Is there a test area? xyz123abc

Good evening.

This new interface offers different, sometimes less or sometimes more formatting options.

It is helpful for users to have a test area to learn the new formatting options. The other larger forums I use here in Germany all have this, without prior discussion! The preview window is not really suitable for this, nor is the possibility to save a draft… The latter is too shaky, I have already lost data several times.

Thank you,

Sven

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

DE-Version:

Guten Abend.

Diese neue Oberfläche bietet andere, manchmal weniger oder manchmal mehr Möglicheiten der Formatierung.

Für Nutzer ist es durchaus hilfreich, einen Test-Bereich zu haben, um jeweils für sich die sich neu eröffnenden Formatierungsmöglichkeiten zu lernen. Die anderen größeren Foren, in denen ich hier in Deutschland unterwegs bin, haben das alle, ohne vorherige Disskussion! Das Vorschau-Fenster ist dafür nicht wirklich geeignet, auch nicht die Möglichkeit, einen Entwurf zu speichern… Letzteres ist zu wackelig, da hab ich schon mehrfach Datenverlust erlitten.

Danke,

Sven

PS:
Please switch off the automatisms!

Original title is:

DE: Gibt es einen Testbereich?
EN: Is there a test area?

With the original title I get the message:

Title seems unclear, most words contain the same letters over and over.
OK

Error DE:
Titel scheint unklar zu sein, die meisten Wörter enthalten immer wieder die gleichen Buchstaben.
OK

That’s why the xyz123abc in the title…

This is annoying…

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Part 1 (Test area) has been discussed here. Just for information, maybe there will be further input from the international community.

Part 2 (automated messages) are some kind of pain in the … Another complain about this nonsense here. For every new topic you get the same nonsense messages from Discourse. This feature would be helpful if Discourse would be able to find topics which are really related to the actual one but that does not seem to be the case. Maybe this issue should be shifted to a separate topic by one of the @moderators ?

As mentioned in the German thread, it is possible to send a personal message with yourself as the only recipient. You can reply to this message, quote it, and so on – just like you can in a public thread. This allows you to freely experiment with formatting and other features of the Discourse user interface.

8 Likes

It’s not pretty… It is stored in the database anyway and with such test entries it should not matter that it is public or not… In my opinion, it makes it easier for the user to offer him such an area… It’s up to him whether he uses it or not… Everything else may be possible, but it is not practicable.

Setting up such a test area should only be 2-3 mouse clicks, combined with the will to want to do so in the first place.

Original DE version:

Schön ist das nicht… Das wird doch eh in der Datenbank gespeichert und bei solchen Testeinträgen sollte es egal sein, daß es öffentlich ist oder nicht… Meiner Meinung nach macht man es dem Nutzer einfacher, ihm einen solchen Bereich anzubieten… Ober er es nutzt, ist dann seine Sache… Alles andere mag zwar möglich sein, ist aber nicht praktikabel.

Einen solchen Testbreich einzurichten sollte nur 2-3 Mausklicks sein, verbunden mit dem Willen, das überhaupt zu wollen.

Sven

I have to disagree. I myself tested lots and lots of markdown codes for the formatting of the “Tipps und Tricks” site by simply using the preview pane of the editor and apparently many other users did so as well. There are some 3.000 users registered and many of them very active but no one has requested for a test area so far. Not that I would oppose one but considering the facts my impression is that a test area is not the most important feature to be added to the forum.

3 Likes

If we are talking about a subcategory of the forum where users can create, modify and delete posts without disturbing the rest of the community and not bothering about certain rules applying in the general forum, then markdown formatting is just one of many use cases. Such a subcategory could as well be used to play around with and try out Discourse features or investigate suspected malfunctions.

2 Likes

Wie wäre folgender Vorschlag, da dir Vorschau und PNs an die eigene Adresse zu kompliziert sind:
Nutze diesen Faden zum editieren, studieren, zitieren, probieren, parlieren, kapieren? :heart_eyes:

Falls sich ein Juser dran stören sollte, wird er dich schon flaggen :japanese_goblin: oder es möge fie gesammelte Meute der Motz über dich herfallen. :japanese_goblin: :japanese_goblin:

:fondue::zap:

I would suggest to start with lowest hanging fruit proposal: Sending a PM to yourself (or @discobot) to experiment first and see if that’s enough or if there is something else needed.

3 Likes

How is it possible to test e.g. tagging with “a PM to yourself”?

Also, is there any documentation of what “@discobot” is? A search finds only the thread, https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/spam-email-from-this-site/814, which presumably isn’t what you meant.

Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.

… and that clearly isn’t helpful. What does “say” even mean in this context?

you will type

@discobot display help

and send this words in a PM to discobot

test it!

No, there are no free data entry fields (apart from e.g. this reply box) in which to type that.

There is also no “send PM” option on any of the menus. What seems to be the nearest is a “New Message” option from “Inbox”.

Edit: For completeness, I have previously suggested that some actual documentation is linked from the front page. There is some (on some other site somewhere) and there is a German “tips and tricks” thing written be some users here, which is probably the best we have.

I tried. @discobot answered:

Hallo! Um herauszufinden, was ich kann, schreibe @discobot Hilfe anzeigen.

So I replied:

@discobot Hilfe anzeigen

@discobot’s answer was:

Hallo! Um herauszufinden, was ich kann, schreibe @discobot Hilfe anzeigen.

Ich weiß momentan, wie man Folgendes macht:

@discobot starte {name-of-tutorial}

Startet ein interaktives Tutorial nur für dich in einer persönlichen Unterhaltung. {name-of-tutorial} kann eine der folgenden Optionen sein: Tutorial, fortgeschrittenes Tutorial.

@discobot würfeln 2d6

:game_die: 3, 6

@discobot Zitat

:left_speech_bubble: Gut ist man nur bedient, wenn man sich selbst bedient. — Charles-Guillaume Étienne

@discobot Vorhersage

:crystal_ball: Du kannst dich darauf verlassen

If you want to send a test message to discobot use

There was another option before the last upgrade to start a PM directly from the reply editor but with the upgrade this option apparently has gone.

So either click on your “Inbox” and then on “New Message” or point with your mouse to “Messages” just above “Inbox” and click on the + sign appearing there. The editor for a PM will open und you just enter “disobot” as receiver in the top box, nothing else. Then you can enter a “message title” in the second box and finally continue to write any message you like, including links and pix and whatever you want to test.

After sending it to discobot you can see the layout of the sent message inluding the formatting of whatever you have put into in the “Sent” folder of your messages. You may probably even get an answer of discobot:

Not much more to expect from discobot and quite a stupid reply, cause if you do so and say “discobot display help” nothing will happen. Anyhow you most probably did not send the message because you expected a reply but just to test some formatting and whatsoever (according to the issue of this topic).

The same is possible if you enter yourself as receiver instead of discobot. That has the advantage that at least you can give yourself a reasonable reply … :wink:. When you finished the test, you can simply delete your messages and that’s it.

Thanks for this comment … :smiley:

1 Like