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Drafts

I like the drafts feature in both Elkarte and Wedge, so I am thinking of adding something similar in Protendo - but I wonder about the usage of it. To explain: on this site my posts are auto-saved, so I have at any time a whole bunch of half-finished copies of a post I finally made or not made, as it were..

But that feels more like "caching" to me, not really a "draft". I am thinking a draft is something saved consciously as something you may want to post proper later - but not right away. So you want specific dated drafts, to see your progress perhaps. If you then have lots of half-finished copies inbetween it makes it harder to really treat them as "drafts".

I am not sure you see it as a problem :) but for me its lots more interesting to have drafts as things I have not posted yet - not just as an auto-saved failsafe copy. I mean, that can be done seamless in the background too and only put forward to the user if something happens. Like, the net disappears and you long post goes by-bye. But instead you have a window saying your "cached" post is still there. The script will have to check of course, if you made a post or not of it.. so I thinking something has to be shown, maybe just the times for each auto-cached copy.

But the "drafts" is all those times you wanted to work on a post for later, but had no place to put it(unless you are an admin and posts in hidden forums :) )

I don't know, maybe the difference isn't so important, its perhaps more important for articles/blogs - which of course Protendo is all about... What is the general opinion about this?

Re: Drafts

Reply #1 –

To me Drafts are how you explained it Bloc, but I also see the purpose of caching.

I for one have unstable internet because too many people in my household use it all at once. Nothing pisses me off more when I'm at a site and I click post, then internet drops, and I just lost everything I wrote. Elkarte/Wedge idea of "drafts" deal with this issue well. However, like you said, it's a form of caching to me, not actually a draft.

Drafting is when writing a long post such as a Blog post or Article, that requires more research or time to finish. Those should be posts that can be "saved as draft", like on WP or Blogger. However, cached posts should be auto-removed after X amount of days. I know Blogger uses both of these, post caching and drafts together.

I think that's how it should be. Cached along with the ability to save as a Draft. With a draft being unviewable by anyone else until "published", and cached posts being removed after X days or so automatically.

I can see the term "Draft" with Elkarte being misleading to mostly Bloggers. I would much prefer the term being changed to "cached".

Re: Drafts

Reply #2 –

Caching is way too ambiguous to me. Caching means only for a limited time. In other words, something I don't control. A post that could be cached, and then suddenly it's gone without me knowing. 

A draft can be auto-saved and left (if you don't submit) automatically. That's exactly what a draft is to me. Something I've started, but haven't finished. Hence, the "Save Draft" button.
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Re: Drafts

Reply #3 –

In theory, when you are writing a message and it is "autosaved", if a draft for that same message already exists (i.e. after the first save) the existing one is updated, so in theory no half-made posts (unless you stopped writing it) should be around.

In both Elk and 2.1 there are settings to disable the autosave, that would mostly look like what you have in mind, though I seem to remember that also wordpress has an auto-save draft option[1] that should work more or less like that one.

In forums and in particular in SMF the "failsafe" version of drafts was quite necessary at SMF 2.0 stage because of the fatal failures for certain errors (e.g. bad attachments, or session, etc.).
In 2.1 and even more in ElkArte, the autosaving of drafts is not terribly important, because most of the errors are dealt in other ways (at least the most annoying that is/was attachments, in 2.1 the post is made and then you get an error, while in Elk you are just sent back nicely to the post page).
1 and I remember at the beginning that darn function was responsible to suck up a ton of database space, the first time it was introduced I say "hey cool!", then after two or three days I remember the db space occupied was twice as much as before and digging I discovered it was the drafts, I had to disable being on an host that limits the db space...↵
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Re: Drafts

Reply #4 –

Then drafts should be auto-deleted after X amount of days to save on resources. Just an idea...

Re: Drafts

Reply #5 –

Yep they are. ;)
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Re: Drafts

Reply #6 –

Bloc, Wedge has topic privacy. In theory you can create a topic only viewable by you, then set it to public once ready. It works if you don't mind having your post 'dated' from when you started it. Or having to recreate a new topic with the proper public date.
Of course you can also save your topic as a draft. Then you have 15 days to finish it iirc. Then you can publish it.
Elk seems to have a save draft button. I suppose it works on new topics, too...

Re: Drafts

Reply #7 –

Well, ok. I see my term of "caching" is perhaps a bit misleading - but still, when I checked my "drafts" here, there were 5 copies of the same message, meaning the original draft were not replaced, it was simply added to more drafts. I deleted them lol, so I can't show it anymore...but it got me thinking afterwards.

I tend to see it the Blogger way then, if its like Xarcell described. Auto-saving/intermediate saving/failsafe-saving/whatever-saving should be separate from proper "draft" saving as in "not posted yet", or "published" perhaps, though I hesitate to use that term lol.

Thanks for the input.

Quote from: Nao – Bloc, Wedge has topic privacy. In theory you can create a topic only viewable by you, then set it to public once ready. It works if you don't mind having your post 'dated' from when you started it. Or having to recreate a new topic with the proper public date.
Of course you can also save your topic as a draft. Then you have 15 days to finish it iirc. Then you can publish it.
Elk seems to have a save draft button. I suppose it works on new topics, too...

Yes, I know, I read about this feature some time ago. It sounds more closer to what I had in mind actually. I just think those two things, post-poning posts and auto-saving posts should not be one and the same, simply to avoid clutter. If there are drafts saved from every post I made , I can't really distinguish between whats what. Not unless I keep deleting auto-saves all the time. I am often slow at finishing writing, kids come and drag me away hehe, or the phone rings...and sometimes I tend to rethink my post or need more info. So in theory I would be having drafts of everything I post due to this.

Re: Drafts

Reply #8 –

Quote from: Bloc – Well, ok. I see my term of "caching" is perhaps a bit misleading - but still, when I checked my "drafts" here, there were 5 copies of the same message, meaning the original draft were not replaced, it was simply added to more drafts. I deleted them lol, so I can't show it anymore...but it got me thinking afterwards.
http://www.elkarte.net/index.php?topic=767.0
That's why I said "in theory". :P
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Re: Drafts

Reply #9 –

Ah. :) If the intention is to replace and not add to,then its a much better system, having just one to deal with. Still not quite what I have in mind - but a lot more logical as it is.