Jacob Bugge]

Claudio,

I am afraid it happens every time a newcomer presses Enter with something filled into the Ask A Question part of the Overview page, so that becomes the OP.

Somewhere it has been discussed how to change that.

[Jacob Bugge]

Claudio,

On second thought:

This shows how misleading the misnaming of the search is.

If newcomers knew that it was a search they would type in some keywords instead of whole sentences which will never return anything.

[mytaxsite]

Claudio González wrote:

Can something be done to prevent newcomers from writing their messages in the Title window?

The problem is the way these forums are designed.  For example, when you want to post a question you get something like this:

Now when a newbie comes here, he just types his question and when he goes to the next screen, it is too late to change anything because humans are just not prepared to delete what they have written and write everything again.  Whatever they have typed becomes the subject matter or title of the thread and that is what you see.

Now can something be done about this.  Of course something can be done but that means redesigning the discussion forums and that is not going to happen here.

[Claudio González]

I agree that is it a design matter. The second link in John's message shows that this has been discussed before, and that concrete and simple solutions were propossed. However, a very major redesign occurred IUand smaller ones seem to be happening all the time), but this matter has not improved. I swould say that just the opposite is true.

[Guest]

This issue has been discussed at length some time ago, in 2009. Re: Lenghty Thread Titles  Unfortunately the address will not stick.  It appears for a brief moment then the search parameter is inserted.

Also the issue of "Ask a Question" has been trashed repeatedly.  This was last covered 1/15/14.  https://forums.adobe.com/message/6017265#6017265 and all recommended it be changed to Search.

With the new Forum format I had a devil of a time finding "Start a Discussion".  Before it was on right side near top.   I looked a clicked and finally found it in a drop down box under actions.  WHY HIDE IT?  Perhaps part of problem?

[Claudio González]

Curt, thanks for the info, but the avalanche of whole messages instead of titles in the Reader forum that I am talking about started with this new version of the forums, not in 2009.

On following your second link, I see that Dave Merchant asked us in late January to be patient because "There is a lot in the pipeline". I am afraid that he didn't know at the time how enormous that "lot" was and how much worse the forums would become.

[MadisonLeupp]

The only known workaround for this is setting a lower character limit to the title- perhaps 100 characters (it's set at 250 now). We're working with Jive to get that edit added ASAP.

[Claudio González]

Madison, that would be an improvement, but a minor one. As the thread on the second link of Curt shows, it is more a question of unsuitable labelling. If I were a newcomer and saw a window with "Ask a question" as title, I would most probably try to enter my message in that window.

[pwillener]

Change that Ask a Question thing - what kind of language is this anyway?

It is 100% ambiguous - it should either be Search the Forum, or Post a Question

[Silkrooster]

m.m.murphy wrote:

The only known workaround for this is setting a lower character limit to the title- perhaps 100 characters (it's set at 250 now). We're working with Jive to get that edit added ASAP.

That's not the only work around. That question box needs to be set to body instead of subject.

It would make more sense for the question box to be a button or link that takes you to a proper submission dialog box.

How hard this is to do is another matter. I do not know how much access Adobe has to the underlying code. or what Jive allows permission wise. I know some forum software can be quite strict with what can be done with the underlying code.

[TizzieH]

I went through the pain of this today when posting my first question. It’s not helped by the fact that when you get to the next screen you can delete text from the summary, but you can’t add or edit. I went backwards and forwards between the two screens a couple of times before I figured that out.

Why not just change the text in the box from “Summarize your question, including key words….etc etc” ? Something like

“Enter a brief summary for your question including keywords, the detail can be added on the next screen”

[OldBob1957]

TizzieH wrote:

Why not just change the text in the box from “Summarize your question, including key words….etc etc” ? Something like

“Enter a brief summary for your question including keywords, the detail can be added on the next screen”

Or just;

"Step one: Give your question a title"

--OB

[Phillip M Jones]

Question title only

[station_two]

Yes, Claudio, a little something can and should be done about.

The users are not entirely to blame.

If you notice, right after you hit the button to create a new discussion, the focus (where the cursor starts blinking) goes immediately to the body text field of the page instead of to the title.

Therefore novice users assume they should start typing about their issue.  Once they click and or save, they get an error message demanding a subject title.  At that point they just copy their message and paste it into the Title message, perhaps figuring the forum software will truncate it to their proper length.

If the focus went instead to the Title field first, this nuisance would be minimized.

[Claudio González]

This is getting tiring...

...and images are still being inserted at the beggining in IE/Win.

[mytaxsite]

OK trying to insert your own image by first inserting a new line:

No problems here at all.

Using Windows 7 Professional/IE10

The trick is to insert couple of blank lines and then clicking up-arrow once so that there is a line before and a line after your insertion point.

Argentina v Germany today/Sunday and I want Argentina to win.  Being British, I shouldn't be supporting either of them for historical reasons but this is sport and Messi is a good player.

[Silkrooster]

Thats how you are suppose to do it. An image is inserted at the current paragraph location, which is the first line unless you add a few paragraphs then insert the graphic. But it should still be inserted where the cursor is.

But if you fail to that, you can insert paragraphs at the end then select the graphic and drag downward to place it at a different paragraph.

Keep in mind that in the background the forum code for the text box is text only. It works that same as how html is. It uses tags for special features like images. And this is why graphics are anchored to paragraphs.

[Dave Merchant]

Messages in Jive are stored as HTML, but the WYSIWYG editor is easily confused. If it starts getting carried away, just switch to source mode and edit the code - that's also the best way to stop it trying to 'adjust' your pasted links.

[Claudio González]

Tax, Rooster, Dave, thanks for your suggestions, but I absolutely refuse to learn new special tricks to perform what should be simple tasks like inserting an image at the cursor position. Even more so if these tricks are so special that they are needed in one browser but not in others. My normal combination is FF/Mac, where I don't have the problem, but my method for capturing screenshots produces PDF files, which are not accepted by the forum software...

[Claudio González]

And of course the image problem is not the subject of this thread. I just mentioned it in passing, as I could have mentioned that when I post a message, I'm not taken to the last posted message, but several messages upwards.

And please don't post tricks to correct this last "feature". Let's go back to the problem of full messages written in the Title field.

[station_two]

Claudio,

The problem seems to be Internet Exploder and Windows specific.

[Claudio González]

Yes, I know, station_two, and I have been saying so in the thread I opened on that subject, Inserting images wrecks my messages. But this thread is about the full messages written in the Title field, a problem for which I have not seen even workarounds, although several sensible suggestions.

[Dave Merchant]

There aren't any because the way the site operates isn't under Adobe's control. There are ongoing discussions with Jive about what might be tweaked in future releases.

Claudio González wrote:

...a problem for which I have not seen even workarounds

[Claudio González]

Thanks for the information, Dave, although it may not be very cheerful. In my opinion, though, there have been several sensible suggestions in this thread which may at least alleviate the problem.

Pitifully, the list of things that perhaps can be tweaked in a future version seems to be increasing.