Roadmap for feature requests

Allow users to choose post sorting criteria. There are three places where this needs to be implemented.

1. Question lists like /activity, /unanswered, /meta, /activity/main, etc.
2. Answer lists on question pages like /15467, etc.
3. User lists like /users.

Question lists

On question lists, there should be a div.qa-nav-sub containing the following list items:

• New
• Votes
• Active

"Votes" should link to a new page type /top which lists questions by votes. Then there should be /top/categoryname which lists questions in the category, categoryname, by votes, and /top/categoryname/subcategoryname which lists questions in the subcategory of categoryname, subcategoryname by votes.

And then "Active" already has /activity.

The following list shows the links that the div.qa-nav-sub on each question list should contain links to (with the text masking the links in bold).

• On the /questions page, there should be links to:
  • New - /questions (this should be a.qa-nav-sub-selected)
  • Votes - /top
  • Activity - /activity
• On the /activity page, there should be links to:
  • New - /questions
  • Votes - /top
  • Activity - /activity (this should be a.qa-nav-sub-selected)
• On the /top page, there should be links to:
  • New - /questions
  • Votes - /top (this should be a.qa-nav-sub-selected)
  • Activity - /activity
• On the /questions/meta page, there should be links to:
  • New - /questions/meta (this should be a.qa-nav-sub-selected)
  • Votes - /top/meta
  • Activity - /activity/meta

• On the /activity/meta page, there should be links to:
  • New - /questions/meta
  • Votes - /top/meta
  • Activity - /activity/meta (this should be a.qa-nav-sub-selected)
• On the /top/meta page, there should be links to:
  • New - /questions/meta
  • Votes - /top/meta (this should be a.qa-nav-sub-selected)
  • Activity - /activity/meta

• On the /questions/main/astronomy page, there should be links to:
  • New - /questions/main/astronomy (this should be a.qa-nav-sub-selected)
  • Votes - /top/main/astronomy
  • Activity - /activity/main/astronomy

• On the /activity/main/astronomy page, there should be links to:
  • New - /questions/main/astronomy
  • Votes - /top/main/astronomy
  • Activity - /activity/main/astronomy (this should be a.qa-nav-sub-selected)
• On the /top/main/astronomy page, there should be links to:
  • New - /questions/main/astronomy
  • Votes - /top/main/astronomy (this should be a.qa-nav-sub-selected)
  • Activity - /activity/main/astronomy

Answer lists

On answer lists, there should also be a little bar at the top of the answer list with buttons saying "Votes", "Active", and "New". The formatting can look the same as that of div.qa-nav-sub. The default option should be "Votes", and when one chooses, say, "Active", the answers should be sorted by activity, and when one chooses "New", the answers should be sorted by age, with newest on top.

User lists

It would be nice to be able to sort user lists like the one on the /users page by "New" and "Reputation", with "Reputation" being default. This helps us find out when a new user registers. Also, for SE users, they should be listed under "New" based on their first physical login (using the value of the email I guess)

First, make the vote to close and vote to reopen buttons only appear if the user is logged in and has $\geq$ 500 rep. The suggest edits button should continue to be visible to everyone.

An advanced pinging system needs to be implemented. The existing pinging system is good, in fact great, and better than SE's even, but it can be improved.

• In comments, @upvoters and @downvoters should ping the upvoters and downvoters of the post the comment is on, respectively. E.g. if A posts an/a answer/question, and B downvotes it, then when C (or A, or B) writes a comment with the magic phrase @downvoters, B should get a ping with description "received a ping". These events in the history plugin should be hidden from public viewing (very important).
• In all QAC (questions, answers, and comments) posts, writing 
  • @experts and @editors should ping all experts, editors, moderators, administrators, and super-administrators. 
  • @mods and @moderators should ping all moderators, administrators, and super-administrators.  
  • @admins and @administrators should ping all administrators and super-administrators. 
  • @super-admins and @super-administrators should ping all super-administrators.

 Pagination or infinite scrolling (whichever's easier) of the user history page, because I'd like to set the time limit to forever, but this makes the page too long and too slow to load for active users.

(1) It seems that many users are using the double-dollar sign approach to LaTeX instead of the TeX button, because they think it is not possible to write centred TeX using the TeX button. This isn't really true, as you can enter the TeX as inline TeX, then go to source mode and change the \.( and \.) (without the dots) to \.[ and \.] respectively.

Of course, this is inconvenient, so I propose that there should be two inline radio buttons that say "Inline equation" and "Centred block equation" respectively at the bottom of the editor, with the inline option being default. When a user chooses the inline equation option, the editor should add the inline delitimers \.( and \.) but when the user chooses the block equation option, the editor should add the block delitimers \.[ and \.] instead of the inline delitimers. 

(6) Votes on comments should trigger an event in the history plugin, so that users are notified when their comments are voted on.

(8) Could answers be accessed through their IDs only? I mean, questions can be accessed plainly by their own IDs, e.g.physicsoverflow.org/15467 links to the question "Public beta feature requests", but physicsoverflow.org/15476 does not link to this answer.  

Instead, for answers, one needs the IDs of both the question and the answer, e.g. physicsoverflow.org/15467#15476. This is somewhat troublesome, for example, in suggesting edits. On MathsOverflow (and SE), the URL "physicsoverflow.org/15476" would redirect to the URL"physicsoverflow.org/1546#a15476".   

It would be nice to have this feature on PhysicsOverflow for the sake of convenience. It would be even nicer if it worked for comments too, e.g. physicsoverflow.org/15483 should redirect to physicsoverflow.org/15467#c15483 or show the same content. 

This is assuming a similar feature does not already exist, inbuilt into the Q2A core, but I have certainly not managed to come across any such a feature. 

(7) The editor should allow image upload.

(4) The history plugin should be modified further to inform users when their answers are hidden, unhidden. It is not necessary to do this when questions are closed/reopened, because that is always accompanied by a recategorisation.

1. ArXiV trackbacks

As explained here, this means that whenever an ArXiv paper is mentioned in a PhysicsOverflow post, a link to this PO post is added to the list of trackbacks (which may already contain blogs etc) for this paper in the ArXiv (Duh, I hope I have this right).

Polarkernel said this would be easy to do each time a new submission is created. For submissions that are already created, Polarkernel said he could develop a plugin to send trackbacks to ArXiv "a posteriori". Parsing posts for references to arXiv and sending trackbacks for them would be more difficult.

I think it would be nice to have all three abilities of course :-)

This should have higher priority to send trackbacks for old and new submissions, and medium priority for parsing posts and sending trackbacks.

See:

• MathOverflow tea/proto-meta post: Trackbacks to ArXiV
• MathOverflow meta post: Trackbacks are no longer being generated for the ArXiV
• TP.SE meta post: Integrating ArXiV trackbacking feature
• TP.SE meta post: ArXiV trackbacks: working!

5. Universal revision history

• A link to the revision history should be placed under every post, edited or unedited. For edited posts, the current text "edited 6 days ago by username" is fine for edited posts, but for unedited posts, there should be an additional piece of text saying "revision history" in place of the "edited 6 days ago by username" linking to the revision history. This is in the same spirit as this MathOverflow meta post.
• Recategorisation, Retagging, closure, reopening, should all be stored in the revision histories.  
• A field, "edit summary" should be there on the edit form, and if filled, the edit summary should be stored in the revision history next to the action description.  
• Edit histories should be stored for comments too.

2. Zotero integration

In order to help people use applications like Zotero on PhysicsOverflow (currently, this can only be done in Firefox through the Zotero Standalone extension), we need to have some meta tags to expose our bibiliographic meta data.

The instructions are here, but I don't know how this can be done for a Question & Answer site or forum, like PhysicsOverflow.   

6. About me and tag wiki editor

Could the editor for the user profile About Me be changed to PhysicsOverflow MathJax Editor instead of the current Basic Editor? This would allow the insertion of links and TeX and images and text formatting and a lot of other useful stuff into user profile About Me's. The same holds for tag wikis, which currently only have an HTML editor.

1. Deleted user handling improvements

See: How should deleted user attributions be preserved

5. Universal revision history

• Recategorisation, Retagging, closure, reopening, should all be stored in the revision histories.  
• A field, "edit summary" should be there on the edit form, and if filled, the edit summary should be stored in the revision history next to the action description.  

4. Submission summary tweaks

It may be good if for submissions (only), the following changes are made:

• Language change from "edited" to "summary edited" on question/submission lists and "summarised by..." on submission pages. 
• All the summarisers' names should be listed. E.g. "summary edited by PQR, ABC, XYZ" on submission pages.