Request: click and limit to specific poster

December 16, 2006 1:43 PM

My first-ever pony request: In a given thread, what about a link next to each member's individual comments, that is titled "see all comments by this member in this thread." So, say, I want to see all of mathowie's comments in a particular thread, I click on that link and it gives me a page with just mathowie's comments in that thread. I know you can see all of a member's comments by going to their user page, but it's kind of cumbersome to click back and forth and you can't view all the comments together. It would be nice to have them all thrown up on one page. It would help us evaluate the position or argument that the person is developing throughout the thread.
posted by jayder to Feature Requests at 1:43 PM (21 comments total)

Would your browser's search function do nearly the same thing?
posted by ardgedee at 1:47 PM on December 16, 2006

Oooh. I like.
posted by ColdChef at 1:48 PM on December 16, 2006

ardgedee writes "Would your browser's search function do nearly the same thing?"

Yes, it does, but it's a hassle. (I actually thought of this while using the search function in Firefox for precisely this purpose.)
posted by jayder at 1:49 PM on December 16, 2006

It would help with a pet peeve:

what xyz said
xyz has it
xyz wins

etc, without explanation.
posted by scheptech at 1:50 PM on December 16, 2006

What browser are you using?

The MeFi Navigator userscript for FireFox' Greasemonkey extension sort of does this (IMO it's actually better, since you don't have to go to another page).
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:58 PM on December 16, 2006

Mefi Navigator is awesome. You can jump to other comments by the same person without losing context. And the admin highlighting is great when you are looking for information straight from the horse's mouth. Not that Matt and Jess are horses or anything...
posted by Roger Dodger at 2:03 PM on December 16, 2006

Hmm, I'm using FireFox. I didn't know about the MeFi Navigator. I'll check that out.

(But still, to use it you have to have Firefox and the extension installed on every computer you read MeFi on---and I use MeFi (i.e., avoid work) on a lot of different computers. It would be nice to just have it as a feature of the site.)
posted by jayder at 2:04 PM on December 16, 2006

Thanks, Alvy, I was going to point that out. :) Seriously, there are some really nice Greasemonkey scripts for FF if you're running it. A number for Meta, as well. (And when I had to reformat this machine and hadn't yet installed Greasemonkey, it was very different. Commenting wasn't as easy, etc., etc.)
posted by Meep! Eek! at 2:05 PM on December 16, 2006

You already have that.
You go to the profile page:
Mathowie
MeFi: X posts, Y comments.
You click on the Y.

You see:
What if Hitler Had Never Been Born?
comment posted at 3:46 PM PST on Dec-12-06
comment posted at 4:00 PM PST on Dec-12-06
comment posted at 5:13 PM PST on Dec-12-06
comment posted at 6:45 PM PST on Dec-12-06

Easy peasy.
posted by Methylviolet at 2:14 PM on December 16, 2006

I just installed MeFi Navigator and am using it now. Yes, pretty cool. I still think, though, that it would be cool to have the user comments all made available on one page, as a built-in site feature.

The feature I am requesting would make it possible to:

(1) See very clearly the position taken by the member in a thread;

(2) Refer and link, easily, to all of another member's comments in a thread, and have other members be able immediately to evaluate whether your characterization of the comments is true or not (regardless of whether they have a particular extension installed). So, we'd be able to say, "look at MemberX's great contributions to this thread," or "look at what an ass MemberY is being," and it would be very easy for other members to check this.

(3) Increase the accountability of members for comments in a thread, since the comments can all be viewed together with no other comments distracting from them.
posted by jayder at 2:15 PM on December 16, 2006

Methylviolet writes "You already have that.
"You go to the profile page:
"Mathowie
"MeFi: X posts, Y comments."

Yes, it is pretty easy, but that feature (which I acknowledged in my initial request) lacks some of the benefits of the feature I am proposing. The clicking back-and-forth between the comment-links on the profile page, and the individual comments, makes it more difficult to consider all the comments together. I think there is a real benefit to having all the comments of an individual, rendered together on one page, without any other member's comments there.
posted by jayder at 2:19 PM on December 16, 2006

I think this is a neat idea. It could also be added quite subtly after the [+] [!] so that it wasn't obtrusive.
posted by The God Complex at 2:28 PM on December 16, 2006

jayder: agreed. it filters out the noise, especially in some of the horrendously long threads and/or where one wants to ignore backbiting and/or jokey answers.

and I read Mefi on my work machine on a daily basis, where we are not allowed to run ANY installers and IE7 is our only option. Hell, I know.

plus I despise firefox. it is the absolute suck on my Mac. and no, I don't really know why.
posted by lonefrontranger at 2:32 PM on December 16, 2006

it would be good for:
- reviewing one's own blatherings perhaps leading to more coherent commenting (for some of us)
- a quick proxy for how invested a given commenter is in a given post, lets see, how about green font for 5 or less comments, yellow for up to 10, red for up to 20, blinking red for over 20 comments in a given thread (ok not really on the blinking)
posted by scheptech at 2:34 PM on December 16, 2006

This would great. And adding an RSS feed to the page would answer this request too.
posted by timeistight at 3:24 PM on December 16, 2006

I tried out the Greasemonkey script for kicks a while back but I found it really visually cluttery. I think Matthowie has struck a good balance here -- the thread interface is clean, and the features are accessed from other places for the people who want them. It turned out that I didn't actually care about singling out admin posts (if I wanted to know I'd keep an eye out for it) or listing individual people's contributions to the thread (because it wasn't as meaningful without the flow of the conversation.)
posted by loiseau at 3:24 PM on December 16, 2006

...er, not completely, but it 'd be closer than what we have now.
posted by timeistight at 3:26 PM on December 16, 2006

Oh right, you did. Er -- nevermind.
posted by Methylviolet at 4:00 PM on December 16, 2006

Methylviolet is trolling, right?
posted by quonsar at 4:07 PM on December 16, 2006

You could probably use Mefi Navigator with IE by installing trixie. It's the greasemonkey-for-IE and many scripts are said to run unmodified, as Greasemonkey is just a means to inject javascript into the page after all. I have no idea how feasible this is as I wouldn't ever want to voluntarily use IE, but there it is.
posted by Rhomboid at 5:36 PM on December 16, 2006

while we're at it , can we have a way to add someone's profile to a list of people we don't like. i would start with methylviolet.

ok ,ok, i'm just kidding, it would really be quonsar.
posted by nola at 6:54 PM on December 16, 2006