Well, would be nice to have both behaviors working together (the typing one at the textarea box and the 'reply to' button). I would think of (maybe) query for the last tweet regarding the @name I'm typing directly at the textarea box. The returned record would (if exists) give me the 'reply to' behavior thing. And if no data returned, we have the ' we are starting a new conversation' thing. And we don't have the need to refactor the 'reply to button' behavior. That would be an example of a workaround regard the problem at typing directly a tweet. Would that be too expensive from a performance point of view?
If this has nothing to do with this conversation, sorry. ^^ Best regards Fábio Silva. On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 1:42 AM, simX <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 24 Gen, 08:01, Steve Brunton <[email protected]> wrote: > > > I've always found that assuming or guessing you know what the end user > > is attempting to do is a sure sign of something going wrong. > > But that's exactly what the *NEW* way of handling replies is doing! > It's *assuming* that when a user manually types an @reply, the user is > obviously starting a new conversation. In my experience it's clear > that this is absolutely not the case. Now, with the new change, about > half of the @replies in my timeline are clearly in response to other > tweets, yet lack the "in reply to" link from the web interface. It's > *extremely* aggravating. > > *Both* methods (auto-linking manual replies and not linking manual > replies) assume something about what the user is doing. Assumptions > will *have* to be made in order to keep the Twitter interface simple, > and I think the current assumptions that are being made are bad for > the UI of Twitter. > > Here are two things to keep in mind: > > 1. On the Twitter web interface, the only way to set the > "in_reply_to_status_id" parameter is to click the reply swoosh. How > many people know about this? Furthermore, how *fast* is this? If I > were to reply to @al3x's latest tweet, it would almost *certainly* be > faster to simply type "@al3x" instead of moving my hand off the > keyboard and clicking the reply swoosh of @al3x's latest tweet. > Humans are lazy creatures. What do you think they are more likely to > do? Combine that with the new assumptions that Twitter is making, and > it clearly disrupts conversation linking when it would usually be > accurate. > > 2. When you're talking in normal conversation, what's the default > assumption? If I say something to you in person, it's assumed that > I'm usually replying to the last thing you said. I never have to > *explicitly* say that. For example, if I say, "What time is it?", you > don't say, "In reference to your question about the time, it is 5 PM." > > The new assumptions in the Twitter API are akin to requiring users to > make conversation linkage explicit. It requires more effort on the > part of users, and people aren't always going to go against their > habit of being lazy. >
