916224 - Move page's metadata into a separate page

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Will Bamberg [:wbamberg]]

What feature should be changed? Please provide the URL of the feature if possible.
==================================================================================
In the current redesign mockups, the list of attachments and tags appears in the sidebar, like this: http://imgur.com/gdVS2S4. This is really high-value screen real estate, but I'd venture that this information isn't of great interest to most readers.

Certainly not the attachment list, and I'd say not the tags either: tags are useful as a way to find articles, but I don't think they are a very useful navigation mechanism, we should build our own custom navigation for each page/zone.

So I'd suggest we have a link in the footer "about this page" that contains this sort of metadata (as well as revision history and maybe last edited date), and don't display it in the page itself.

As things stand I think we are prioritizing the needs of editors over the needs of readers.

What problems would this solve?
===============================
It will make the pages easier to use for readers.

Who would use this?
===================
MDN readers.

What would users see?
=====================
No list of attachments, tags, or "History" button. Just a link in the footer to "About this page".

What would users do? What would happen as a result?
===================================================
Users would find it easier to see the content that they care about.

Is there anything else we should know?
======================================

Comment 1

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

I don't think moving this stuff to a separate page is a good idea; nobody will ever look at it again. I think instead, we should consider moving the tags to be lower on the page than they are at present.

Comment 2

[Will Bamberg [:wbamberg]]

Is the list of attachments actually useful/used by people now? Are the tags?

Comment 3

[Florian Scholz (Open Web Docs)]

(In reply to Will Bamberg [:wbamberg] from comment #2)
> Is the list of attachments actually useful/used by people now? Are the tags?

The tags are useful imho. I think I like the idea of having them back down on the page, though.
For attachments, I opened bug 866542 a while ago.

Comment 4

[Jean-Yves Perrier [:teoli]]

What Florian said (I would move the tags at the bottom of the left bar as that bar contains all the intra-mdn links (related to the page), and this is what tags are.

For the attachments, we have two kind of attachments:
- technical attachments like an image, icon, ... that is displayed inside the page and that shouldn't be showed on the user-facing page
- attachments containing files to be downloaded by the user, like some .psd with goodies for developers, that should be displayed (at the bottom), easy to link intro desk. (but we can't get rid of the useless: "1 attachment" in the right column.

Comment 5

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

(In reply to Jean-Yves Perrier [:teoli] from comment #4)

> For the attachments, we have two kind of attachments:
> - technical attachments like an image, icon, ... that is displayed inside
> the page and that shouldn't be showed on the user-facing page
> - attachments containing files to be downloaded by the user, like some .psd
> with goodies for developers, that should be displayed (at the bottom), easy
> to link intro desk. (but we can't get rid of the useless: "1 attachment" in
> the right column.

This is a good point (and likely needs its own bug) -- it would be nice to be able to indicate whether or not an attachment should be displayed in the list when reading content, just for this specific scenario.

Comment 6

[Jean-Yves Perrier [:teoli]]

Whatever the result of the discussion is, I think this is too much work (both UX, implementation) for not enough reward to be a blocker of the launch. So I propose to move this to the non-blocker heap.

Up to Ali, for a blocker/non-blocker decision.

Comment 7

[Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber]]

For landing pages specifically (not article pages below them) where Tags are the only element to show up in the right column, we are discussing moving the tags to make better use of that real estate. This is being discussed in another bug.  

However, for article pages, the 3rd column is much more useful. A TOC and Tags tell the user an overview of what is in the article, so I wouldn't move them to another page. The page is working great right now, also in responsive views. My vote is to take another look at all further layout concerns on article pages after launch and focus our time on our blockers for things that aren't created yet or are broken.

Comment 8

[Jean-Yves Perrier [:teoli]]

I think this is a WONTFIX, then.