-6

Unless I'm missing something, there seems little point in having hover text for the three elements to the left of every question, as they simply repeat exactly what the element already says.

enter image description here

There is perhaps a very small need for the accepted answer text, but nothing any user wouldn't learn on their own within days [or minutes] of arriving here.
The 'votes' hover text says 'score' instead of 'votes', but I don't see this as being sufficient to warrant a tooltip.

enter image description here

Does it serve a purpose I'm failing to grasp, or is it superfluous & could be done away with?

Apologies if this has been asked before - my patience only lasted seven pages of posts mentioning hover text;)

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  • 4
    I think you are missing why these are useful but, even if they're not useful to you, what harm do they cause? What would be gained by removing them? I'm not in the code but it's possible that some past usability effort made it not optional to include hover text on any UI elements. I mean, they're on everything even when, sometimes, they're not super useful. "Score," for example, is better explained in this tooltip.
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Commented Jul 22, 2023 at 16:08
  • IMO the 'votes' tooltip saying for example "Score of -40" makes more sense than the text saying "-40 votes" (especially for a question that has received 44 votes).
    – Anyon
    Commented Jul 22, 2023 at 16:10
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    @AaronBertrand - Mainly I dislike them because they sometimes pop up unexpectedly & then if you mouse away quickly they stay up indefinitely [without any reliable repro, just randomly], until you either go back to them or refresh the page. They're also not on 'everything'. Create a custom filter, for instance. What's a custom filter? Why wouldn't a tooltip here be useful?
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 22, 2023 at 16:44
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    Well, I didn't mean everything literally. And that symptom sounds like environment-specific (I've never seen it) but if you think that is a legitimate bug then it should at least be included in your question if not its own post. It sounds like you are arguing for more tooltips, not fewer, anyway (and to that I would agree - Ask Question on this site could really use some guidance on what to ask here, for example).
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Commented Jul 22, 2023 at 16:52
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    @AaronBertrand - The bug has been around many years, but as my Mac is no longer current, no-one will entertain bug reports on it any more [I've tried previously for other bugs.] I'm certainly not arguing for more tooltips, merely ones that would seem more useful than -1 votes == Score of -1. If it even said what the vote split was I could perhaps see some point to it, but that's going to be a privilege issue. Without privs right now it just looks like one person didn't agree, whereas there's more to it than that once you can see the split.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 22, 2023 at 17:07
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    A bug has been around for years but nobody's ever reported it? I have several Macs and again have never seen it. So an unreported bug being experienced by one user (and maybe not even only on this site) doesn't seem to me like justification for removing tooltips (regardless of how useless - the bug should annoy you whether the tooltip contains useful info or not). I do agree about the split, I don't know why that's a privilege (other than some attempt at rate limiting).
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Commented Jul 22, 2023 at 17:13
  • As for seeing vote count/split, it was reduced to 100 here on MSE, about one year ago, see this. /cc @Aaron.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jul 22, 2023 at 17:26
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    @ShadowWizardStrikesBack Yeah, I realize it is lower here, I just don't know why it's a privilege at all. The information is arguably much more useful to new users than those with 100+ or 1000+ rep.
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Commented Jul 22, 2023 at 17:36
  • @AaronBertrand oh, because to show the split, query has to run, and if abused can take the server down. Or at least could do that in the olden days. That said, decent feature request would be to ask to make the split "static". not live, i.e. load that as part of the overall question details instead of sending AJAX request when clicking the score.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jul 22, 2023 at 17:38
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    @ShadowWizardStrikesBack Seems a better argument for rate limiting than privilege-based limiting. Since I am rate-limited even at 200K rep (one fetch per second, which would be hard to do very often no matter how long you've been here). A better solution is to not make that a database query in the first place. When loading the page (or populating cache), just bring both numbers instead of only the composite.
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Commented Jul 22, 2023 at 17:41
  • Don't these hover messages help screen readers? I have never needed to use such software, luckily, but I would guess that having a message pop-up will make the reader read it out loud and that can help those with limited vision. If so, that is an excellent reason to keep them.
    – terdon
    Commented Jul 23, 2023 at 9:40

1 Answer 1

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They are all useful, each in its own way.

  • The tooltip for "votes" adds info that it's the question score, as you already said yourself.
  • The tooltip for question with accepted answer explains that answer was accepted, it's not really clear from color alone.
  • The tooltip for views shows exact number of views when the number is big: views tooltip showing exact number

If for some reason you don't like hover text in general, I'm sure there are plenty of userscripts and browser extensions to hide them all.

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    So the first two explain the obvious. Regarding the third, in what realistic use case do you need to know the number of non-unique views of the post to 5+ significant figures?
    – Dan Mašek
    Commented Jul 22, 2023 at 15:17
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    @Dan well, why not? If I have a question that has "<x>k views" where <x> is some threshold for a badge, why can't I see whether I'm 499 views away or 1 view away? Anyway specific numbers are important to people as you can tell from these past thousands separators bugs.
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Commented Jul 22, 2023 at 16:06
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    @Dan obvious for you, for me, or for active/engaged users, sure. But not for new users, or people who didn't yet stumble over the word "score", for example. So it won't harm to introduce them to the term in a tooltip. As for the third, Aaron gave a decent reply already.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jul 22, 2023 at 16:58
  • @AaronBertrand Personally, if I wanted to see that particular piece of information, I'd look at it in the header of the question (found on my profile, not on that big list). Not really sure what I'd do with that number anyway (log in to all our machines and start clicking?), but I never really asked a question where that would be of importance. Might be a cultural thing too.
    – Dan Mašek
    Commented Jul 23, 2023 at 0:18
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    @Dan I'm just saying there are plenty of reasons plenty of people might want to see a specific number vs. the rounded/friendly label. My example was just that: one very specific example.
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Commented Jul 23, 2023 at 2:38

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