Nikki added a comment.
Sorry, this got a bit long... I don't find the clear button very intuitive as a way to start a new query. I'm having trouble explaining why, but I can try: It's quite far down the page below the textarea (often off the bottom of the screen on my laptop since the query pushes it even further down), so it's not very easy to spot (assuming it's on the screen at all). It also doesn't work with how I actually react to things: When I go to the page, my intention is to start a new query and if there's an existing query there, my instinct isn't to go down the page (past the stuff I don't even want) to find a clear button at the bottom of the form, it's to abandon the current page in favour of a new one (e.g. by clicking a link back to the main page... which in this case would only lead me into an infinite loop :)). When I have no choice but to clear the form, I end up doing it manually, because it never occurs to me to start by going to the end of the form - by the time I notice/remember there's a clear button, it's too late. I think adding a hash to the end of the URL might be a bit too subtle. I can see why you suggest that, but a stray hash at the end of the URL normally has no effect on the page and it's also not obviously saying "this creates a new query", so I think it could be a bit confusing (e.g. in particular, if some people link to it with the hash and some without, someone loading the page would sometimes see an old query and sometimes a blank query, unless you spot the pattern, it will just appear inconsistent). I think if we want a URL explicitly for new queries, something like /new would be better. Referring to what aude said, I think the lack of a history is another problem with loading old queries. The current behaviour gets in my way because I don't have any use for loading the last query I ran: I can't be sure I won't accidentally run another query after closing a query (e.g. one of the other queries I have open or a query someone else is asking for help with), so if I want to save a query, I'll either leave it open in a tab or create a bookmark, then when I want that query again, I'll just open the tab/bookmark, not go to the main page. That means that when I do go to the main page, it's only to start a new query, and having to clear the form ends up being an extra step every single time. I also find it weird because I don't use any other site which does anything like that, which makes it unexpected behaviour for me. The closest thing I know of is the way Phabicator saves unfinished comments, but those are specific to individual tickets and go away once saved. I would prefer a way to make it never load the last query (since as I explained above, I have no use for it), but if people don't want that, I would at least appreciate some way of getting a page which defaults to a blank query. TASK DETAIL https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T128851 EMAIL PREFERENCES https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/settings/panel/emailpreferences/ To: Jonas, Nikki Cc: aude, Smalyshev, Nikki, Aklapper, debt, Gehel, D3r1ck01, FloNight, Izno, jkroll, Wikidata-bugs, Jdouglas, Deskana, Manybubbles, Mbch331 _______________________________________________ Wikidata-bugs mailing list Wikidata-bugs@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-bugs
