Help users reference specific messages when answering #65
Description
Muhokama currently supports
- linearly threaded discussions, which is a choice we should discuss at some point, but not in the present issue,
- and a JavaScript-free navigation experience, which is great
Unfortunately linear discussions can quickly become hard to manage: if I answer several messages at once, they can be quoted one after the other, making it hard to know who I am answering to. Moreover, it would be nice to have an easy way of quoting one or even several messages when answering, without having to copy and paste them by hand. However, I kind of like having a minimal presence of JavaScript on the forum, or at least having a support for JavaScript-free browsers.
Here's an idea of implementation for this feature. Let's take some time to discuss it as well:
- with JavaScript, have a button explicitly called "Citer le message" which quotes the message in the text field at the bottom of the page; if I click on the button several times, it does not add the message again. If I click on other messages, it quotes them as well, one after the other;
- without JavaScript, have a checkbox for each message and have a separate page (and service) to edit an answer, where the quotes are added to the text field. This would probably use something like the
prefilledparameter introduced in the topic views for preview; - when adding a quote, insert a link towards the original message using unique IDs as anchors (e.g., https://muhokama.fun/topic/show/8cfca186-41f4-4761-9fde-5378e114a4a1#f2d5062a-9ef4-4888-bf2c-b351d6e39a15 ) and some text for the link (e.g., "Écrit par XXX").
What do you guys think?