Add New Query Button

It would be much easier and faster if the "Add a New Query" button was at the top of the ATT page instead of the bottom. This also applies to the "Add a New Post", "Add a New Conversation", etc buttons.

There's a deliberate reason why they are at the bottom: to encourage people to read through the existing posts first to make sure they don't duplicate one.

That makes sense, but in reality I think people just scroll down quickly or press the "end" button. Or, at least, that's what I do anyways on ATT and Lost and Found. For forums any new post appears at the bottom so it makes sense to keep the add new post button at the bottom. For ATT and Lost and Found, not so much IMO

And besides, are repeated postings really that much of an issue? As in, are they enough of an issue to warrant the apparently sizable number of tropers who are just plain pissed off about this?

I see a repeated post maybe once a month. Maybe. Once every couple of weeks on a bad day. And I'm a regular visitor. Having the add post button at the bottom is a purported solution to an issue that isn't really an issue at all.

Ho-hum. While duplicates are indeed uncommon in the current system, the current system has the button at the bottom. That's more evidence that the current setup works well.

That's a valid point - assuming that everyone actually reads on their way to the bottom. Which I, for one, do not. I grab the scroll bar, pull it to the bottom, and grumble halfheartedly under my breath about inconsiderate mods who put the damn add post button at the bottom instead of the top.

And given anecdata that I am hardly the only one employing this method, I think we might be looking at correlation instead of causation here.

How hard would it be to move, anyway? Because if it's not terribly difficult, the process is simple: 1) Move it to the top. 2) See if the number of duplicate posts increases drastically. 3) If the answer to #2 is 'yes', move it back to the bottom.

I agree. The people who read all the posts (I try to) are going to read them regardless of where the button is, and the people who don't, won't. No matter where you put the button. It would just make it faster for those looking to post something if the button was at the top. Admittedly, it just takes a few seconds to get to the bottom, but it's an irritating few seconds.

I agree that "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" isn't very good reasoning, by which I mean "X isn't a problem, so Y must be preventing the problem, and we should not change Y" doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Correlation vs. causation, indeed.

If it were a voting matter, I'd vote to move it up; having it at the bottom is a nuisance I could live without.

EDIT: That said, the "END" key will make those few seconds go by in the space of a few milliseconds. :p

edited 5th Jan '15 10:25:45 AM by SolipSchism

I never actually use the mouse wheel to get to the bottom of that monstrously long page, but I went ahead and tried timing it just now. By my count, it took about thirteen and a half seconds of furious scrolling, even without reading of any kind. x_x

There's just no way I can believe that anyone would actually take the time to read the entire page on their way down to the bottom. If people really want to check for previous answers to their question, Google site search and Ctrl+F are much more efficient ways to do so (and may be the actual reason for the rarity of duplicate inquiries), and if they don't care enough to do those kinds of searches, they're just going to call tl;dr on the page and skip to the bottom anyway.

I can say with 100% certainty I've never done that. See, there's this thing called a scrollbar that exists since the 80s. You use it to skip to the bottom of the page :-P The only people this "encourages" are people who don't understand how a scrollbar or the end key on the keyboard works.

And that's not counting how ATT posts tend to turn into literal form threads with dozens of replies so reading them would take an eternity.

Correlation doesn't imply causation. That's not evidence that the button at the bottom does anything to prevent duplicates.

edited 5th Jan '15 7:17:24 PM by CobraPrime

If it hinders new thread creation, that's actually sort of a win for us. At least it offers the opportunity for users to stop and look before posting.

It's a win for tropers to just give up and not post a perfectly legitimate thread?

There is no evidence that the position of the button does anything whatsoever to prevent duplicates. If anything, it prevents perfectly legitimate queries.

Yes, there is evidence. The scarcity of duplicate reports. Now we can disagree whether there is a causal link but it's not "no" evidence.

The mods are definitely making the logical fallacy of correlation vs. causation here.

However, no-one has posted that they have just given up trying to get to the bottom of the page and gone elsewhere for their query (like the report page to mods function, or hollering in the forum.) yet, so they don't have to change it because people just use the "END" key on the keyboard, or if you want to skim read it, the "Page down" key.

Well, for what it's worth, my standpoint on this is not "The current position of the button is a huge problem that needs to be fixed."

My standpoint is "It's a nuisance and I do not feel there is any convincing evidence that it is serving a beneficial purpose, so there's no reason not to fix it."

With a caveat of "...and then see if the frequency of duplicate questions increases notably as a result." But I don't believe it will.

So everyone else has made excellent points (especially those on my side of the debate ). From the tropers' point of view at least, it seems like we agree that although having the button at the bottom of the page is not a massive problem it is an inconvenience, and if it is a simple matter to change it's position to the top of the page we would greatly appreciate it.

ATT and Trope Finder are different from the forums for other reasons. On the forums, the other posts in the thread are going to be relevant to whatever it is you want to say (though there may be some exceptions, for example in Long Term Projects). That's not really the case in ATT and Trope Finder; most of the time, if you're at, say, Trope Finder to find a trope you're looking for, it's not really useful to look through all the tropes everyone else is looking for, and you're really rolling the dice that someone had the exact same query as you recently enough that their query is still on the page, while scrolling through a bunch of querys that aren't relevant to yours.

I say this with inappropriate glee: ATT has just had 3 posts regarding the same issue. Duplicates, duplicates, duplicates! so the button being at the bottom did not prevent the duplication, thus proving that tropers do not scroll slowly to the bottom reading every post. they in fact skip to the bottom to push that button.

We can close this thread now right, since there's now an Add New Query button at the top of the ATT page?

Yes. I'll close this.