Abandoned drafts keep rising from the dead

[nathanielvirgo]

Describe the bug

I think this is a recent change in behaviour: previously, if I started drafting a message and thought better of it, I could just close the draft and it would go into my drafts folder, where I could access it if needed but otherwise I could just forget about it. Recently, my abandoned drafts keep resurfacing whenever I try to reply to a different message.

This wouldn't be so bad, but it's really awkward to dismiss them, and sometimes the old text gets mixed into a new draft without me noticing, so it gets a bit frustrating sometimes.

To Reproduce

To reproduce the basic issue:

1. start typing a reply in some topic, and don't post it
2. close the draft
3. try to reply to another message in the same topic. The old draft text reappears

if you don't want to resurrect the old draft but still want it to stay saved as a draft, it seems the only thing you can do is click on the three dots next to the send button and click "Save draft and start a new message", which is awkward to do and very non-obvious.

To reproduce accidentally mixing up an old draft with a new one

1. start drafting a reply in some topic
2. close the draft
3. select another long message in the same topic and click "quote and reply."
4. start replying to the quote by breaking the quote up into chunks and replying to fragments of it
5. now notice that the old draft text is still there at the end of the quote, even though it never became visible in the process of editing the quote to reply to it.

Expected behavior

Either the old draft just never reappears unless I specifically seek it out, or if it does reappear, it should be very very obvious that it's an old draft and very, very easy to dismiss it and start a new one.

If I click "quote and reply" to some message, I don't think the draft text should ever reappear.

Or perhaps the best option would be something like a note that says "you have n drafts in this topic, do you want to restore one of them?" above the text box where you enter a reply. So it's easy to resurrect a draft but not mandatory.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• Operating System:

macOS 12.6.5

• Zulip Desktop Version:

5.11.0

[alya]

Thanks for the report! This is indeed a recent intentional change, as described in this Zulip update message:

When you start composing, the most recently edited draft for the conversation you are composing to now automatically appears in the compose box. You can always save a draft and start a new message using the send options menu next to the Send button. Learn more.

It's very possible there are improvements to be made in how it works.

I'm surprised about the particular issue you report with quote-and-reply, though. When I try to follow your instruction to reproduce accidentally mixing up an old draft with a new one, I'm not seeing the old draft appear.

[nathanielvirgo]

I think you're right - it is not happening for me following the exact instructions I gave. So I am not currently sure what was tripping me up - I definitely did have the experience a few times where I was replying to a quote and found some old draft text that wasn't meant to be there, but I'm now not sure exactly how to reproduce it.

Then I guess all I want to say is that as it is, I don't think this is a good change. It could be useful occasionally, but the rest of the time it just presents me with a problem I have to work around. If there was an easy one-click way to dismiss the old draft it wouldn't be so bad, but I would still honestly prefer it not to happen at all.

[alya]

Are you hoping to save the old draft for later, or do you want to get rid of it altogether? If you don't need it at all, deleting the text in your compose box will clear it out.

[nathanielvirgo]

Often I want to keep it. I use Zulip for maths, and it can take a while to get everything right before I send it. Often I do end up abandoning drafts entirely, but I don't want to explicitly delete them because I do sometimes come back to them. (Speaking of which, I sort of wish drafts wouldn't be auto-deleted either, but that's a separate issue.)