Move question info from underneath question title back to sidebar on wider viewports

Question

Recently, the system was changed to show question statistics (asked, views, last active) underneath the question title, rather than on the sidebar as before. This appears to be in response to this feature request, which requests that this be done for narrower viewports.

However, this was also implemented for wider viewports. Can this please be changed so it's only on narrower viewports? Personally, I find the info to be in a rather unnatural spot. Second, as a mildly autistic person I find the information a bit hard to ignore, and too eye-catching. Finally, this change has broken existing user scripts which add information to the former sidebar; it will take some time for user script authors to update their scripts, leaving them out of commission for a potentially long time.

I also agree with this answer to the original question asking about this feature (was deleted by a mod as it didn't answer the support question), which states that aside information should be in the sidebar, not in the main content.

Answer 1

I believe the new layout is harmful (for those with larger screens) because the previous configuration logically delimited identifiers with a newline, whereas the newer configuration delimits it using a bit of whitespace and bolded text. It takes less mental effort to process the former. Is this easier to parse?

foo: 256
bar: 42
baz: lorem ipsum

Or this?

foo: 256    bar: 42    baz: lorem ipsum

If you quickly want to know the value of "bar", which takes more mental effort to parse?

Fundamentally, newlines are better mental delimiters than horizontal whitespace.

Answer 2

Hopefully the stats get restored to the sidebar, but until that happens (if it does), if you find the new position of the question stats too distracting and want to put them back in the sidebar, you can install this userscript. Screenshot:

It re-creates the #qinfo table in the sidebar, so in addition to the more appropriate placement of the stats, older userscripts that depended on data in the table have a chance of continuing to work, like Roomba Forecaster.

Post moved here from Why are the sidebar stats for a question now under the title?, as suggested by Tinkeringbell.

Answer 3

On desktop, this modification does not help in terms of readability, usability or accessibility.

First, it strays from a basic web readability principle:

Multiple chunks of information presented vertically as list items (like the page stats were in the sidebar) are easier to read, scan and digest than when presented in narrative form (like they are now, which looks like an odd sentence).

The latter creates a greater cognitive burden.

Also, the natural flow of the main content is disrupted, because visitors are forced to read meta data, which can't be ignored, as it's right below the main title.

The placement of this data in such a high-profile spot within the main content also implies that the information is of great importance. In reality, however, it's just <aside> information, and should be set aside from the main content (the sidebar location was perfect).

Then there's the fact that the key-value pairs have minimal space and formatting separating them.

Weak headings. A reliance on space, with minimal differentiation, for all facets of separation.

If you must create a horizontal list of key-value pairs, a greater effort should be made to distinguish them from one another. But the people at SE HQ appear to know this already.

Stack profile page layout:

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Perhaps there are other factors driving this change that we aren't aware of because, for the reasons listed above, it falls short of a layout improvement.

Hopefully, the previous layout will be restored.

Answer 4

This may be unpopular, but I disagree. It will take a while to get used to, of course, for experienced SE users like us, but this is not a harmful change.

Personally, I find the info to be in a rather unnatural spot.

Really? I think the current location is much more natural than the old location. As I said here, look at what else is in the right sidebar: links to the blog, hot/featured meta posts, linked and related questions, a sample of the HNQ list, ... All of that falls into the category of "here's some other stuff that you might want to click through to", not info about the post you're actually viewing. It kind of makes sense to put info about the post in the same part of the screen as the post itself. (Not necessarily immediately below the title, but that would be a whole different FR: yours is specifically about moving it back to the sidebar.)

Finally, this change has broken existing user scripts which add information to the former sidebar; it will take some time for user script authors to update their scripts, leaving them out of commission for a potentially long time.

In no reasonable universe should that even be a consideration. If you modify your SE experience with some add-ons, that's on you, but don't expect the people who design the site to cater to whatever add-ons some users might or might not have used. The vast majority of users don't use any extra enhancements to their SE experience, and the few who do shouldn't expect to be a factor, at all, in site design decisions.

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This whole post smacks of "move my cheese back" and XKCD 1172. You can't expect SE to undo a change they've just made, although you can certainly change it back yourself using another add-on.