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!

Just to clarify — if someone leaves the subject field blank, the system still pulls a subject from the comment itself?

If so, it might be worth reconsidering that behavior. Requiring users to fill in the subject manually could help keep things clearer.

I won’t rehash what I’ve already mentioned, but if the goal is to make this change stick, a bit more than just encouraging users might be needed.

Not to counter your thought, it's a good one, but having experienced issues with form based input, especially complex ones, only to discover there is an error thrown if there is a blank field, locating that blank field and finally submitting, might end up becoming too much friction, espeically for those who are less comfortable with forum posting.

I think encouragement, in this case, is kinder than enforcement. Navigating the internet, finding instructions, errors etc, is already more difficult for us. I'd rather people post incorrectly than be put off.

Hopefully, leading by example, will be the best way forward.

I'd also say, most of the time, the first line of the comment is pretty reflective of the content of the comment. If comments are 'front loaded' with the point... EG:

I disagree with Oliver... And then listing the very fair points which eviscerate my argument, serves.

I would suggest removing the subject line altogether, but that would completely defeat the purpose of what we're trying to achieve here. This isn't an email, so I'm not entirely sure why a subject line is even necessary. But yes, maybe some generic options could populate the subject line if one isn't written. For example, phrases like: "My opinion," "My thoughts on the matter," or "What I think." These could fill the subject line without pulling from the first couple of lines of the main text. Then, if someone wants to, they could go in and remove or change it later. I think the reason they’re trying to move away from this is because when the subject gets pulled from the main body, it tends to get cut off, and many don’t want to deal with that messy aspect.
Ultimately, though, we're going to have to deal with reading messages without always understanding the full context from a subject line. Most discussions, except for a couple, don't normally go on for more than a page or two, which means you're not reading a huge amount of information. The only thing I'd say is that the way it's set up right now does take up a lot of screen space. Maybe especially for longer updates, you could remove the original post and just have the main post on the first page. Then, when you go to the second page and beyond, you'd only see the comments instead of re-reading the entire original post on every page.
I hope more individuals come forward and put their points out here, because I'm not entirely sure where others are saying that they're not able to follow the discussions because of inaccurate subject lines. I don't know if this is an internal decision, or if others are sharing their views and thoughts behind the scenes. The only thing I'll say here is that when it comes to online spaces, and anywhere in general, even outside of the internet, you're always going to have disagreements and people who don't necessarily agree with you. Now, I don't want to sound mean or negative, but I do think that there really has to be some kind of guidance as to what constitutes bullying or people being rude or nasty for absolutely no reason at all. If you come on here and say, "Hey guys, I don't know how to open an application on the iPhone," and somebody responds by saying, "Well, I thought everybody knew how to do this already," that's not necessarily the kind of opinion I'd like, but it's not something I would take personally. Again, I understand that everyone processes situations differently, but I don't want a person to be discouraged from posting here because they think individuals here are mean or nasty or that they're bullying them. Someone making a general comment or a comment that you don't agree with isn't them being nasty. I guess I don't like all the censorship. If you go outside of this platform, I think that's where you see real nastiness. If you have an additional disability on top of your blindness, like autism or dyslexia, or if you struggle with your hearing, I cannot know that unless you choose to disclose that information. I don't criticize people for their spelling or grammar because I understand that it's difficult to type on the iPhone, and sometimes you're in a rush and mistakes happen. You're never going to find a perfect place where you're not going to have any pushback, where everybody's going to say what you want them to say. We're not robots. I will say that if someone finds my comments to come across as rude or aggressive to them, they can literally tell me, "I'm sorry, but please stop commenting on my post because I don't like what you have to say or the way you present yourself." Alright, cool. If that's the case, then I'll keep my mouth shut, and I'll let you find your answers from somewhere else. But at the end of the day, I don't know you, I can't know what you want me to say or how you want me to say things in a way that you constitute as me being kind to you. If you don't speak up publicly, then we can't help you, and unfortunately, you don't have as many choices and places to go to get information—that's the awful truth. If you don't want to deal with the negativity because of XYZ reason, no matter how valid, you're the one who's going to lose out on the information, not me. This is a pretty small community. No matter where you go, you're going to be encountering some of the same persons. And, if you're going to talk about the grievances that you're having, then you should at least have some proposal for a solution. If you don't know, because this is a collective effort, guys, if we don't work together, nobody else is going to do it for us. If you don't have a solution to the problem, then you either don't bring it up, or you bring it up so others can help you find a solution that could possibly work for you. But I can't be held responsible for other people's feelings or emotions on the internet when I don't even know them.
This place is messy, crazy, and chaotic, but honestly, even if we don’t chat personally, this is family to me—and I want to take care of my family. Our community is small, and folks come with really neat questions they want answers to. There are also folks out there who have access to knowledge and information but aren’t part of the group or maybe can’t share what they know for one reason or another. It’s always good to remind ourselves to be kind and empathetic because there’s a human being behind every screen. Every now and then, especially here, we need that reminder. Sometimes people come in typing posts that are all over the place—they don’t know what to do, how their device works, or how to explain their problems clearly. And if someone can’t explain what they need help with, it’s hard for us to help them, especially if it’s a new topic for the group. I’m not expecting perfect spelling or grammar, but if a post is so choppy that we can’t understand it, how are we supposed to help? And if someone just comments “I don’t know” or “I want the same answer,” that often doesn’t move the post forward. Sometimes it’s easier to follow the discussion quietly rather than add a comment like that.

Firstly, I want to say that I really appreciate the subject it makes browsing a discussion a breeze. Whereas pretty much every other online forum I've used makes it really awkward to get from one comment to the next. Whilst I've not had many issues with subjects used on here, I like the fact that they are given a bit more importance.

I like the idea of a Reply button - if it just filled in the subject and maybe tagged the person it might be quite helpful. Potentially there could be a way to refer back to the original comment - possibly just a link or an expanded section that shows it. But I really don't like the idea of making these forums any more complicated by adding big hierarchies or whatnot. The current view is lovely and simple.

I have mixed feelings about mentions. If I am replying to someone I tend to fake it and go back and copy their username and stick an @ in it. So if there was something to make that easier, than that might be good. However, I often find that if I am in a text area and some symbols start randomly throwing up little auto-complete lists and whatnot that it can make entering in a comment quite difficult. I have this in teams - if I type in a bracket it starts doing some weird auto-complete thing which I find really gets in the way. I would rather not have this than have to fight with the ui every time I try to use the symbol.

Anyway, thanks as always - it's great seeing these discussions and little improvements popping up on here, and it's reassuring how thoughtfully they are approached.

Hi all,

Thank you everyone for your continued feedback. Keep it coming!

Kool_Turk, the current behavior is for the site to pull in the first 64 characters of the author's comment if the subject line is not filled out. This is the part that we would like to come up with a more elegant solution for.

Oliver, you make a great point about form errors unintentionally making the site harder to navigate and use, and your comment gave me an idea. Perhaps the way we could go is to by default, have the site populate the subject line of comments with RE: and then the subject line of the original post, similar to an email. Like this:

RE: Upcoming Changes to Subject Lines in Comments on AppleVis

If we were to implement the change in this manner, users could then edit the prefilled subject line if they have something more specific or leave it if that isn't possible.

I am not a developer, but we will take this and other suggestions onboard to our developer when we move forward with this in the next month or two.

I don't really see the point of defaulting to :Re:" plus the original subject. I would say that is less useful than the current behaviour - at least in that case each subject is different. I am already on the thread so I know what it is about. Whereas it may make more sense in an email because the reply comes in on its own.

I also agree that form errors are a pain with a screen reader, although with aria-live regions I think you can at least make it pretty obvious that it has happened.

There could be an argument for just leaving it as it is.

I don't think that using this format—RE: Upcoming Changes to Subject Lines in Comments on AppleVis—would actually help, to be honest. Think about it: if you have multiple discussions happening in one thread, wouldn’t that get confusing? Like, if two or three people are posting about the same aspect, how would you keep track of that without a reply for each comment? If all the comments have the same subject, how would that even be relevant? You’d only figure out what the discussion is about while you’re reading through the thread.

If every comment has the same subject line, I think that would just add to the confusion. The only way I see this working is if everyone manually adds their own subject line. Like I said, you could have some generic defaults that get filled in, remove the subject line altogether, or let everyone type in their own for whatever it’s worth.

So basically, you’d remove using the first few lines of the comment as the subject, like we do now, and require everyone to type a subject line—even if it’s just “My thoughts” or “Opinions.” And if someone doesn’t put it, they will not be able to post the comment until they include one. Simple but effective. Seriously, guys, this doesn't need to be so complicated. That’s the only way I can see this working.

Please do not code in an autofill of, Re:, for replies. I fear this will lead us down a rabbit hole of posts with a ton of:
Re: Upcoming Changes to Subject Lines in Comments on AppleVis
Re: Re: Upcoming Changes to Subject Lines in Comments on AppleVis
Re: Re: Re: Upcoming Changes to Subject Lines in Comments on AppleVis
Re: Re: Re: Re: Upcoming Changes to Subject Lines in Comments on AppleVis

Hope my example above makes sense. 😅

Yes, I thought about this aspect as well, but I thought they would have a way to negate this somehow. Regarding the mentions, I'm assuming that the usernames would only show up when you type the @ sign. The only difference? When you're going to mention someone, the usernames would eventually be one word, similar to on Twitter, rather than the original names on screen with the spacing.
Winter roses
@WinterRoses

Especially if all the subject line contains is something generic like "My thoughts" or Here's my opinion", the only real use for a subject line is for navigation purposes. Likewise, if the thread topic is simply repeated in the subject line, it's useless. You could accomplish the same navigational ability by making the poster's name or the date a heading, omitting the subject line altogether.

Speaking of navigation, Something I'd find much more useful than subject lines is navigable new message identification. I really appreciate new messages being marked with "new" but I wish the word "new" was given either a unique heading level or made a graphic so they could be navigated to with accelerator keys.

I do get the point with the re, the re re, and the re re re...

I'm just wondering now, if there could be more introduced to the heading which, if you're anything like me, is how you jump through the forum. I'm wondering if author could also be included in the header, EG:

some thoughts on making subject lines more data rich by Oliver

this does add some deeper info without taking up too much time and, people know to skip my replies etc.

It's a really interesting example of digital ergonomics for the blind. Sighted, things need to be laid out in a 2d Fashion, which makes sense. For us, it needs to be 1D, Ie linear.

I do get the arguement for doing away with subject lines for comments, mirroring reddit. If we landed directly on the comment, and it had the voiced format:

Oliver says: I agree agree with Michael... etc and so on,

It gives us a direct feed into the meat of the comment without this more circumspect approach without the need for authors creating a summary, but also we get that front loaded comment thing too.

This would mean the heading would have to contain the entire comment which is problematic. I am thinking that, as long as people aren't quite as verbose as me however, this could work. It would be like reading a whatsapp group message.

In short, subject line with clear indication for OP, then a single block of information including both author and comment for the comment section, mirroring a text chat which, I believe, more people from the community will be comfortable with.

AppleVis is unique. I think there are most likely unique solutions which break the convention of sight based sites which put our usage and navigation front and centre.

Hi all,
I think this is a great idea, especially for when creating a forum post. I've seen some forum posts with things like 'this is a great app!' or 'need help with iPhone' or words to that effect. Forum posts with names like this arn't helpful at all. But yes, clear subject lines within forum posts are helpful too. As for error handling in forms, you can set it up so that if a user omits a field (in this case the 'subject' field), when the page refreshes, the user is automatically taken back to the form field where the error has been flagged, or they're taken back to a list of errors. You could also have an error message come up when the user hits the 'submit' button, and it'll say something like 'subject field must be filled in' or something. There'll be an 'OK' button you hhit on, and it'll just take you back to the page, and you can fill in the subject. All these things are possible, I worked in web accessibility years ago, and I saw people implementing these things. I hate the idea of nested replies and having to expand things to read a forum topic. Topics on here aren't usually that big, and this isn't Reddit. I understand the concept on Reddit because posts often have hundreds, sometimes a couple of thousand comments and replies to comments. And Reddit is designed as an app primarily anyway, Applevis isn't. If Applevis implemented this whole nested replies thing, forum posts would just become such a drag to read through.