Loomio
Tue 10 Jan 2017 1:21PM

Threaded comments feature

AS Alex Stacey Public Seen by 127

I think it would be great if comments were threaded, so you could reply to an individual comment. Is this something that's been discussed before? I saw that someone made a user script to add that functionality it although that doesn't work for me. (I also can't imagine how it could be added via only front end JS in a user script.) Does anyone know how difficult this would be to implement? I was considering posting a bounty for it on the bountysource page but thought I should get an idea what other people thought about it first.

CS

Comrade Senya Tue 10 Jan 2017 1:32PM

We would need a more detailed description of the idea in order to
discuss it. Bountysource bounties are tied to github issues, so you need
to open one first, but it is a good idea to achieve some agreement here
first.

AS

Alex Stacey Tue 10 Jan 2017 2:48PM

I see. Ok. I'm talking about the ability to do this sort of thing:

threaded comments shot

I think it makes for much richer conversation.

MS

Max Strube Tue 10 Jan 2017 5:00PM

looks good

T

thomas Tue 10 Jan 2017 4:59PM

agree; conversing in the comments thread is cumbersome, threaded comments would be a change for the better.

DD

Dominic Duffin Tue 10 Jan 2017 5:42PM

This looks like a good idea, though I don't have the knowledge of the technical side. Threaded comments of that kind definitely make conversation easier, their disappearance on some sites has been a disappointment to me.

R

RAM518 Tue 10 Jan 2017 10:44PM

Super idea. Would love to see this implemented. Option to auto-collapse child comments would be much appreciated also.

S

SuperTux88 Tue 10 Jan 2017 11:56PM

Just for info, we already spec'ed the federation for this feature at the 33C3, see: https://diaspora.github.io/diaspora_federation/entities/comment.html (thread_parent_guid)

So this will be compatible with friendica where this feature is already available.

Z

zulu Wed 11 Jan 2017 6:08PM

YES! Start a proposal!

S

SuperTux88 Wed 11 Jan 2017 11:09PM

There is no need for a proposal if everybody already agrees in the comments ... so everybody wants it and it would be finished faster with a proposal. What we really need is somebody to implement it.

MD

Michael Dagn Thu 19 Jan 2017 4:47PM

I think it would be great if comments were threaded, so you could reply
to an individual comment. Is this something that’s been discussed
before? I saw that someone made a user script

to add that functionality it although that doesn’t work for me. (I also
can’t imagine how it could be added via only front end JS in a user
script.) Does anyone know how difficult this would be to implement? I
was considering posting a bounty for it on the bountysource page

but thought I should get an idea what other people thought about it first.

I don't think client side javascript can do that currently.

It would need to know the date of the parent of each comment (as in what that comment replied to) to render that tree correctly!

but server-side it might be easier than people think

from what I remember in Diaspora comments are stored as a list in the top-level item.

if it still does that then perhaps if it stored the date of the immediate parent with each comment a new comment could just be inserted in the right place in the list (under what it replies to) when it is added/updated
(avoiding any need for additional complexity or tree-walking at view time)

just a thought

I can't really try it myself right now
(until I fix that server or set up another and work out how to update rails and get my own instance back up!)

...but if comments are still stored the same way as I remember then I think getting it to do comments in threaded order could be as simple as that.