Hey, I'm talkin' here! June 20, 2018 10:46 AM   Subscribe

In the site activity megathread some suggested users ought to have some way of knowing just how much of a thread they're occupying. I added a userscript just for that purpose to the MefiScripts repository. It puts summary stats just below the comment box.

You should be able to install it at that link, assuming you have either the Tampermonkey or Greasemonkey extensions installed. No normative judgments or analyses of comment quality here.

Example of what you would see:

You have contributed 5 comments to this thread. That's 25% of all comments by count and 30% by length.
15 other people have commented. You make up 7% of all commenters.
posted by waninggibbon to MetaFilter-Related at 10:46 AM (21 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite

This is a great idea. Thanks, waninggibbon.
posted by Rock Steady at 11:05 AM on June 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


I love this idea, it's definitely a thing mods have been able to see in MeFi for a while now.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 11:13 AM on June 20, 2018 [4 favorites]


In case anyone's curious about what mods see - after the advent of megathreads, frimble built a tool that lets us see, for threads over a certain number of comments, the 10 (or so?) most frequent commenters and how many comments they've made. It doesn't show percentages, but one can work that out. For us it was useful especially for long threads where there are multiple shift changes, so you can see objectively who's been active before your shift, or if one person has made like 20 comments when the next highest person has made like 3. It's a sanity-check for one's subjective impression of how much airspace someone is taking up.

As an individual user tool - I can see this being a useful check-in for people, especially for stuff like long heated threads, or if you tend to get into intractable debates in those threads. But I hope people will remember context, and won't just feel like this is saying "talk less everywhere"... It's fine and good to participate a lot if there's a thread on pickle carving and you're a pickle carving expert, or if there's a riffing thread and you have terrible jokes to contribute, etc!
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:26 AM on June 20, 2018 [12 favorites]


Exactly. It may even tell some people who feel bashful that they're talking too much that they're doing nothing of the sort.
posted by waninggibbon at 11:39 AM on June 20, 2018


This does not appear to work in Greasemonkey in Firefox 48.0.2 for OS X. The computer I am using is quite old (still running OS X 10.6.8,) though.
posted by zarq at 11:47 AM on June 20, 2018


I like this, and will eventually get around to figuring out how to use it with Safari. :7)

Heck, I think this would be neat as a user-configurable flag on the site itself.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:01 PM on June 20, 2018


the advent of megathreads

Worse seasonal calendar ever!
posted by Celsius1414 at 12:15 PM on June 20, 2018 [14 favorites]


Sorry about that zarq. If you press option-command-K to show the console, it will show what the error is. You can message me and I'll see about fixing it.
posted by waninggibbon at 12:15 PM on June 20, 2018


No worries. At this point I'm not going to be using this computer for much longer (a week or two at most) so it's not a big deal. I'm happy to send on the error if it would help you, but sincerely don't go to any trouble on my account.
posted by zarq at 12:24 PM on June 20, 2018


I really want to see a thread about pickle carving now.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:56 PM on June 20, 2018 [8 favorites]


I really want to see a thread about pickle carving now.

Be the pickle you want to see.
posted by Fizz at 1:01 PM on June 20, 2018 [11 favorites]


In case anyone's curious about what mods see - after the advent of megathreads, frimble built a tool that lets us see, for threads over a certain number of comments, the 10 (or so?) most frequent commenters and how many comments they've made.

*looks on in horror and weeps*
posted by zachlipton at 3:13 PM on June 20, 2018 [4 favorites]


PICKLE CARVING CONTEST
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:04 PM on June 20, 2018 [1 favorite]




WELL DONE waninggibbon!
posted by some loser at 9:12 AM on June 21, 2018


I’m just waiting for the riffing thread
posted by wheelieman at 12:05 PM on June 21, 2018


I am the pickle I want to see.
posted by mochapickle at 1:13 PM on June 21, 2018 [6 favorites]


Just installed it. Nifty. Thanks!

And a bonus pickle-carving thread! Win-win.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:39 PM on June 21, 2018


Because it's tied to the comment box, this doesn't currently work on archived or closed threads, which don't have an active comment box.
posted by Errant at 12:28 PM on June 22, 2018


That's doable. I figured people would be mainly interested in open threads in which they're participating, but I guess people might want to look retrospectively, too.
posted by waninggibbon at 3:08 PM on June 22, 2018


Alright made the script work on archived/closed threads. Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey should auto-update it to version 0.3, but if not just head here to reinstall.
posted by waninggibbon at 8:40 AM on June 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


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