Small text change in "How do I change my preferences"

In How do I change my preferences? is explained how to set the depth level of which the nodes of a discussion are displayed on a page. And of how many of those levels the content of a reply is shown. The current explanation is a bit confusing for first time readers. Please consider my alternative text.

Please note that I have added double quotes (" ") around field names for clarity. And I divided the alternative text in 3 paragraphs, also for clarity.

Current text:

Note Configuration
These settings control the display of a single page view of a discussion thread. The Replies header depth setting controls how many levels of node headers are displayed on a page. When replies in a thread are deeper than this level, a box appears with the text "Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here". To view nodes below this depth, click on a lower level node in the thread of interest to make it the top-level node on a new screen. The Replies text depth setting controls how many levels deep the node text is displayed on a single page. Nodes below the Replies text depth, but above the Replies header depth will be shown with just a header (title, author, date, link), and no body text. To view the text of these nodes, click on a lower level node in the thread of interest to make it the top-level node on a new screen. The User Settings page allows you to set the Replies header depth below the Replies text depth, in which case the Replies header depth takes precedence.

Alternative text:

Note Configuration
These settings control the display of a single page view of a discussion thread. The "Replies header depth" setting controls how many levels of node headers are displayed on a page. When replies in a thread are deeper than this level, a box appears with the text "Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here". To view a node below this depth, click on it (or on any of the lower level nodes in the thread of interest) to make it the top-level node on a new screen.

The "Replies text depth" setting controls how many levels deep the node text is displayed on a single page. Nodes of which the level is deeper than set with "Replies text depth" will be shown with just a header (title, author, date, link), and no body text. Of course, no nodes are shown deeper than the level set with "Replies header depth". To view the text of a node of which the text is not displayed, click on it (or on any of the lower level nodes in the thread of interest) to make it the top-level node on a new screen. By the way, the User Settings page allows you to set the "Replies header depth" below the "Replies text depth", in which case the "Replies header depth" takes precedence.

Example: "Replies header depth" = 10 and "Replies text depth" = 2: the discussion is shown 10 levels deep, but only the first 2 levels show the actual text of the discussion; the next 8 levels only show the header information of the replies.

Comment on Small text change in "How do I change my preferences"

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Small text change in "How do I change my preferences" by halley (Prior) on Aug 13, 2003 at 14:37 UTC
I had never bothered to play with those settings before. I just skimmed your writeup, saw your Example: "Replies header depth" = 10 and "Replies text depth" = 2: the discussion is shown 10 levels deep, but only the first 2 levels show the actual text of the discussion. That's all I needed; now I've set them up. I think a lot of people are example-oriented more than lengthy-discussion-oriented. -- `[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]`	[reply]
Re: Small text change in "How do I change my preferences" by Mr. Muskrat (Canon) on Aug 14, 2003 at 16:27 UTC
The SiteDocClan thanks you woolfy. Help for User Settings has been updated.	[reply]
Re: Small text change in "How do I change my preferences" by Notromda (Pilgrim) on Aug 18, 2003 at 15:28 UTC
Indeed, I was greatly confused for a long time by the "Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here" thing. I thought it had something to do with moderation, aka slashdot. Maybe that should read "chosen nesting depth" when hiding content that is deeper than your "chosen depth".	[reply]
Re^2: Small text change in "How do I change my preferences" by woolfy (Chaplain) on Aug 18, 2003 at 15:54 UTC
That seems to be the right description for that "warning". And I guess that a link to the User Settings should be added in that warning, something like this: Notes below your chosen nesting depth have not been shown here. To alter this, adapt your User Settings. To finish it off, a named anchor could be added, like this: ...adapt your `<a href="/index.pl?node=1072#nestingdepth">Note Configuration</a>`. In that case, an anchor should be added to the User Settings: `<a name="nestingdepth">Note Configuration</a>` That's beyond my reach though.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re^2: Small text change in "How do I change my preferences" by menolly (Hermit) on Aug 25, 2003 at 21:48 UTC
What initially confused me about that warning was that I hadn't chosen a value, and no value was shown on the edit prefs page. It'd be more clear if the text fields populated with the default value, or if leaving them blank meant "show everything".	[reply]


Perl-Sensitive Sunglasses
	PerlMonks