EA Forum update: New editor! (And more)
It’s time for another round of feature announcements!
New editor now available in beta
We’re rolling out our new content editor as an experimental feature, available for anyone who wants to use it.
The new editor features:
Better image support
You can now upload images into a post, or just copy-and-paste them directly. No more mandatory URLs!
Table support
You can now create and edit tables directly in the editor:
You can even merge cells to create fun shapes:
More text editing options
This is your new editing menu:
New options include custom code blocks for a smorgasbord of languages, as well as nested numbered lists (no Markdown required):
How to get experimental features like this sweet editor
You can opt into experimental features from your account settings:
If you use the Forum a lot, you should definitely click that box so you can see the neat stuff we roll out sooner than anyone else (except for us).
Create your own sequences
You can now create your own sequences, like the Motivation Series, by going to this page.
Once you create a sequence, you’ll be taken to a page like this…
After you’ve written a description and marked the sequence as a draft, clicking “Submit” will take you here:
You can add whatever Forum posts you want (yours and others’) to fill out the sequence.
Make your own tags
Users who check the “experimental features” box can now create tags, not just vote on those made by other people.
They also now have the ability to edit tag descriptions in a wiki-like fashion.
Delete your own comments
You’ll now be able to actually delete your own comments (rather than just removing all the text), as long as they haven’t been replied to. No more accidental double-posting!
Into the gray
Top-level pages now have a gray background, and are 70% less blinding!
Seems like great changes!
Some questions about tags (let me know if there's a better home for these questions):
1. If people create their own tags, are these visible to everyone, or are they like private tags just for that person? (I assume it's the former; just want to check.)
2. Are there norms around what kinds of tags to create? Should there be?
E.g., should we be careful to avoid a proliferation of extremely fine-grained tags, or just go ahead and not worry?
As case studies, here are some tags I might create if no one tells I maybe shouldn't:
3. Are there norms around editing tag descriptions? Should there be?
You say "They also now have the ability to edit tag descriptions in a wiki-like fashion", but when someone does something stupid on Wikipedia other people can view the article history and restore old versions. Here it looks like regular users can't do that? That makes me slightly concerned about unilaterally making changes that seem good to me but might seem less good to other people.
As a case study, there are some tags that correspond to topics I've made collections of sources about (e.g., value drift). I'm inclined to add to the bottom of the description of each of those tags "(Sources on this topic from outside the EA Forum can be found here[link].)"
4. Would it be possible for tag pages to, in future, include links to sources from outside the EA Forum by means other than adding links in the description? Would that be good?
It seems to me that that could be cool, as an elegant way to have the tag page be the ideal go-to link to use, as it'd then have a brief description of the topic and a comprehensive collection of sources.
I've now created the post Propose and vote on potential tags, which I hope can serve as a place to collect and sift through a bunch of ideas.