Favorites: it took a while to figure if they're of or by that person

November 28, 2006 1:53 PM

SemanticsFilter: When you're viewing the posts and comments that a specific users has marked as a favourite (i.e. the favourites of) it says, for instance, "Favorite posts from blacklite". It took me a couple of minutes to figure out whether these were the posts by or of that person. [mi]
posted by blacklite to bugs at 1:53 PM (20 comments total)

The posts and comments, of a user, that have been marked favourite by others, are more clearly titled e.g. "Posts from blacklite saved as favorites", but the link from a user's profile says (as you all know) "Favorites: ### saved and contributions from user saved by others ### times."

The wording has always kind of messed me up. Can we come up with something better? "### favourite posts and comments" and "### posts and comments by user saved as favourites by others"?

Feel free to add or subtract Us as appropriate, I am a Canadian living in the US and seem to have contracted u-schizophrenia.
posted by blacklite at 1:58 PM on November 28, 2006

And by "add or subtract Us" I mean the letter U. I may be schizophrenic about spelling, but I do not as far as I know have multiple personalities. Yet.
posted by blacklite at 1:59 PM on November 28, 2006

"Favorites: ### saved and contributions from user saved by others ### times."

People have complained about this in the past and with good reason. Everytime I see that sentence it is as if I am seeing it for the first time. How about:

blacklite has saved X favorites.

X of blacklite's posts have been saved as favorites by others.
posted by vacapinta at 2:05 PM on November 28, 2006

Aye.
posted by timeistight at 2:17 PM on November 28, 2006

Jeez, I've changed the text several times based on suggestions here everyone seemed to agree on at the time.

How about: blacklite has saved X favorites. X of blacklite's posts have been saved as favorites by others.

vacapinta, but that's not what the text is saying. The second part is blacklite has gotten X favorite "votes" if you will on an unknown quantity of posts/comments. It could have been one comment with 100 favorites or 50 comments that each got an average of 2 favorites marked off.

It's a clumsy sentence because it's a tough concept to explain and the text that is there was contributed by someone here as an improvement over the previous incarnation.
posted by mathowie at 3:07 PM on November 28, 2006

blacklite has gotten X favorite "votes"

Why not just use that one?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:33 PM on November 28, 2006

Why not just use that one?

Because it strays uncomfortably close to a Popularity Contest mode of community participation, something Matt (with my wholehearted agreement) has made it clear in the past he wishes to avoid, and something that we veer dangerously close to with the new(ish) favorites system (badly named for that very reason, in my humble, but I've said that before).
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:56 PM on November 28, 2006

comments saved by blacklite as favorites.

comments by blacklite saved as favorites.
posted by quonsar at 4:06 PM on November 28, 2006

quonsar is making the same mistake I did above. The number is how many times all comments/posts were saved as favorites, not the number of comments/posts that were saved at least once as favorites.

If you can understand the sentence I wrote above, you understand the problem. If you cant understand the sentence, you have an even better understanding of the problem.
posted by vacapinta at 4:16 PM on November 28, 2006

Feh.

x comments marked by blacklite

comments by blacklite marked x times by others

Does it matter if they're all on the same comment or only one per comment? The only people this matters to are us, and we can follow through and see that one comment has 5 people having marked it while the next 10 have one apiece.

I always think of "favorites" as being things I've marked so that I can come back to them (for reference, to see what happened to the OP, whatever.) If matt doesn't want it to be a popularity contest, the term "favorite" is an unfortunate choice of term.
posted by Meep! Eek! at 5:49 PM on November 28, 2006

He is but a man, and his feature's name is borne of Internet Explorer's terminology for links to websites, saved for later perusal.
posted by blasdelf at 6:02 PM on November 28, 2006 [1 favorite]

If matt doesn't want it to be a popularity contest, the term "favorite" is an unfortunate choice of term.

Precisely my tediously oft-repeated point, but it's far too late now. Plus, you know, it doesn't really matter.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:12 PM on November 28, 2006

Because it strays uncomfortably close to a Popularity Contest mode of community participation, something Matt (with my wholehearted agreement) has made it clear in the past he wishes to avoid, and something that we veer dangerously close to with the new(ish) favorites system (badly named for that very reason, in my humble, but I've said that before).

Ok, that makes sense and I agree, but that sentence is horribly worded. BUT it makes sense when you're trying to avoid the popularity contest for the most part, since it's not obviously stated as a contest. Still it sounds bad.

How about this:

contributions from (user) HAVE BEEN saved by others X times.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:17 PM on November 28, 2006

how about: There are no favorites, we love every comment equally. Meaning: not at all. Please go away.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:09 PM on November 28, 2006

"comments saved by blacklite as favorites.

comments by blacklite saved as favorites."

# comments favorited by blacklite

# comments by blacklite favorited

Or do we hate verb-i-fying favorite?
posted by Eideteker at 9:06 PM on November 28, 2006

(it's all weird, I have become Example User Name)
posted by blacklite at 9:11 PM on November 28, 2006

As blackliite says, they are the favorite posts and comments of the user on their favorites page - so it should say just that "Favorite comments of X", "Favorite posts of X"

Eideteker wins the other one, anything other than verbing "favorite" just results in a clumsy and grating phrase.

If they were called "bookmarks" instead of "favorites" my guess is it would already say "bookmarked by", and "by X, bookmarked", and since favoriting is the same as bookmarking in this case...
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:03 PM on November 28, 2006

Oh, dammit, both Eideteker and I have made the same "number of posts is equal to number of favorites slip up as a few other people, I think.

So, maybe:

"Blacklite has favorited X comments"
"Blacklite's comments have been favorited X times"

or, if we want to be a bit more olde-worlde about it,we don't even need to verb favourite:

"Blacklite has favoured X comments"
"Blacklite's comments have been favoured X times"

But that's a bit silly.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:10 PM on November 28, 2006

Your favorite sucks.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 11:22 PM on November 28, 2006

I always think of "favorites" as being things I've marked so that I can come back to them (for reference, to see what happened to the OP, whatever.)

Oh, my.

I took every one of my comments that was favourited as a little note saying "Meatbomb, I love you."

This is most disturbing.
posted by Meatbomb at 3:21 AM on November 29, 2006 [1 favorite]