problems with user-added comment to source item

[wdn5e-virginia-edu]

a user can add a single comment to each source item. how this is done has the following shortcomings:

• there's no feedback on a user adding a comment or subsequently editing it that it was actually saved
• comment as it appears to other users includes the email address of the adding user. this is of course useful, but not especially foreseen. it might be good to tell users about this behavior on their signing up, i.e., that their id (email address) will be revealed in this way to all other users.
• on returning to view the same source item, a user can delete a comment by clearing its content from the associated html form field. this removes the content as seen by other users, but the adding-user email address remains visible to other users, as if saying "this user added but then removed a now-unseen comment". this is especially hurtful when that comment was just sample text to test how commenting works.

(in our april 1, 2014, meeting at UVa IATH, there was discussion about making comment addition a popup. i mention it here, but have some caution about making that specific change, as many users block popups in their browsers as routine ad aversion.)

[wdn5e-virginia-edu]

a suggested approach is for

• all posted comments to appear to all users in the same list way. so on clicking "Save changes", the user's new or replaced comment would appear above the text input they just used to enter the comment. this would provide feedback that the action was successful.
• continue to keep the text in the input form field for easy edit, as it is now
• add some explanation on the sign-up page that user ids are exposed to others. this could be reinforced too on the subsequent sign-in page. (for the most part, the user email address as a login id is not a big part of this application and so the user could miss that it may be revealed to others. it's easy now for the user to choose inadvertently an address which they would prefer not be revealed generally.)
• remove the user id along with the comment content itself from the comment list shown to other users, on the adding-user later deleting (clearing content of) a comment
• leave the interface as-is for now with regard to not using a popup. (i'm not as opposed to that change as it might appear and we can return to address it after other changes.)

it may be easiest for me just to make these changes and for others to try them out.