Change 274656 had a related patch set uploaded (by Siebrand):
Remove double emphasis in strings

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/274656

Change 274657 had a related patch set uploaded (by Siebrand):
Remove double emphasis in strings

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/274657

@jmatazzoni , @Pginer-WMF : Thoughts?

For additional context, some of the considerations were discussed in T121724.

With the bolding and the quotes I think we are trying to solve two different problems (with some overlaps):

• Bolding is proposed to emphasise the the important info. Making it easy to recognise at a glance that there has been a reply to the topic you were looking for.
• Quotes were introduced before the use of bolding to limit the piece of information (this can be be argued that bolding now also does) and help make clear that it is literal content (not needing to blend into the sentence in terms of grammar). For example: "Cronopio thanked you for your edit on an irrelevant article" vs. "Cronopio thanked you for your edit on 'an irrelevant article'").

So one valid question is whether the bolding can achieve both goals well enough.
I've noticed that currently the use of quotes is not consistent across notifications, which allowed me to compare how both cases worked in a real scenario. I was able to read the bold-only version fluently, and didn't missed the quotes (the "...topic on page" construct read natural and the context did the rest). So I'm ok in evaluating some more examples and remove them if we don't find cases where they add value.

I added the examples below:

Bold-only for thanks notifications (flow and edit related)*:

Bold and quotes for discussion topics:

*I modified the usernames for thanks, since as far as I know, thank-related info is not publicly visible.

As some may remember, I was initially concerned that all the boldfacing and quotation marks were too much. That it would make the notifications too busy. But as I've had the opportunity to see this in action, I'm convinced that the boldfacing and quotations work well together. Information, it's said, is a distinction that makes a difference. Using quotation marks to distinguish between topic names and page names adds information that I think is useful.

Yes, users will of course be able to piece together which is which. But our whole goal in crafting the design of this has been to enable people to scan the messages and quickly figure out what they need to pay attention to. I think having a cue that tells you, at a glance, which are the topics helps. Oddly, perhaps, I find the version above without the quotation marks more busy-looking, with all the undifferentiated bold. Maybe it's because I need to engage my brain to sort out what's happening instead of just using my eyes.

... Continuing. If we were going to change anything -- and I'm not convinced yet that a change is necessary -- I'd want to look at what it would be like to bold the page names only and then use quotation marks for the topic names. At least that way you'd preserve a distinction between the two types of information.

I haven't read any feedback concerning bold or quotations.

At least that way you'd preserve a distinction between the two types of information.

As I mentioned above I think quotes may help to emphasise the literal aspect of a piece of content. However, I don't think that distinguishing the different kinds of content should be our goal. There are many different kinds of content (from images, collections, categories, user groups, tags, etc.) and we probably don't want each one to have its distinctive kind of marking.
So I think one important question to ask is, which is the general rule about what should be in quotes? Is it a one-time exception for topics in the specific Flow extension? or there is a more general definition that other extensions should follow?

I'd want to look at what it would be like to bold the page names only and then use quotation marks for the topic names.

I create a wider combination of examples:

A) Just bold for key content elements (pages and topics):

B) Using both quotes and bold for topics:

C) Using just quotes for topics:

D) I also included another example where only the one main content element (being it a page or topic) is bolded (which is what the notification normally links to), but just one. The "thanks" notification is a good example to evaluate since topics and pages are combined:

My biggest concern is with option C, since we are emphasising more the context (page) than the main piece of content for which the user was thanked.

There are many different kinds of content (from images, collections, categories, user groups, tags, etc.) and we probably don't want each one to have its distinctive kind of marking.

I'm using "topic names" as a shorthand for "all the things that we're boldfacing that aren't pagenames." I'm pretty sure that all those items is getting quotes now, aren't they?

So far we haven't seen a lot of reaction to the styling of pages and topics (etc.). Moving this to the backlog while we wait for the dust to settle.

Change 274656 abandoned by Siebrand:
Remove double emphasis in strings

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/274656

Change 274657 abandoned by Siebrand:
Remove double emphasis in strings

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/274657