Please, return the ‘Edit’ comments link
Or make it more obvious. A few days back, I spent nearly an hour looking for the ‘edit’ link in the comments management section of WP 2.5. Sadly, and I almost panicked, I found it someplace I least expected – by clicking on the name of who made the comment!
My initial reaction I recreated in the graphic below:
Why was the ‘Edit’ comment link placed on the name of the comment author? It sure beats me and conventions of using WordPress. Surely though, the guys behind WordPress had a reason for it to be like this in WP 2.5. One of the developers of WP explains both with clarity and sense (highlights are mine):
This sort of mirrors how post edit links work. To edit a post (or a page), you just click the name of the post. That is quite intuitive. I learned that behavior in about a day, and now the old way of clicking the “Edit” link seems strange. I’ve not had the same experience with comments. I think the problem is that comments don’t have a title, like posts do. The title is an obvious click target. It is (generally) unique, and it is a natural answer to the question “which post do I want to edit?” (oh yeah, this one!) Clicking the comment author is not intuitive. You don’t want to edit the comment author, you want to edit the comment. The comment author is often not unique, and doesn’t really work as a “handle” for an individual comment.
Thanks Mark! Thank you for shedding the light of wisdom and common sense on to this issue. I’m sure all the other WP users out there who experienced the same issue will agree and even support the idea of returning the ‘edit’ comments link or at least making it more obvious in the next version of WordPress. I hope it will be WP 2.5.1
There are a lot of good and welcomed changes in WP 2.5, sadly though this little detail is perhaps among the not-so-good changes.
Do you agree? Or do you like the new way of editing comments just at it is?
I actually find the WP 2.5 interface more intuitive, but it’;s such a big departure that small changes like this can be such a biiiig nuisance.
The new interface is nice and a welcomed change – overall. But from these little issues, the devil is indeed in the details.
It also gave me a hard time looking for that edit link.
I did not expect that clicking on the author’s name will bring you to the edit comment page. LOL. But now it’s clear