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Comments on Let's revamp our status tags

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Let's revamp our status tags

+4
−1

One of our holdovers from Somewhere Else is the way we mark bugs and feature requests with status tags - including [status-completed], [status-declined], [status-bydesign], and we've got our own [status-planned]. The tags are marked in red like other moderator-only tags.

But... maybe we can do this a little differently?

I'd like to knock off the "status-" from the beginning of the tags, and possibly re-color them to differentiate them from other moderator tags.

Removing the "status" and changing the color would make it clearer, I think, that this has received Official Attention™ and help it stand out. I'm thinking purple, but that's just me. (This would also, admittedly, help us differentiate ourselves from Somewhere Else - there's no reason to keep the existing system because that's what they're using.)

As for the status tags, I'd like to propose the following tags and the way they should be used:

  • [declined]

    This should be pretty obvious. This bug or feature request has been declined by the team, and won't be fixed or implemented for whatever reason. (This would include the current [status-bydesign]; it's declining the bug report because it's working as designed.)

  • [planned]

    This would indicate that something is on our roadmap; this feature is either actively in the works or it's something that we want to do in the relatively near future. In other words, something that we're actively thinking about or will be fixed / implemented as soon as is realistic.

  • [deferred]

    A new status tag (for us), this would be something that we would like to get to at some point in the future, but it's not on our roadmap and isn't something we're likely to focus on in the near future. We'd like to consider this at some point in the future, but no promises and we can't consider it right now.

  • [completed]

    Again, should be fairly obvious here - this was done and dusted.


So... thoughts? These are my personal thoughts and suggestions as a regular user, not as a staff member, and I haven't run this past any of the other team members. I'd be interested in hearing what everyone has to say on any part of these suggestions.

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General comments (1 comment)
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+3
−0

I agree that distinguishing these kinds of responses from other moderator-only tags would be helpful, and that we don't need to keep doing what we started doing early on when we needed something.

The "status-" is part of the name to avoid having only one type of "encoding"; somebody who can't see the colors can still tell the difference. We'll need to make sure that whatever we do works for screen readers. (Is there a way to add metadata that readers can use?) Are the names alone (and the context of a meta question) enough for people who can't see the colors, or do we need to have some sort of prefix (needn't be "status-")?

On some community metas, moderators use status tags to indicate community, rather than platform, resolutions. For example, a community might have a meta post about changing help text or close reasons or some configuration. This means that either we need different tags or moderators need to be able to use these tags too. I don't know if that's confusing.

Scope creep: For issues that end up in tickets on GitHub (many of them, if they aren't solved quickly and aren't user-support issues), it'd be nice to have a canonical place to add that link on the meta post, instead of having to use comments. This way community members could track the ticket's activity. Since only moderators or admins can add these tags, we could either add the field in the question edit interface for them all the time (in categories that use these tags only) or prompt for it if a "status" tag is used. It shouldn't be required, because there won't always be a ticket (at all, or yet).

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General comments (6 comments)
General comments
Moshi‭ wrote over 3 years ago

"The "status-" is part of the name to avoid having only one type of "encoding"; somebody who can't see the colors can still tell the difference" Is there some reason there needs to be a difference? The colors, IMO, are decorative, not informative. If the tag was just named "completed", its still obvious what it means, right?

Monica Cellio‭ wrote over 3 years ago

@Moshi I worry that it becomes more of a "for those who know" thing at that point. If you know there are status tags, you'll probably figure out what "planned" means. On the other hand, if you're on a databases community where questions could be about query plans, maybe less clear. Or "declined" on a languages community. Maybe I worry too much; I've heard of enough failures with screenreaders to want to be sure it's ok. Any prefix would disambiguate (and sort together); needn't be "status".

Moshi‭ wrote over 3 years ago

Tags aren't used in isolation. If something is tagged both "feature-request" and "planned", and further, is on the Meta for that site, I think people can reasonable infer that yes, it means that the feature is planned, not that the feature is about "planned". Somewhat of an aside, but you don't disambiguate the Meta tags the same way (discussion, feature-request, bugs, support). Why? They could easily be as misunderstood as the status tags.

Monica Cellio‭ wrote over 3 years ago

@Moshi fair point, and maybe the meta context is enough. I'm asking, not asserting. :-) As for discussion etc, while those are a different aspect than things like "comments" or "editing", they're still the "original context" of the question rather than a disposition from the staff, so that feels different. We color those differently but you don't lose anything if you can't see the color, I don't think.

deleted user wrote over 3 years ago · edited over 3 years ago

@Moshi I was thinking of it also. Only planned, differed,pending isn't very meaningful. New user can't understand it. So, it would be better if those tags contains a "status" prefix

Peter Taylor‭ wrote over 3 years ago

Re "Is there a way to add metadata that readers can use?", as a hack you can add a single-pixel image with alt text, but some screen readers will prefix the alt text with a standard hint that it's image alt text.