Upcoming Changes to Subject Lines in Comments on AppleVis

I always think about my subject, because that's how I navigate the site by heading, so I want it to be useful to the visitors.

Given the length of some of the example subject lines seem to be much longer than any subject I can recall seeing on the forum before, will the subject line character limit be increased to allow for more meaningful/specific ones?
What about exposing the character limit in a counter element so we can better plan our subjects?

Hi Gar,

Thanks for inquiring and for the suggestion!

The current length of subject lines for comments is set to 64 characters, and we can definitely look at increasing the limit if the current length is not sufficient. Regarding adding a character counter element, I will add this to the list for when our developer implements the changes.

Best,
Michael

First, thanks for posting those suggestions about subject lines. Those are all good ideas for any forum. One should be able to tell from the subject line what the posting will be about before deciding whether or not to read it. It is probably good to remind people about these suggestions once in a while both to keep things on track and for new posters.

Second, I particularly like your suggested example subject when replying to a post, i.e.,:
"For @Michael Hansen: A Possible Solution That Might Work for You"
I can't tell you how many replies I read which, after reading, I have no idea what the reply was referring too. If a reply says something like:
"Great idea, I'll try that," or "I agree", it is not helpful or very meaningful.

Lastly, I thought that there used to be a "Reply" button associated with each post. Maybe I mis-rememberd this or that is only an option on other forums. Perhaps such a "Reply" button could be useful to make it easier to associate replies with the original post.

Anyway, kudos to the team for constatnly thinking of improvements!

--Pete

I have a question about how notifications work on the forums. When another person is mentioned in a comment, does the system automatically tell you? My thinking is, if you're going to mention someone in a comment using the @ sign, is there currently an option in the website's settings to be notified when someone mentions you in a comment? This would be incredibly useful because it means someone wouldn't have to subscribe to the entire topic. If someone is referring to you, or mostly to you, in a comment, you would get a notification specifically for that mention, letting you know they're talking about you. I don't want to be negative, as platforms can always update and change, but if there's a long post with lots of topics and questions, there's bound to be some overlap. When I type a comment, sometimes I might be referring to two or three people. I don't generally send each person a separate message or a couple of separate lines in the comment. I type one comment, and then if they're following the thread, they'll know what I'm talking about if it makes reference to them. I understand the idea of trying to make content more organized though. kind of tough to do since we can't scheme the page as someone sighted can.
Another aspect that's a bit frustrating is when someone makes a post, I don't always know which forum it's in. Sometimes I think it's for iPhone or iPad, but when I go in, it's actually for the Mac.
In the settings, I was thinking that instead of subscribing to the entire thread, you could subscribe to get notifications only when somebody mentions you. I'm not sure how this would work perfectly because I know the pop-up notifications can be a bit clunky, and some users have very unique names. Trying to mention them with the @ sign doesn't always work because I might not know how to spell their username, and I'd have to go back and check. Unless it could be similar to Facebook or Instagram, where you type the @ sign and then their name pops up, and you select it from a list, adding it as a tag. This tag wouldn't show on the screen with a link to their profile; it would just display their username. You would see their name and know that "Okay, this comment was in reference to what this person said." I don't know if it would be possible to take you directly to the comment if you click on the link in the email, or if you would still have to search the entire thread for the comment in question. Regarding extending the subject line, I would increase it to 100 characters. Like I said, I don't want to be negative, but what if several comments have the information you need, but because of the subject line, you never checked the contents. There are general comments where I have a little bit of everything, and then I have specific comments that are more focused in nature. Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I don't know exactly what I'm going to put into a comment, until I actually write up the comment.
I try to summarize the main points in my subject line, but there are times when I put a lot of information in a comment, and I don't know what you might be looking for specifically. Maybe it's a nugget of information that was mentioned at a glance, like in passing, but not necessarily a part of the main subject line. When I'm in a rush, I might not be as thorough as I would like regarding summarizing the subject. Yes, I think it's good to be intentional with the subject, rather than leaving it to be the first lines of the comment. I don't know. Seems like this should be a website courtesy. If persons weren't doing this before, I don't think they're going to flip the script at this point. We have a post about it, so now it kind of feels like an ultimatum, like a formal rule, or something. To each their own, I guess. In all honesty though, I sincerely hope that this change works out for the best. It's a thoughtful and considerate gesture for all of us.

There’s just one thing that I want everybody to know as we go forward with this new changes. I have CP so it makes it really impossible for me to actually physically edit my post. I do have to use dictation so I’m hoping that when I say here is clear and makes sense. I can’t physically edit as I said. So I’m trying to speak as clearly and deliberately as possible to this phone. I’m using my iPhone SE 2022 with voiceover. I also will occasionally use voice control. So now that that’s out of the way, I just want to say that I think that making this website is organized as possible will be beneficial to everybody. I’m returning user from a few months ago. And hopefully now I will have a better experience this time around now that I’ve explained my lead for the use of dictation. :-) Thanks for looking at this.

See, I'm already trying! Is there an easy way to reply to a specific comment and add a tag? I'm on safari on mac, but can't find any specific reply button which would pre-populate the subject line.

If this doesn't exist, it would be very useful. When I click on the subject line for the comment, which I thought might do it, nothing seems to happen. Maybe I'm just being dumb.

I like what you're doing here. These are all sensible changes. However, it would have been more amusing to have had further examples of bad practice.

There used to be a reply button on the website where you could respond directly to comments from other users, but that was quite a while back—like in 2010 when the site first launched. I recently noticed, while looking through some posts and updates, that they tried bringing it back around 2024 or 2025, but it got confusing because the replies took up too much space on the screen.
Not sure if this would help, but here’s another suggestion. The comment section could be laid out like a Facebook or Instagram timeline. So, for example, you’d have the original post or question at the top, like: John Doe, “Hey guys, which apps are great for music editing on the iPhone?” Then, as you scroll down, you’d see all the replies arranged neatly in that same timeline style. Let’s say Susan Jones comments: “Hey, check out GarageBand. It’s great.” You’d read all these replies in that format, one after another. If you want to reply to any of those comments, you’d swipe down on the comment and tap the reply button. Once again, this is similar to Facebook where you have like, comment, share. To get to each option under the post or the reply, you swipe down and activate it. This would open a text box—maybe in a pop-up or menu—where you can type and post your reply. To see replies to replies, there’d be a “View replies” button with the number of replies next to it (like “View 5 replies”). Tapping that would open a pop-up or expanded section showing all those nested replies below the original comment. Now, having a reply for every single reply could get confusing, so it might be better to keep it simple: the original post is at the top, underneath, you have the main comments in the timeline format, each comment would have a reply button, and when you open replies, you’d see all the nested replies grouped in one section, not threaded endlessly. This way, the flow is easier to follow—you still see the original post, each comment clearly, and all replies nested neatly without too much chaos. It might still get a bit confusing with lots of replies, but overall, this could be clearer than the current format. It might take a little while longer to navigate and read the replies, but it should be organized a little better.
Personally, I think the website is fine, but I understand that some people need more organization when it comes to the content posted here. The problem is, every time we try to fix this, we usually end up going back to the same format we had before. Now, don’t get me wrong—I know it’s frustrating to have to sift through a lot of posts without easily finding the info you want or being able to navigate smoothly. When lots of information is shared, it’s naturally going to get a bit overwhelming with a lot of overlap and repeated details. I get that it’s annoying, especially if you’re in a rush and not really reading the whole thread or catching all the context clues. But if you’re following the discussion, it’s usually pretty clear what people are referring to. For example, if someone says “try GarageBand” and then a couple posts later someone replies “yeah, I’ll try that,” it’s obvious they’re talking about GarageBand. Still, not everyone is always focused on context or logic. Plus, it's hard to follow the context when the discussion is much longer. What could help is if people were a bit more specific, like saying, “Yes, I’ll check out GarageBand,” instead of just dropping big vague words. But then again, what if someone posts a comment and later edits it to talk about other comments without making several back-to-back comments? That can get confusing, too. Anyway, best of luck to everyone working on the site. You won’t be able to please everybody, but hopefully whatever changes get made will satisfy at least some of the folks who have been having trouble.

Dear team,

The idea of clarifying the subject line is great and will certainly help navigating the forum. Pushing this idea further, would be nice to have a button named "reply" after each comment, that would automatically take the comment's subject, add a "Re:" if needed, and place it on the comment's subject line.

Another suggestion would be to have each parent comment (not starting with "Re:") shown as a heading level 3 (like it is today), and all other replies as level 4, so that the user shall be able to skip unwanted threads while browsing comments. Note that I'm not 100% convinced on this one, as the current forum implementation (as I guess), is flat and does not care about replies and threads. If it was not the case, we could imagine a different implementation, being able to fold/unfold threads and lazy loading comments like in modern AJAX apps or frameworks (Next, React, Angular, and so on)). But this is certainly a much more ambitious project. Should you find this useful though, feel free to contact me privately if I can be of any help.

Thanks, Michael, appreciate the quick response and the useful information! I'm grateful my suggestion is being considered too.
I would recommend somewhere between 80-100 characters for a new limit, maybe.

They tried implementing nested comments earlier this year.

Let’s just say—it didn’t go well.

You ended up in different parts of the thread, depending on what comment someone was replying to.

It was a huge mess, which is why they reverted things back to the original format.

This setup is a nice compromise, but there’s one quirk: if you don’t enter a subject, the system pulls part of your comment into the subject line.

You could do something about that, but I’ll admit—even I often leave the subject blank, just because I don’t always know what subject to give a comment

Makes sense to keep everything on the same heading level, so a continuous single feed. We need to remember how we navigate and, I for one, don't really listen to the heading level as I bounce through items. In fact, I think I've customised it to be at the end of the output.

Hi all,

Much appreciation to everyone who has given suggestions on improvement of our forum processes and layout. Below are some answers to the questions raised:

• Our goal with requiring the subject line to be filled out for comments is to try to make discussions easier to follow. Right now, as someone pointed out above, when an author does not fill out the subject field, the site just takes the first part of the body of the comment and uses that as the subject. These are the types of situations that we are attempting to solve.
• Please do not worry about perfection with subject lines. If "My Thoughts" accurately summarizes a comment with thoughts on several different aspects of the discussion, that is completely fine. While we do ask that the subject line please be filled out, how you fill it out is up to you.
• Our forum does not currently support @ mentions/user tagging, though that isn't to say that it couldn't in the future if we are able to identify a solution that works for us. Consider the suggestion noted.
• We experimented with the built-in functionality to display comments as threads, and it did not work out like we had hoped. I have no regrets about trying it, though.
• Great suggestions about adding a 'Reply' button that auto-populates the subject line with RE: and then the subject of the comment to which the reply corresponds.

Thanks again all for your suggestions and feedback, please keep it coming!