On 24 Gen, 08:01, Steve Brunton <sbrun...@gmail.com> wrote: > I've always found that assuming or guessing you know what the end user > is attempting to do is a sure sign of something going wrong.
But that's exactly what the *NEW* way of handling replies is doing! It's *assuming* that when a user manually types an @reply, the user is obviously starting a new conversation. In my experience it's clear that this is absolutely not the case. Now, with the new change, about half of the @replies in my timeline are clearly in response to other tweets, yet lack the "in reply to" link from the web interface. It's *extremely* aggravating. *Both* methods (auto-linking manual replies and not linking manual replies) assume something about what the user is doing. Assumptions will *have* to be made in order to keep the Twitter interface simple, and I think the current assumptions that are being made are bad for the UI of Twitter. Here are two things to keep in mind: 1. On the Twitter web interface, the only way to set the "in_reply_to_status_id" parameter is to click the reply swoosh. How many people know about this? Furthermore, how *fast* is this? If I were to reply to @al3x's latest tweet, it would almost *certainly* be faster to simply type "@al3x" instead of moving my hand off the keyboard and clicking the reply swoosh of @al3x's latest tweet. Humans are lazy creatures. What do you think they are more likely to do? Combine that with the new assumptions that Twitter is making, and it clearly disrupts conversation linking when it would usually be accurate. 2. When you're talking in normal conversation, what's the default assumption? If I say something to you in person, it's assumed that I'm usually replying to the last thing you said. I never have to *explicitly* say that. For example, if I say, "What time is it?", you don't say, "In reference to your question about the time, it is 5 PM." The new assumptions in the Twitter API are akin to requiring users to make conversation linkage explicit. It requires more effort on the part of users, and people aren't always going to go against their habit of being lazy.
