The ability to add version comments is BACK in Confluence Cloud!

[Rodney Hughes]

I agree with @Mary Connor 

Keyboard shortcuts are great if you use a tool every day.

But the real beauty of Confluence was its ease of use for people who perhaps only edited a page a few times a year.  Most things you needed to do were right there on the screen so you did not need t be a "power User"

Now I have to wave my mouse all over the screen thinking "where has that option gone?" (especially as ! work in one CLOUD system and one SERVER system!!)

Then click

Then think again "which option does what I want?"

Then click again

Then depending on which option I need, click again

then finally click <<Publish>>

So compare that wasted time and extra clicks with the habitual 1-second move of the mouse to the bottom of the screen (why not just put that up at the top of the screen or on a fixed slide bar or something)

SRERIOUSLY.

All these new editor changes to "improve the User experience" has made it FAR more annoying.

Relying on us knowing a couple of hundred keyboard shortcuts to do such easy things is simply a lack of understanding of Users.  I manage a global instance of some 6000 Users who are all spasmodic editors at most a few times a year, and of ages from 20's to 70's. 

If we can't see it, we probably won't remember use it.

So all those discussions your product teams had was clearly a waste of time!

Please ... just bring back the old Editor functionality and go back to your discussions and drawing board until you truly have a better functionality than the old system and that doesn't destroy the User experience.  Your Users should not be treated as suffering guinea pigs 

[Arthur Mack]

@Rodney Hughes  How do you have a cloud instance with 6,000 users when the maximum is 5,000? Most of our users use it all the time so not an issue for us as long as they give us all the functionality back. 

[Rodney Hughes]

@Arthur Mack 

I have two systems that I manage. 

A SERVER system with a rapidly growing 6000+ Users in thousands of different companies world-wide for our industry association where the Users collaborate to write industry guidelines for the power industry.  Some Users might only be editing pages a few times a year, some perhaps a few hundred times.
THE reason we selected Confluence was its extreme User friendliness and helpfulness for Users with no training on the system as such an association needs.

A  CLOUD system with a much limited number of Users that I assign for my own clients from project‑to‑project who are generally new to Confluence - certainly low familiarity with it.  At the time I implemented my own company instance, CLOUD at that time was almost identical functionality as SERVER back then. CLOUD has so much cut out of it "to improve the User experience", especially the last "slash and burn" changes last year, I am now reluctant to use for my next projects because it will just confuse and hinder my clients rather than help them in our mutual collaboration of the documents I am preparing for them.

[Kim Hirschman]

I have to walk back one of the things I said in my comment of 9/15/2020.  You do not have to choose between notifying watchers and adding a change note.  The interface is confusing (anyway, it confused me) but now I understand how it works.  Assume you are ready to publish.  Here is what to do in a variety of circumstances: 

• You DON'T need to add a comment and DO want to notify all watchers:
  •    Click "Publish"
• You DON'T need to add a comment and DON'T want to notify watchers:
  •    Open ... menu and select "Publish without notifying watchers"
• You DO need to add a comment AND...
  •    You DO want to notify watchers:
    •    Open ... menu and select "Publish with version comment", fill in comment and check "Notify Watchers" (it is checked by default so no big deal.)
  •    You DON'T want to notify watchers
    •   Open ... menu and select "Publish with version comment", fill in comment and uncheck "Notify Watchers" 

So you can make a decision about notifying watchers independently from adding a comment.

By contrast, here is what I used to do when I decided to publish my changes:

• Go to the bottom of the page.
• Fill in a version comment or not.
• Check or uncheck "notify watchers."
• Click Publish.

I have not left the page or had to memorize what is on a menu.

However, I was pleased that I could include comments like "fixed typo" without forcing other people to know about it!

[Prateek]

Can I make this a default option shown in main window instead of a "Publish" button?

[Jason Perry]

This is the kind of b.s. you have to deal with when products go "cloud only."  With server-based, on-premise products you have more control over preventing existing features from just up and walking away.  3 more years of a peaceful existence and then we're going to have to put up with crap like this...

[Rodney Hughes]

@Jason Perry 

Don't forget that if you currently have a SERVER licence, you do not ever have to abandon it. 
Just do one last version upgrade before the end of SERVER support and use that forever.