Mind labeling this with “## Appendix” and pinning the cells below? Unpinned code cells make it harder to read how this notebook works.

Safe to delete this cell?

Sure.

Hello! 👋🏼

I love it !

Bonjour !

Great!

This feels soooo goood :D

🤣🤣😂😀😃🧟‍♂️👯‍♀️💇🏻‍♂️ it seems emojis aren't working that great.

Cool!

@rabelais seems like in-browser works pretty well? I see the zwj emoji modifications above in Chrome and Safari. In Gmail on the web, I don't see the right emoji though, but in my Gmail app they look good. Are you seeing other renderings?

> Gmail on the web, I don't see the right emoji though. Same here. Also, emoji sizes aren't all the same size in the message received via Gmail and viewed on Chrome, though they appear all the same size in the notebook. Seems Gmail re-interpreted which icon set it wanted to use to render these back out [i.e. on the web all icons are from the same set, whereas they come through mixed in Gmail on the web.].

w00t!

Am a newbie..

I am commenting on a public notebook!

I am really like it

Hello, world!

"redact" reads like a euphemism here since comments cannot be edited. Why not just write "delete"?

👍🏼

You are awesome, I've been really looking forward to something like this! The best feature (apart from public comments) is not having to fork a notebook and submit a suggestion to comment something (which felt very heavy and too much trouble for a small comment).

+1

+1 (we need emoji reactions now :D)

Thanks y’all! ❤️

How about comments when viewing notebooks in safe mode? Came up just now when i wanted to fix up a very slow notebook but keep the conversation from the comments while doing so

Aha, we had explicitly turned off comments off in safe mode, but mostly due to lack of real world examples of needing them in safe mode (and being conservative about introducing bugs in safe mode). Thanks for the feedback! We'll look into adding them in safe mode.

Would you want to do all comment-related activities while in safe mode? Reply, add new comments, delete comments, report a comment? Or just read?

Observable is getting more awesome everyday

My first reaction is that the comment icon is too prominent and distracting. In particular, when there is no comment, I feel that the icon could be hidden in the menu. When working on a notebook, it tends to spuriously open comment mode rather than dropping me into edit mode. However it's only a first reaction after a few hours—I suppose I'll adapt my movements after a while.

Good feedback, Fil! If there are no comments, the comment icon is only shown on hover. But we’re keeping an eye on this and we’ll see how it feels after adjusting. Personally I’ve found I now like the window to be a little wider for a larger left margin for opening and closing cells.

yes you need to finger-learn to avoid that icon area :) Another tiny UX issue linked to the placement of that icon: on a cell that is higher than screen height, clicking "show comments" doesn't show them (because they are below), and there is no immediate feedback (change of icon's color or shape—I don't count the hover title) as to whether they are now open or closed (an accidental double-click leaves you wondering…)

Another possible argument for hiding the comment icon under the menu is that the addition of an extra click + searching the menu makes it a *little* bit more of hassle to start a conversation, and that tiny bit of friction might help a surprising amount to discourage people from frivolous comment spamming. Not all UI friction is a net negative, especially in social contexts

Yes, I find I keep accidentally clicking on the icon, when I mean to open the cell. Perhaps only show icon if there is a comment, otherwise include under the three dots menu.

I too would prefer the icon to not be shown unless a cell already has comments (it's only one more click). Even then I'd argue that a less interfering way could be found to indicate comments.

I assume you placed it prominently to invite conversations, but 99.9% of the time my preferred action is to open a cell. Always having to avoid the comment icon just doesn't make a lot of sense in that context, especially since I have to move the cursor past it. There is a "Toggle code commenting" keyboard shortcut, but I have no idea how to access this functionality otherwise - the shortcut doesn't work for me on a German layout.

"Toggle code commenting" is still not well named (was renamed from simply "Toggle comments" as part of this launch). It's to toggle comments within code if you've highlighted several lines. Maybe "Toggle comments in code"? There currently are no keyboard shortcuts for commenting other than cmd/ctrl-enter/return to send a comment. And, we're working on the suggestion to hide the icon in certain cases.

We've gone ahead and hidden the "Add comment" icon on hover, as suggested! You can still find it in the cell context menu when adding the first comment on a cell.

The icon isn’t showing up, even when there are comments already (in Safari on iPadOS)

Can I start a monologue instead? Well it does look like that I can, indeed, start a monologue. Several successive comments merge into one!

They do! This is an old feature of suggestion comments. We were wondering if this feature was surprising to others or still useful. Thoughts?

I think it's great! What would also be cool is a "comments" tabs on our personal home pages, so that we can follow what's up with the threads we've been part of. Ideally with the relevant cell.

Counterpoint 1: Now I have no means to split a comment into multiple parts, to: - a) list multiple tasks that can be resolved individually, - b) split out sensitive information into separate comments that I can delete prior to publishing a notebook. Counterpoint 2: Comment timestamps no longer reflect the actual comment creation time.

To show our hand, we were thinking about removing this behavior because it causes a built-in delay before sending a notification email to wait for possible appends. We'd like to remove the delay and send emails immediately, which motivates us to remove this append behavior.

I think merging comments is great! I would argue for keeping the delay in any case, because I really would love to be able to edit a comment, or delete it promptly, without leaving a trace. I very often edit comments just after sending them, because that's where I spot a typo, a problem with tone, a missing URL, a pasted password (jk)… so that also would call for a short delay before a comment is sent to everyone. (I'm also a big user of the "undo send" button on gmail.)

I stand by my arguments against comment merging, but Fil makes a good point about the delay. Until there's an edit feature (and maybe even then), having a short delay is almost a requirement to avoid spam due to brainfarts, spelling errors and the likes. Especially since anyone who ever commented on a notebook will receive a notification (unless they unsubscribed).

+1 for keeping the delay, as well as the option to editing/deleting a comment (or perhaps instead of editing it have a "delete and re-draft" option like mastodon). To give another example of where zero-delay emails can go horribly wrong: GitHub comments. Sometimes I: - post a comment with a question or discussion point - realize the answer or a mistake - start editing and fix the comment - come back the next day to a reply from a colleague who used GH's reply-to-email-to-comment feature, replying to the unedited comment in the process At that point we have to resolve confusion about the comment content on top of what actually is being discussed. So basically, zero-delay emails can lead to merge conflicts in conversations.

(Side note: Perhaps, after creating a comment, there could be a small indicator that shows that the notification hasn't been sent yet?)

On the topic of notifications: it would be great if mails could also contain an excerpt of the thread's preceding comment, to give some context. Otherwise mails become a lot less useful for notebooks with multiple threads.

Amazing. Guys you are the best!

whoa, cool idea, but they're way too easy to click on! I keep clicking on them as Im trying to work on a private notebook, and then I have to keep closing it... maybe hide them a little bit? Or what about having them on the right side of the cell, so its not competing with editing?

@pstuffa - I also find that I accidentally click comments open. Maybe this would be less frustrating if they didn't stay open by default, but instead closed and disappeared if focus left a cell without any content being added.

(New topic) A rather serious problem that remains is that comments get lost when the cell that they are bound to is deleted. Afaik there's no way to restore them, which means that entire conversations can be nuked accidentally.

You can bring the cell back (and its comments) by opening up a notebook’s history, selecting the version prior to the cell being deleted, and then clicking Revert in the notebook menu. That said, we’d like to make it easier to undo accidental edits, and perhaps find a way to show comments that are attached to deleted cells or to move comments between cells.

Is there any way I can temporarily turn off commenting? I constantly miss and hit the icon and have to close the comment form all the time.

Yes! You can lock comments so they're not available. There's a section on how to do this just a few cells below https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/comments#moderation

I would love an option to expand comments for all cells without having to click on each icon individually. Otherwise it feels like I have to hunt for comments instead of leisurely scrolling past them and taking in the conversation. Also, on mobile this would currently be the only sensible way to access comments, since the current path is: 1. tap on cell menu, 2. check if it says "show comments" or "add comment", 3. If it says "show comments", tap on "show comments". Repeat for every single cell in the notebook.

+1

+1

nice work... also to add likes and dislikes for comments

just got surprised by this! very cool to get emails with other discussions on a particular notebook. Perhaps you could link the cell related to the comments on the email notification, then you could just jump into it.

If I unsubscribed from the comments on this notebook, will I still receive notifications if someone answers in a particular thread I'm participating in? To take an example, suppose many users start to comment on D3's documentation notebooks to ask questions; the risk I see is that they will then either receive tons of non-relevant messages, or unsubscribe and miss a reply to their question.

+1 to Fil's remark. Ideally comment subscription should be thread based. It might also be necessary to introduce direct replies to individual comments. Otherwise the following will happen: - Cells without comments will become a valuable commodity, as they allow to start a new thread. - Users will comment on cells that are unrelated to their actual comment, just because of their position and/or availability. - There will be hard-to-follow threads with mixed discussions. Some of these issues could be mitigated by allowing dicussions on the notebook level (i.e. not tied to a cell).

When you enable notifications for a notebook (which happens implicitly when you comment on or author a notebook), you will receive notifications for every subsequent comment on that notebook; it’s notebook-based, not cell-based. If you then unsubscribe, you will no longer receive any notifications related to the notebook. Thanks for the feedback—we’ll consider changes and refinements to this behavior after seeing how it works out in practice.

I've just noticed the email notification with comments are coming with a hash navigations! awesome! https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/comments#comment-c16599a95294a64c

I can comment here...

You can!

Nice! Trying it out

ok

So speaking of visibility, have you considered showing the total amount of comments on a notebook next to the likes? I'm honestly not sure myself if that would be good or not, since it would risk "gamifying" having lots of comments. That's a Pandora's box waiting to happen. On the one hand you have places like Reddit, where topics that intentionally push people's buttons are the ones with the most comments. You don't want to encourage that. On the other hand, I remember from the golden days of Google Reader that when an item had many reshares and conversations, it was because the topic was thought-provoking in an interesting way and the comments tended to have lots of really interesting content. Google Reader was special though: since it was all about sharing RSS feeds, where at best you could comment underneath a shared item, it organically was a social network for people who wanted to share things they found interesting instead of talk about themselves. Not sure how the affordances of Obsevable's comments compare to that

Just added this! This count was available for editors, but not the general public browsing Explore or other listings. Thanks for the suggestion!

I can now finally comments on notebooks!!