[DISCONTINUED] MATLAB Answers Wish-list #5 (and bug reports)
Rik
on 3 Jul 2019
Latest activity Reply by Rena Berman
on 17 Jan 2024
This is the 5th installment of the wish-list and bug report thread.
This topic is the follow on to the first Wish-list for MATLAB Answer sections and second MATLAB Answers Wish-list #2 (and bug reports). The third started out as New design of the forum - grey on white and the fourth MATLAB Answers Wish-list #4 (and bug reports) is also growing so large it is slow to load and navigate.
Same idea as the previous ones: one wish (or bug report) per answer, so that people can vote their wishes.
What should you post where?
Next Gen threads (#1): features that would break compatibility with previous versions, but would be nice to have
@anyone posting a new thread when the last one gets too large (about 50 answers seems a reasonable limit per thread), please update this list in all last threads. (if you don't have editing privileges, just post a comment asking someone to do the edit)
268 Comments
Now that moving answers/comments is possible, we kind of need these objects to have accessible timestamps with a resolution better than 24h. When multiple people are posting comments on each other's comments-as-answers, it gets a bit difficult to untangle the thread without knowing the order of events. The sequential identifier numbers are useful to some degree, but comments and answers are not comparable in that manner; furthermore, once an object is moved, it's no longer in-sequence.
A lot of other sites will show rough timestamps, but a mouseover will reveal the full timestamp. That'd be fine.
I wish that the Categories feature be much more useful. Check out hte categorization of this Question:
Scroll over the right and we see: Gaming / Historical Contests. If I was actually trying to find this Question, or others like it, I don't think Gaming would be the first Category I'd check in the "Filter By" pane. I've seen a lot of cases where the categorization seems not useful. Calls into question the utility of the Filter By pane in general for finding interesting content, IMO. As an example, this question is also categorized the same way.
I've alos noticed that many questions are not categorized at all. Any idea why that is? I assume that means such questions can't be found via the "Filter By" pane either?
I have been complaining about the AI categorization in other channels. It is often pretty far off. For a while I tagged the Questions with "miscategorized" to flag them, but there were so many of them that I mostly gave up and stopped looking at the categorization.
I've been spending a lot of time browsing old content and making use of the RHS "See Also" related forum links ... and I think they're less useful than expected. The related forum links seem to be drawn from a small pool of frequently garbage questions, many of which are unanswered or answerable. I see the same ones all the time.
I don't know why the pool is so shallow, but it is, and that's frustrating. I'm half inclined to delete some of the unanswerable ones just to get them out of the pool. While maybe cleanup is in order, why is it so persistent at recommending things with no demonstrated interest?
With the search tool and sidebar in mind, the difficulty in finding relevant content is what has made me more inclined to simply provide direct links to things I think are relevant. Even then, I find myself going back and updating answers to add links to newer threads/answers. It's hardly maintainable.
But that got me thinking about the value of being able to have some curation done by humans. I already keep a growing list of links to reference answers myself, and I know I'm not the only one. Sometimes I wish I could just make it public. I have no idea how it would be implemented, and I doubt anyone ever will, but I think it could be incredibly valuable if we could create something like custom public/private "collections" or "playlists" of content (threads/answers/comments).
The idea really struck me when I saw John D'Errico posting a tutorial on doing exponential curve fits, and I realized that there were a lot of good curve fitting examples that I wish I could still find in this giant sea. I think about Stephen23's tutorial threads, some of the "How to ask" threads, and meta threads like this.
Let's say you loaded up the "Why you should avoid dynamically named variables" thread. You look over in the sidebar and there's a little section that says "Part of the Mega Tutorials collection by Stephen23", and there's a list of links to content that an actual human decided was relevant for a particular reason that's probably described by the name of the collection.
Let's say you add an answer or comment to a collection, maybe the answer can have a little widget at the bottom that links to the collection so that a user can just browse it.
I know, I know. It's hardly a well-defined proposition, but the post is long enough already. It's just an idle thought that might provoke some opinions.
I find myself using them as templates. If I already have something written, I will just use my clipboard and paste it back once the quick reply has overwritten it.
I thought quick replies would be great. I do have a couple quick replies set up, but I think I've found that the only scenario that I'm comfortable with a canned response is when I'm probing junk nonsequitor/copypasted answers before shoveling them. Maybe I'd feel different if I were more active on current general questions.
I prefer to either put the links inline in the explanation or at the end of the answer with some context. Quick replies aren't conveniently inserted in a half-written answer.
I have a small number (7 right now) of Quick Replies for various topics, some of which (like my "Dynamic variables" Quick Reply) link to Answers that I frequently reference. I find this to be a lighterweight version of Adam's Trello board and a more portable solution than DGM's flat file (which I used prior to the introduction of Quick Reply but had some challenge keeping synchronized between my work and home machines.)
@Adam Danz See you're way ahead of me. I just have a giant text file with poorly delineated categories :D. I find that it's valuable to add some sort of description to each link to describe why it's been cataloged or what things it demonstrates.
Still, it's largely up to me to remember what's in the catalog.
I admit that the way I collect this wouldn't be suitable for a public list of links. Besides the terse descriptions, much of it is simply for me to have quick references to my own answers so that I have something to adapt upon.
Bear in mind it may well be an artifact of my browsing behavior. I've had a habit of just browsing down every rabbit hole provided by the "for you" recommended list on the Answers front page. I browse (and answer) a lot of old low-traffic threads related to image processing or image editing.
I'd take that for a spin and see if I could rustle up some instances, but it won't load for me at the moment. That tends to happen fairly often when my connection is slow.
Similarly, sidebar links won't always load on slow connections either, so it's difficult to search for good examples but from memory right now.
There are some that I recall by name. Bear in mind, these aren't the worst. They're just the ones that are common enough that I can get links without browsing for hours.
There are plenty that are perfectly valid questions or answers, but they just show up way more often than expected, while much better, higher-traffic/value threads with multiple good answers rarely ever do.
I have noticed that after I answer some of these old questions, I can reload the page and the sidebar is changed for the better (usually). Is it just that old unanswered questions are relevant to old unanswered questions? I imagine questions like "how do i do a thing with a thing" don't really provide much information to work from. Even still, within the scope of junk threads, I know the pool is large enough that I'd expect to see more variety in junk recommendations.
As an aside while we're talking about the sidebar, why are unanswered links formatted with the same style as accepted answers?
As far as screensharing meetings, that's not going to happen. Much of the time, I can barely use the site on my connection. I have no control over when and how bad my connection gets. It's safe to assume that I have less than zero bandwidth to spare and that any attempt at voice/video/screencast will be reduced to an hour of getting disconnected repeatedly without communicating a single thing. Without exception, that has been the sum of all my experiences attempting such things.
That Trello board seems like a huge amount of work. On the other hand answering all the questions here is a huge amount of work as well. So perhaps looking at a way to let such work be useful for multiple people makes sense.
Hi DGM - You mentioned that the See More links seem to be drawn from a small pool of low quality question threads. Can you tell me more about what you're seeing so I can understand the issue more thoroughly? Specifically, it would be very helpful if you could tell me:
- What you were searching for?
- What question(s) you were on?
- Which See More links were low quality/unexpected?
This would help us pinpoint the root cause.
If it's more convenient, I'd be happy to set up a brief meeting where you could share your screen and walk us through some of the things that you've been seeing. Feel free to contact me at: kmillard@mathworks.com
Thanks!
Several years ago I started tracking a selection of my (and others') answers so that I could find them again quickly.
I use a Trello board where each list is a topic (e.g. "Data types') and the cards in each list are sub-topic (e.g. "structures", "cell arrays", "timeseries"). When you open a card (2nd image below), it is further broken down into categories of solutions. Over the years it's become large and sometimes requires some clean-up but overall, it's a big time saver relative to searching for the content in the forum.
This is to say, I support DGM's human-curation idea.
Thanks for your feedback on the quality of the links in "See Also". I'm a UX Designer on both the Search and Answers teams; this is definitely an issue we need to look into and I'll forward your feedback to both teams.
Best - Kent
Sometime a poster posts approximately the same quesiton more than once, for whatever reason. Is there a way for a moderator to merge such duplicate posts, if it is suggested to the mods, and if a moderator agrees? The advantage of merging the questions is that the various answers and comments woudl be in one place for all to see. A possible disdvantage might be allocaiton of answer points, if there are accepted answers in multiple versions.
Sorry if this was already asked and answered. I search this thread and Matlab Answers for "merge" and did not see it already asked.
And I was just throwing another somewhat related editor function in the suggestion hopper while talking of such things...
@Sam Chak, yes we knew exactly what he meant, because many of us have thought the same thing. There was no misunderstanding of what he meant.
I think @William Rose was referring to multiple discussion threads opened by the same poster, and asked for opinions whether it is okay to have the feature or a tool to selectively merge the unanswered new thread with the old thread of close variations on the same topic, if the Mods/MVPs (and maybe the OP) agree.
The comments should be auto-sorted by date/time.
Anyway, the poster has clarified the reason of opening multiple threads.
- https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1813140-calculate-work-has-been-done-by-pressure-detailed-explanation-inside?s_tid=srchtitle
- https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1815170-resultant-vector-from-three-different-location-and-normal-vector-of-a-plane?s_tid=srchtitle
- https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1811345-work-calculation-from-applied-pressure?s_tid=srchtitle
- https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1812140-get-the-displacement-component-which-is-perpendicular-to-the-triangle-finite-element?s_tid=srchtitle
- https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1810475-volume-formed-by-a-moving-triangle?s_tid=srchtitle
On a very few I've done something in that vein and noted that I had posted author X's comment/answer. But it is time-consuming to do...an automatic merge function if an editor flags two or more as duplicates could be useful as starting point from the flagging option, maybe??? That all gets into a lot of manual effort though, and most of those of this ilk are of questionable value, anyway, it seems to me...
I flag them as duplicates (if they are actual duplicates and not variations on the same theme).
@William Rose No. We can move posts within a single discussion thread but cannot move to post to a totally different thread. However you can edit it and copy and paste it from one to the other but that would be a very interactive/tedious editing operation, though you could do it if you thought it was worth the trouble. You can't assign authors though. So if author1 replied in thread 1 but not thread 1 and you copied the reply to thread 2, it would show up with your name. If author 1 is in both threads, then you can edit either one and it will retain the author 1 ownership (and just show that you edited it).
Well, I skimmed a bunch of these threads (you might have noticed) and I didn't see anything about this sort of thing, so I'll just throw this idea out there.
I would feel a lot more comfortable if I were able to give some sort of reason or substantiating information when I delete an answer/comment. This usually seems to cross my mind when I'm faced with what I regard as spam in the form of seemingly random chunks of code/text which have been copied and pasted from other comments/answers or from other threads without any added commentary. I'd like to be able to say "comment is a verbatim duplicate of this one" or "this is a partial chunk of code copied from this unrelated thread over here".
I have no idea if there's any review on these deletions or if the "this is spam" checkbox actually changes anything. I think of what it's like moderating spam through the "manage spam" page. If I were to see any of these posts show up there, I would often have no way to know that they were copied and pasted garbage posted on unrelated threads. Since many are copypasta of legitimate comments and answers, initial appearances would strongly suggest they're not spam.
Then again, if deleted items just disappear into the abyss without review, I'd only be satisfying my desire to prove some modicum of reason or due diligence. Any thoughts?
It would be nice as a feedback to the original poster -- That's a good point. I occasionally see things deleted on threads that I follow, and it just says "[user] deleted an answer on [question]". Having that little bit of commentary added to the notification would be nice to know for anyone following the thread.
Speaking of fat-fingering things, I've come close a few times. Partly because I really need a new mouse, and partly because the pages on the site really like to jump around after I've scrolled. Sometimes you end up clicking on something four inches above/below the cursor. Similarly, the recent inconsistent location of the upvoting button has led to clicking on the flag button when I was trying to get a permalink. Maybe I need new eyeballs too.
I didn't know the spam marking fed the AI, but that makes sense. It kind of makes me wary about marking copy-pasted things as spam. I fear I'd be training it to flag legitimate content.
I only really brought up the "manage spam" page as an example of the hazards of decontextualized manual review. I usually try to visit the content in-context and see if it makes sense. ... but yeah, some of them are extremely obvious (and persistent).
"mark as spam" is (automatically) used as input to the AI that (tries to) detect spam.
"closed" questions can be reviewed (and occasionally someone bothers to re-open one.)
The entries in the spam logs that look like legitimate posting content: for those you often have to examine the user name or user profile to see that the posts are intended as spam, such as if the username turns out to contain the URL for a gambling site.
I think there is a reason you need 3k reputation points to delete things. It means you have been Walter-levels of active for a year (like Madhan), or fairly active for several years (like plebs like me). The idea is that you have proven to be able to make decisions and have some motivation to make this site better. You don't have to delete things yourself if you don't feel comfortable to do so. Simply flag it (or not) and someone may at some point come along and take action.
I suspect the lack of free text feedback is because that would require manual interpretation, or vast numbers on the scale of YouTube/Facebook. The checkbox is probably only there to feed it to the automatic spam filter.
Providing a reason for a deletion (or at least having the option to provide one) would be a nice-to-have, but only people who are already invested as frequent users are allowed to do that. It would be nice as a feedback to the original poster, but I doubt it would improve anything much. The reason for closing a thread is also not easy to find (it's in the activity feed and on this page). I have never fat-fingered a deletion, so that type of accidents also seem unlikely (I tend to flag first which helps in this regard, and I must admit I have forgotten the spam check box at times).
I noticed a minor issue with hyperlink.
Clicking the link (marked with yellow below) in my Content Feed takes me to the wrong position in Question, close to the comment https://se.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1450984-what-should-go-in-a-next-generation-matlab-x#comment_1993700 near the end of the Question. However, the hyperlink itself is ok, i.e https://se.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1450984-what-should-go-in-a-next-generation-matlab-x#comment_2066594
Clicking the link (marked yellow below) in the "header section" of the Question takes me to the correct comment.
I checked this issue and a second time an hour later with refreshed pages.
Windows 10 and Firefox. Both are recently updated.
I always thought it just did that because I have it set to expand all comments.
It's annoying, but I kind of expect websites to jump all over the place uncontrollably anyway.
P.S. Yeah, I'm using Firefox.
I demonstrated this to MATLAB (Rena) and she has some theory on the reason. Unfortunately it was not fixed in the new Answers code they rolled out 2 days ago. It did fix the missing/hidden comment bug though.
Actually it's not a minor bug. It's extremely annoying for me. I've found a workaround though. It's particularly bad for very long threads. You end up not a comment or two away but many screens away from where you should be. The workaround is to go up to the top and click on the last activity there are the top of the screen in the discussion thread. If you do that, you should land on the correct location.
The two hyperlinks to this particular comment works correctly with Edge. However, with Firefox the Content Feed hyperlink still takes me to the wrong (same) position in the page.
This is a known problem that affects at least Firefox. (I do not know if it affects other browsers; all the reports I have seen have been from people who happen to use Firefox.)
It would be really nice if we could double click a function name in our Answers response, click some toolbar icon, and have it convert that word in our response to the URL for the online MATLAB documentation for that function.
Since smart-sense can put in the links, I wonder why it can't do something to automagically highlight them some how as well -- at least with settings here (that I've made no known changes to any defaults I'm aware of, anyway), they're essentially indistinguishable from ordinary text. I think there may be a color change, but it's not enough I can really even tell that for sure. I (sometimes) will use <> to surround, but it's more time/effort than typically take unless pasting a remote link with the CTRL_K route in which case have to edit the display text anyways, generally.
However, the doc link, while useful, doesn't have links to base functionality -- other than functions, it doesn't know about keywords where those could be the most helpful/pertinent to the poster/question raised. I tried to link to <for> the other day -- it didn't know anything about it.
I just type ‘@doc:’ then type enough of the function name to bring up the appropriate function in the drop-down menu (that magickally appears at that point), and click on the one I want. I generally use bold+underline+monospace for function links so I have to go back and do that, however once I highlight the function name that’s straightforward.
Thanks for describing your workflow @Image Analyst--this is very helpful. As you pointed out, step 3 does not trigger the dropdown--I agree with you that it should. I'll talk with the developer about this. Thanks again.
Kent, it's an improvement, and works fine if I remember in advance to do it. However I'd still like a tool bar icon to doc it after I type the function name. Here is a common workflow for me
- Type sentence, including some function name, for example bwlabel().
- Remember that I can make the function name a link but I forgot to add @doc: in front of the name.
- Return cursor to the beginning of the function and type @doc:
- That does not bring up the popup list of functions, so I have to delete the function name I typed, and start all over again using @doc: in front and re-type the function name.
It would be easier if I could just double-click the work and click the toolbar button to turn it into the link.
This feature has been released.
Type @ or @doc:[function name] to search and add a Documentation link to your post.
Let us know what you think.
Any quick way to link to the doc would be really nice. IMHO the documentation and Answers are the biggest advantages Matlab has over its competitors, and currently they are poorly linked.
A minor issue
By mistake I accepted an old question of mine. I realized my mistake an unaccepted the question. However, in my "Followed Content" both actions are reported as "accepted an answer"
@Rik, Yes, you hit the nail on the head. I edited the question and now "Followed Content" shows accepted, unaccepted and edited.
If the last two actions on a page are taken shortly after each other, the activity feed sometimes displays one action twice. It often goes back to showing the different actions if there is something new.
I have noticed this especially if the OP accepts an answer and posts a comment saying thank you.
PROJECTS is too closely coupled with Git CM
Some users may want to have a limited view of the files in the Set Path folder list.
MATLAB chooses files based on the ordering of the Set Path. Our developers share a CM repository. Some users create temporary projects to do some analysis. They might need only a couple of files in the main project. So to focus on just the files the user needed, files were deleted from the project. Later, after the analysis and the temporary project was deleted, the user pushed his changes to the shared repository. When users pulled from the shared repository, they were surprised to see that some files disappeared.
When I called MathWorks support, I was told that this is by design. When a file is removed from a project, then the file is staged for deletion in Git CM, so when everyone else pulled from the share, the corresponding files were deleted.
But, they said not to worry, because when the file is removed from the project, the file is not actually lost to the file, because Matlab makes sure to keep a copy even though it is deleted from Git CM. So, when other complain about lost files, then the user who removed the file from the project can be added back into Git followed by a Git Commit and Git Push, and everyone can then restore the file(s) by doing a Git Pull. The user will still be able to work fine with the so-called deleted file(s).
This is not good - very ineficient recovery as well as having confusing history. Project is too tightly coupled with Git with respect to deletions. I recommended strongly that when a file is removed from a project, do not by default, mark it for deletion in CM. Or, at least have a toggle where the user can set the default to not to delete it from CM.
In 2020, after a short tryout, we had to stop using projects.
Background: I recently put some effort into answering How to store and reuse coefficients in a for loop. My answer together with a comment includes a discussion on "column-major order" and "performance". I searched in vain for references in the documentation and in Answers regarding the significance of taking "column-major" into account. OP has read my answer an comment. So far so good. Now I would like a few more users to read my responses. To make my responses to OP's comments more visible, I sometimes add them at the end of my answer. And I add tags, in this case I added "column-major"..
Proposals:
- support multiple code blocks/wells in one answer. In the current case my answer contained one code block and my comment another. Adding the comment to the answer causes "Run in 2021a" to throw an error for the second code block.
- support searches (Cntr-F) in the current thread to include hidden comments. Currently, "Search Answers" for "tag:"column-major" singleton" returns the question ("singleton" is in a hidden comment), but Ctrl-F doesn't find "singleton". (I use Firefox.)
As a temporary work-around you can do what I do: make use of the fact that the output is persistent. I sometimes reorder everything to make it run with the correct output in the correct places, and then edit the code to a more sensible structure. One example was a user posting a question about fminsearch where their cost function didn't return a scalar. Easy enough to show, but I didn't need the entire function to do that, so I just ran it with the function and then edited away the function, leaving only the call.
So if there are plans to remove this persistent behavior, please don't.
Thank you for your suggestions @per isakson. There are currently some limitations preventing what you suggest for multiple code blocks and we're working with teams to look for ways to provide these capabilities.
Thanks Per.
- For mulitple code wells, I'll refer that to @Tushal Desai--he implemented the Run feature and can respond to your suggestion.
- For supporting search of hidden comments, to Walter's point, we released a "Show/hide older comments" that appears at the top of every question thread. The toggle is persistent so if you prefer to see or, in your case, search threads with CTRL-F, you now have that ability.
Thanks as always Per for all your work in Answers.
Mathworks did some work, at least for power users, to make comment expansion easier. Now that I think of it, though, it might possibly only be in place on mobile: on mobile, if you expand older comments, then it expands all of the comments in the entire post and it remembers that you want comments expanded.
I suggested distinct code-wells to Mathworks a number of months ago, along with automatic numbering of lines in code wells, and control over which code wells restarted the line numbering .
It is common that we want to quote particular user code to discuss it. We might not want to quote the entire code before that point (readability) so variables might not have been defined that are needed -- and of course the reason we might have quoted a line is that it might have a syntax error that we want to discuss. And we might want to then show correct code. Thus there might be code wells that we do not want to have executed at all.
After I click the "Follow" link on a question, I'd like that question to show up in my Managed Followed Content list immediately (with some reasonable delay for the system to catch up). As it stands now, it only shows up in my list after someone else subsequently answers or comments.
@Paul, Thanks for the additional info. Defaulting the latest activity to the time of follow seems like reasonable behavior, we can consider that for a future update.
I see my first follow is on that date too but I couldn't remember when I actually started contributing here. The system says 2014 but that was probably a single question/comment and I may not have followed it.
I'm surprised that I follow twice as many threads as the number of my contributions. I thought the number of follows would be slighly higher but not double.
October 11, 2017.
As per the default, following is on for any Question I ask, Answer, or Comment on. The system thinks I have contributed to over 83000 Questions.
But you have ~20K more answers than that. Was the follow-feature added later in the forum's development?
Over 33000 threads followed for me ;-)
It never occurred to me that it would be at the end of the list and that sorting by Date Followed would be the workaround. Good to know. But I like my list sorted by Last Activity, so it would be great if me clicking the "Follow" link was considered activity, thereby pushing it to the top of the Last Activity list.
As for workflow, sometimes I click on "follow" with the intent of coming back to the question, either to review it in more detail, answer, or comment. Of course, when someone else answers or comments it bubbles to the top of my list. But if nobody does, it gets lost in the shuffle and I'll forget about it. So I guess my use case is similar if not the same as Adam's use case.
I was also not aware that newly-followed links would appear in that list without any recent activity. The sort solution is good to know.
In addition to hearing Paul's workflow, I'd like to offer mine. The majority of followed threads are auto-followed after I contribute to them but some threads I follow without contirbuting to them because I'm interested in seeing the solutions by other people. Until now, I didn't realize we could see links to followed-threads that didn't have any recent activity to push them to the top of the list.
This partially fulfills a feature I wish we had, although I'd still like to have the feature. Sometimes I'd like to make a contribution to a thread but I think others in the forum could answer it better so I'll follow it the thread. But sometimes those questions never get answered and they get lost in the list of followed threads (~6000 followed threads for me at this time). I'd like to receive a notification when a followed thread does not receive an answer within 24 hours. This would only apply to newly asked questions (~48 hrs?). That way I can be reminded to answer the thread since no one else gave it a shot.
This would have two benefits:
- The unanswered question stays in the unanswered-list longer than if an answer is added knowing that it may not be the best answer. Of course a comment could be added in this case but sometimes answers are a lot of work that we only want to invest if needed - ie, no one else answered it.
- If we have intentions of making a contribution if no one else tries to answer it, there's less of a chance that we'll forget to revisit the question to check on it later.
Thanks for sharing this frustration Paul. Your Manage Followed Content page should immediately show any item you've followed. I think the issue may be the default sort value of "Last Activity". The system only considers activity you've been notified of for this value, so it starts off as a null value, and is sorted to the end (probably on the last page of your follows, if you follow enough to paginate). One simple workaround would be to sort by the "Date Followed" header if you want to see the most recent item.
I'm curious what your workflow is in this case. What is your goal when looking for something on this page just after following?
At least w/ Firefox, recently the scroll wheel acts to reduce the size of the response textbox such that what is being typed gets chopped off at the ends (both left and right) rather than being scrolled to fit. This is quite annoying and I don't recall having seen this behavior until relatively recently (few months). I dunno if it's something FF has done with later release or Answers is interpreting the scroll, but I wish it would quit. :)
It's doubly frustrating since the penchant is for the text box to be off the bottom of the screen so you can't see it all anyway and so the natural reaction is to move it up -- without, of course, taking the time to ensure the focus is over in all that (still useless waste of screen real estate even though could be holding a whole lot more text/code) white space on either side...
I don't recall seeing it as long ago as IA mentions, but then again, "time flies!" as one gets older... :)
I just really getting annoyed relatively recently, altho I'll make no claims that's when the symptoms really started.
? I thought we are discussing the problem that started 2 months ago.
And it's not just recent. I remember showing Tushal in person in at the Mathworks in Natick the problem in June 2019. Maybe I'll try Randy Sousa, Wendy, Rena, or Chen. You'd think at least one of them would see it.
"..., they couldn't reproduce it, even in Firefox,"
Boy, that's hard to imagine if they're using current releases the rest of the world is.
Yes, it's very annoying but when I mentioned it to Tushal and others, they couldn't reproduce it, even in Firefox, so I doubt it will get fixed until we can get them to reproduce it. Maybe I'll try again to do a Teams meeting with him or someone else.
Mathworks tells us the problem is specific to Firefox.
If I understand correctly, the next Answers bug-fix update is due the middle of the month.
I wish Answers would automatically reject comments like
"I did that but it didnt work"
It would be great if there was a comment toggle shortcut, like Ctrl+; in some IDEs.
Using Ctrl+R and Ctrl+T is not practical, because I don't want to think which one to use for that line that I need to comment or uncomment.
I would expect this result (which will lead to no change at all):
%{
% author = 'Douglas Adams'; % So long, and thanks for all the fish
% [x, y, z] = peaks;
% surf(x, y, z, ... Coordinate data
'FaceColor', 'interp', 'EdgeColor', 'none')
%}
The shortcut should only deal with "%" that appear at the beginning of the line, only. Then:
- It is the user's responsibility if the toggle action causes an error.
- Comments after commands are not affected by the shortcut (like lines 2 and 4).
- Block comments are seen as a commented line like any other line with a '%' at the beginning. (see 'Dealing with block comments')
The purpose of having this shortcut is to quickly take the action of getting rid of a pice of code and retrieving it again without using Ctrl+r and Ctrl+t or wrapping it with the "%{ %}" structure.
Some examples:
From the above code, selecting lines 1 to 5 will result in:
% %{
% % author = 'Douglas Adams'; % So long, and thanks for all the fish
% % [x, y, z] = peaks;
% % surf(x, y, z, ... Coordinate data
% 'FaceColor', 'interp', 'EdgeColor', 'none')
%}
From the resulted code, selecting all lines will result in (which generates an error):
%{
% author = 'Douglas Adams'; % So long, and thanks for all the fish
% [x, y, z] = peaks;
% surf(x, y, z, ... Coordinate data
'FaceColor', 'interp', 'EdgeColor', 'none')
}
From the resulted code, selecting lines 5 and 6 will result in (which also generate an error):
%{
% author = 'Douglas Adams'; % So long, and thanks for all the fish
% [x, y, z] = peaks;
% surf(x, y, z, ... Coordinate data
% 'FaceColor', 'interp', 'EdgeColor', 'none')
% }
From the resulted code, getting rid of block comment (lines 1 and 6), and selecting lines 2, 3 and 4 (which generates an error again):
author = 'Douglas Adams'; % So long, and thanks for all the fish
[x, y, z] = peaks;
surf(x, y, z, ... Coordinate data
% 'FaceColor', 'interp', 'EdgeColor', 'none')
Dealing with block comments:
Personally, I don't use comment blocks often. I use them in the finalization phase, when I read my code looking for parts that need big explanations or parts that I don't want to be executed, but that I don't want to delete either.
However, it is obvious to me that the proposed shortcut does not handle comment blocks well, so here is my suggestion:
1) If a line equals to
%}
is encountered in the selected lines, then the shortcut ignores that specific line and leaves it unchanged, always.
2.1) If a line equals to
%{
is encountered in the selected lines and the shortcut is in comment process, then the shortcut ignores that specific line and leaves it unchanged.
2.2) If a line equals to
%{
is encountered in the selected lines and the shortcut is in uncomment process, then this line becomes:
% {
3.1) If a line equals to
% {
is encountered in the selected lines and the shortcut is in uncomment process, then the shortcut ignores that specific line and leaves it unchanged.
3.2) If a line equals to
% {
is encountered in the selected lines and the shortcut is in comment process, then this line becomes:
%{
4) All these three lines are seen as commented lines:
%{
% {
%}
Examples:
From the code below:
%{
% author = 'Douglas Adams'; % So long, and thanks for all the fish
[x, y, z] = peaks;
surf(x, y, z, ... Coordinate data
'FaceColor', 'interp', 'EdgeColor', 'none')
%}
Selecting all the lines will result in:
%{
% % author = 'Douglas Adams'; % So long, and thanks for all the fish
% [x, y, z] = peaks;
% surf(x, y, z, ... Coordinate data
% 'FaceColor', 'interp', 'EdgeColor', 'none')
%}
From the resulted code, selecting all the lines again will result in:
% {
% author = 'Douglas Adams'; % So long, and thanks for all the fish
[x, y, z] = peaks;
surf(x, y, z, ... Coordinate data
'FaceColor', 'interp', 'EdgeColor', 'none')
%}
From the code below (here I removed the comment of line 2):
% {
author = 'Douglas Adams'; % So long, and thanks for all the fish
[x, y, z] = peaks;
surf(x, y, z, ... Coordinate data
'FaceColor', 'interp', 'EdgeColor', 'none')
%}
Selecting all the lines will result in:
%{
% author = 'Douglas Adams'; % So long, and thanks for all the fish
% [x, y, z] = peaks;
% surf(x, y, z, ... Coordinate data
% 'FaceColor', 'interp', 'EdgeColor', 'none')
%}
From the resulted code, selecting all the lines again will result in:
% {
author = 'Douglas Adams'; % So long, and thanks for all the fish
[x, y, z] = peaks;
surf(x, y, z, ... Coordinate data
'FaceColor', 'interp', 'EdgeColor', 'none')
%}
I hope I have covered all the possibilities here, but let me know if there are any more questions.
What would you expect to happen if I selected lines 2, 3, and 4 in the following code segment and used the toggle shortcut?
%{
answer = 42; % The answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
[x, y, z] = peaks;
surf(x, y, z, ... Coordinate data
'FaceColor', 'interp', 'EdgeColor', 'none')
%}
What should the updated code look like? There are three separate types of commenting involved.
Exactly! I want both Ctrl+r and Ctrl+t at the same time in a single shortcut.
Your suggestion makes sense, actually I shouldn't call my proposal a "toggle" shortcut, because yours is more "toggler" than mine :)
However I personally use Ctrl+; in Overleaf or Spyder to quickly get rid of a piece of code and test the program, so merely toggle the comment-state of lines may not always get the job done. This feature is waaaay more important in Overleaf, since there I am working with Latex and want to compare two versions, but it would be great to have it in Matlab too.
I see. Thanks for the nice demo. That behavior is exactly the same as using the ctrl+r | ctrl+t commands but from what I understand, you want to use 1 shortcut instead of using 2.
Another alternative is if a single shortcut merely toggled the comment-state of a line. But I'm not advocating for that. I'm happy with the separate comment/uncomment shortcuts. It drives me nuts that I can't use the ctrl+t with Matlab online since, in chrome, that opens a new tab, so I understand how frustrating it is when you're used to a set of shortcuts that differ wtith software.
After selecting both lines....
In fact, remapping the shortcuts doesn't help much because the big problem here is having one to comment on and a different one to uncomment.
Regarding the selection of lines with and without comments all together, I would say that the preferred behavior is to comment all lines again, that is, the comment action takes priority. It doesn't seem practical, but believe me, I use this feature in Overleaf and I miss it a lot in MATLAB.
Here is an example (using this theoretical Ctrl+; shortcut with selected lines):
...but what would happen if you select a few lines, some of which are commented and others not?
Go to preferences > Matlab > keyboard > shortcuts to change either or both of those shortcuts (see "comment" and "uncomment").
Activity Feed: "See more" asks for "See less".
Excellent suggestions. I think this new page has a lot of potential, but it will take some time to get used to this.
Yes, I intended to say that there is a need for an undo button that reverses the effect of "See more".
I'd like to be able to collapse the group back to 1 again rather than see fewer.
Also, I'd like to see a number indicating the number of new threads since our last visit to that page, if possible. Something like this below.
I think per is saying that if you are going to have a "See more" then you ought to also have a "See less"
Not sure what you mean by this. When I click it, it seems to display more items. It doesn't ask for "See less" or ask me for anything else. You probably need to explain more explicitly, probably with screenshots inserted, so we know what you're talking about.
Create a MATLAB bot (just like Reddit bots) that posts useful information.
As an example, person asks a question related to importing data from Excel (by the way, there are way too many questions related to it). OP might use a tag, 'import data' or 'Excel', when bot detects a question with such tag, it replies with a link to a properly answered question, or to a comprehensive answer.
No, tag can be set only by OP and anyone with sufficient privileges. If OP doesn't include it, other people can tag it and bot would respond.
The autohotkey script is just because copy-pasting doesn't work the same way in this editor as in the old editor (which you can still see on mobile). It doesn't actually automatically respond, it simply allows me to quickly answer with a canned response.
I didn't mean to suggest a bot wouldn't be useful. I know too little about the Reddit and Wikipedia bots to know what fundamental changes might be required. I am also not sure bots are the optimal solution to the problem. Your description leans heavily on people using tags correctly, which seems 'optimistic'.
Wouldn't it easier for you anyone to set a homework tag rather than to use additional software?
I have the feeling the homework tag is set more often by us then by the people posting the question.
Some people don't understand English (or their problem) well enough to understand that those questions will contain a solution to their problem. Others are just too lazy.
I have a few autohotkey autoreplies, so in a way I am already that bot XD.
This is useful, but still there are some questions that could have been prevented if the user actually clicked on few links here or used a search tool. However these questions might also relate to user not knowing how to code, in this case it could also send a MATLAB Onramp link.
There is another usage for it as well. if OP has not provided any code or did not show any efforts to solve homework problem, someone can set a tag homework and bot will write a comment with the usual "This is a homework question..."
Similar to this?
I wonder how often the question is cancelled after follwing the suggested links.
Users who edit away the questions get an explicit warning not to do it again. Freeze account/remove rights to post questions/answers/comments for some period of time. Might be a bit harsh, so some alterations are welcome.
Also, it is trivial to create a new account, so a suspension might not be effective enough.
Maybe a 'first question' badge would be more effective as a warning signal.
I kind of agree with this, but I think most of the offenders wouldn't be affected by a temporary suspension. It seems they tend to purge the evidence only after they've decided they're done exploiting the forum.
When someone tries to answer a homework question (when it has a tag), it could restrict the answered to post the full solution(showing a message in a dialog box stating don’t provide full solution).
Being able to collapse items in the activity feed would be useful. Fairly regularly, I have 3-7 items for "X commented and edited their comment 5 times." Occasionally, I'll have a full page of items related to a longer discussion (usually on one of these meta-threads). It would be useful if I could manually (or Mathworks automatically) collapse large sets into single concise items ("X,Y,Z commented 30 times on an answer to the question What frustrates you about MATLAB? #2"). This would make it easier to scan my log without worrying about missing a more relevant item in the noise
This can happen especially when some users many several smaller edits in a row to the same comment/answer. It would be nice if those were merged in the first place.
Yep, I'd like that too.
Yes, I agree. I know this has been proposed to Mathworks more than once.
When user sorts questions for which answer has not been accepted, the questions are found in two different sections. I believe this lowers the visibility of questions and adds an extra effort for the users who would like to help/contribute due to the fact that they have to filter by both statuses.
Filter by Status needs an addition or change: unsolved and solved. Furthermore, in unsolved status, there can be another one: answered/unanswered.
I agree that would be more explicit and intuitive
Yes, those links.
Maybe something like this, where 'Answered' and 'Unanswered' would be grouped under one status, with the possibility of further filtering it. If questions are sorted by 'Date updated (Newest-Oldest)', all relevant questions will be higher in the feed. The questions that have received an answer that solves the issue, but have not been accepted yet, will not be updated and they will be lower in the feed.
- Solved (Answer accepted)
- Unsolved
- - Answered
- - Not answered
How are you doing the initial filtering? Is it by these links:
or some other way? How would you change the above? Do you want "Answer Accepted" to be called "Solved" and "Answered" to be called "Answered and Solved"? Some posts that have not been officially "Accepted" are considered solved by the person(s) posting the answer(s), it's just that the original poster never accepted any answer.
Well, I have a small complaint about the rules on MATLAB answers.
Seeing the content of some questions is frustrating, such as not formatted code in the editor, pictures of code taken with the cell phone, low-effort questions, asking a question that is already answered, gets overwhelming. With the increasing junk like this, quality answers will not be so easily found, maybe it already is the case
Maybe staff can force users to actually read "Community Participation Guidelines" for new users, as this would reduce a lot of issues.
Actually there isn't anything about formatting practices, I feel that this line could have some addition to it:
2. Strive for clear communication adhering to good spelling and grammar practices
(Answers Dev) @Dyuman Joshi we designed the field specifically to not be required since many questions can apply to multiple versions and most people won't take the time or know which versions a question would apply to. Can you provide your reasoning for making it required?
@Rena Berman, going slightly off-topic from the parent comment, but as mentioned earlier here - https://in.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/470111-discontinued-matlab-answers-wish-list-5-and-bug-reports#answer_458068
Is it possible to make the MATLAB Version a requirement while asking questions? Like how Summary, Description and Tags are a requirement?
(Answers Dev) Hi @DGM, we released contextual tips on the ask a question page. You can see it as the Dos and Don't's in the pic below under the summary input box:
For new askers, the contextual help shows up by default on the summary on page load and switches to the appropriate field anytime they click into a different field. Each field in the form has one. Here's what shows up for the description field:
For high reputation users such as yourself, it appears closed by deafult on page load:
Do these cover what you were thinking of?
I sometimes think that the question editor needs to come up with some sort of default question template or just some sort of bulleted guide in a sidebar. If not always, at least like training wheels for new accounts.
It doesn't have to be incredibly detailed or anything, just basic things that amount to "remember to actually ask an answerable question".
You could make a decent checker by simply checking if '=' shows up outside a code block. Sure, there will be a few false positives, but not many
I am not sure how the text within this editor is read, but copied code usually consists of lines of code and there could be a function that checks some/all (don't know if this is computationally expensive, considering the amount of users and messy codes) lines and tests if it is a valid MATLAB syntax.
Would running that line return an error or not. If any/some of the lines do not return an error, check if the line that returned is in code format, if not issue a warning before posting.
I hear ya, Mario! It's a tough problem to solve. Some of these things like images of text and unformatted code may be detectible and it would be nice if a suggestion box appeared before the question is submitted. We've also requested a spell checker which would help tremendously. Another suggestion made at some point is to offer template responses that users with sufficient reputation can use to quickly respond to typical problems.
I've suggested that first-time-posters and first-time-in-a-while posters should have to click an "ok" checkbox after reading a very short message reminding them that they cannot delete their questions after receiving a response and are encouraged to write a focused question. "Very short" is important because we've all grown used to clicking through the user agreement windows that appear when we first use a product without reading them.
Don't encourage the use of "matlab" and "simulink", by showing them as popular tags. Instead, encourage the use of the Product field.
Fully agree that the use of the Product field should be encouraged. Way too many questions post w/o the relevant product(s) tagged, which is bad for the questioner who might not get answers from product subject matter experts because the question is buried on the main page, and makes it more difficult for those same experts to answer questions for the same reason.
Yes, I bring that up constantly at board meetings. Should be really easy to fix but they just never seem to do it. Plus on the list is a better curated list of prepopulated tag suggestions. I've been bringing these up for literally like 5 or 6 years.
In fact every day or two I go in and remove the totally useless "matlab code" from 10 to 30 posts. Plus remove the "matlab coder" tag from posts that have nothing whatsoever to do with the coder toolbox. In fact, usually posters will put matlab, matlab code, matlab coder, and code ALL in there so I have to remove 4 tags on hundreds of posts per week. And often they'll throw in "help, help me, and problem" just to pile on the useless tags.
Who's idea to introduce the black background for code? I can read almost nothing now easily with the small contrast between the dark background and many of the selected/default colorings.
Can one set back to the old somehow? Or can somebody pick a better-contrasting colorset?
There were lots of people calling for "dark mode" in MATLAB, even here in Answers. I guess the Web app developers were able to get it done first. It was pushed out unannounced. Kind of like an Easter Egg. It only applies to code blocks, not the message body (for those of you who don't know about it yet). You must have clicked on the half circle icon unknowlingly. Like madhan says, just click the half circle thing again to switch back to white background.
Dpb there’s a toggle switch(circle half black and white) to get back to the old contrast. I usually use the dark background since it’s easier for me.
Not mandatory but a replying feature to a specific comment would be nice.
Badges
Donot you all think that there should be Reputation Point Badge with the contributors name (untill he became a MVP) instead of rising star (as it is a temporary badge and need persistence). For example
GUIDE LIGHT
Now Adam is approx. MVP but no badges :'(
PRO
Or Something like this
(Answers Dev) That's an interesting idea Mehmed. I'll share it with the team.
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