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Replying to week-old comments
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By psctsh , Section Wishlist []
Posted on Sat Feb 16, 2002 at 12:00:00 PM PST
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Basically I outline two possible implementations which let users know that their [new->old] comments have been replied to. One is better for the user, the other is better for the system...
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I'm well aware that people have asked to get some kind of a notification on replies to their comments, however, I'm not sure as to how interested you people are in trying to implement this.
I've come up with two possible solutions (and either one might have been suggested here before--I couldn't find anything when I searched, though): one that seems to fit in with most new ideas I've read about (the "add a box" school of thought) and another that modifies the "new" attributes of comments. Note that I'm assuming many things about the database structure scoop uses, as I was wholly unable to figure it out from my [brief] once-over of the scoop code (it helps that I don't know perl).
The first method is simply to put a box on the side with the most recently "replied to" comments. It would give a link to psctsh's comment "Y" and then give userx's name (userx having recently replied to comment "Y"); it would look something along the lines of:
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Recently "replied to" comments:
Psctsh's comment on bugs and kids (UserY)
Some stupid comment psctsh made (UserX)
Psctsh's comment on bugs and kids (UserZ)
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This shouldn't be overly hard to do (I wouldn't imagine...), the only problem being what kind of a database/processor hit you're taking. I'm thinking that if you limit it to around 5-15 entries, it shouldn't be that bad. However, it would be getting accessed with every main page/section view, which might kill the server (at least, the site's been fast as hell *cough* since the "online users" box has been removed). Which brings me to the other way to let users know about replied to comments...
This method would be less of a strain on the system, because the only time any computing is done is when someone posts a new comment. However, it might require a little more work than the previous method.
There's really two parts to this one, modifying the "post a comment" code and modifying the "search for comments" code.
In the "post a comment" code, you would have to do another database call to toggle the parent comment'S "new" status. The "search for comments" code would also have to be modified to display "new" at the end of each comment title. However, this last part should be trivial (I think?).
The most obvious advantage to the latter method is that the database isn't getting queried extra on each regular page hit, which should save some processing time. That being said, I must say that I like the former method better (as a user), if only because it's more passive; if someone replies to the first comment I've ever made, it'll let me know right away by going to the top of the box (as opposed to me clicking through fifty pages of comments to look for a *new* tag).
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