User settings for Task Confirmation Modal not working as expected

[govvin]

What happened?

When a user configures their preferences to disable Task Confirmation Modal, then the user will not see the modal at all, when the project/challenge doesn't require it. However, the modal window still shows up.

I confirm that I've tried on a challenge that doesn't require confirmation. I've also double-checked on the project settings, to ensure that the confirmation is optional.

Steps to reproduce

1. Set your preferences, disable the Task Confirmation Modal.
2. Work on a task from a challenge that doesn't require task confirmation
3. After hitting any of the completion buttons (i fixed it, can't complete, etc.) the modal comes up:

Environment

Linux on Firefox, Vivaldi

Additional information

No response

[maxwellward]

On this challenge, the "I fixed it" button proceeds without confirmation correctly, but all the other proceed buttons ask for confirmation even with the disable confirmation setting enabled. MacOS, Zen (Gecko/Firefox).

[govvin]

Trying this again on challenges, and giving this a bit more thought, and I think I may have misunderstood this setting.

It seems that the behavior is that when the setting is enabled, and the user manages to fix a task, then the confirmation is optional.

If the user weren't able to fix it, it displays the confirmation modal.

I am interested in the following scenario:

• a user browsing or giving a task a cursory review, and unsure about what to do (maybe a beginner, looking for something they can handle; or a local trying to review tasks in the vicinity of their neighborhood) , then tapping on the Skip button could behave the same as "unlocking" the task, but let's the user jump to the next task. (Actually, there are equivalent shortcut keys for this behavior, but only for challenge owners, and only if a task has a status.)
• without this option, user has to unlock the task, which I've observed in many users, is an option often overlooked. Plus, unlocking a task doesn't send them to another task, but back up to the challenge page.

If this isn't the desired behavior, always expecting the user for feedback for any task, it could feel tedious for (new) users.

[CollinBeczak]

Hmm, thinking about the future of task status's and completion, it might be useful to come up with a different solution for skipped tasks. I think we should maybe just store the number of skips on a task, and have it retain its previous status, usually "created".

Also I'm not a fan of the "skip confirmation modal" settings personally, i have no notion to remove that feature at the moment, but i would like to know if its a feature we should really have. Maproulette wants to push through high quality edits, and wants users to think through their changes and validate that they made a high level change.

You seem very active govvin in the community, do you have any opinions on task status management and confirmation steps? Nothing to be acted on yet, just building a library of opinions to help guide bigger developments in the future.

My opinions for reference are:

1. We should enforce the confirmation step to make users take a second longer to think about their changes and consider adding tags and comments.

2. Store the skip data in a separate location than task status and don't do the confirmation modal for this user interaction.

[govvin]

I hope we're not thinking of another button 😁, but I think what you're saying is that you want to keep the code in place for now?

For the behavior I described, let's say there's a "Bypass" button instead of "Skip" on the screen, and a user will still be required to follow the behavior of current buttons, except that Bypass will not bring the feedback modal, and simply jumps to the next random task. It's like a shortcut to unlocking the task, going back to the challenge page, and hitting the start button again.

Challenge managers should not think of this "Bypass" button as direct feedback mechanism, but more for the benefit of users reviewing for tasks they feel confident to work on. I think counting the number of Skips or Bypass taps for a particular task provides challenge managers some clue, and if they're unusually high, and it can be something they can look into more closely.

Will this button encourage "cherry-picking" behavior? Maybe, but again, we rely on volunteers' goodwill, time and skills, and at the same time, we want them to be confident with what they're doing, to produce good edits.

We can only hope that they could contribute more time, and complete more tasks, while the platform can only hope to make the contribution/editing experience enjoyable, or at least not so tedious, at the same time encourage good practices.

[CollinBeczak]

It wouldn't be another button, we would probably just make the current skip button the bypass button. And with that change we would probably make it visually distinct.