New design migration: Expandable list of subscribers

[mvl22]

The new site will not list each person subscribed to a thread by default, under 'Subscribed to this thread', but instead that will be viewable by clicking on an expansion button.

I would like to get as much of this mechanism of this working on the current site, to help lower the amount of change users will experience.

I presume the generation of this list is a fairly quick database call, so it probably doesn't make sense to load this via AJAX, which is less accessible obviously.

The changes are:

• Instead of showing a list of people, hide them by default
• Keep the thread leader visible, if there is one.
• Then show a single entry, using the same box style, which has a label with a down arrow: 'X people ▼', where X is the number
• Clicking on that box shows the people under that box.
• Clicking on that box again hides the list again.

Default state:

After clicking:

[nikolai-b]

Hmm, although I understand the wish to implement this to reduce the change felt by end users I think most of the work I do on it will have to be re-done when it comes to the new design. I'd have hoped it would just be a few hours but I think here it might make more sense to spend those hours on implementing the new design.

[si-the-pie]

I find the sometimes very long list of thread subscribers to have virtually no value. This is partly because many of the threads I see are several years old and it's impossible to tell from them how interested a subscriber is in the issue, e.g. whether they have ever interacted with the thread (beyond the initial sign up), and how long since they were last active etc. I find having such a useless listing take up so much space on every thread page rather irritating especially on mobile.

When browsing a thread I find I often want to go straight to the last posted item. On a mobile phone I do not know how to quickly get to the bottom of the page, so I have to wave my finger up and up until the page scrolls to the bottom. Then I have to scroll back past the sometimes very long list of subscribers names to get to the last posted item.

If the list was pre-shrunk that would at least reduce the hassle somewhat.

I think all that is needed here is something very similar to the existing '#groups-list' widget that appears in the '#main-nav' on every page. In the initial state the thread leader is shown. Toggling the triangle shows or hides the whole list.

None of that should involve any back end changes or any clever ajax as such.