Could we have a post comment button on the comment page?

August 22, 2004 6:57 PM

Could we have a post comment button on the comment page? Going through preview is unnecessary in a lot of cases, and in the cases where it is necessary people aren't going to let the extra step actually force them into previewing. Also, since it looks like preview for html character entities is going to remain broken for the time being, being able to hit preview and then going back and hitting post comment if all is well would be preferrable to having to preview and then fix up the entities again (or copying and pasting).
posted by fvw to feature requests at 6:57 PM (35 comments total)

and in any event it's totally unnecessary to preview the entire thread, only the comment in progress. this slows the site down, performs an uneeded database query and doubles the bandwidth consumption.
posted by quonsar at 7:23 PM on August 22, 2004

Oh, HELL no. This place NEEDS every tiny influence toward reconsideration it's got.
posted by NortonDC at 7:26 PM on August 22, 2004

and in any event it's totally unnecessary to preview the entire thread, only the comment in progress.

Given the number of 'on preview' comments we see, theres probably many more comments not made because you realize the person above you just said the same thing. This is a good thing.
posted by vacapinta at 7:32 PM on August 22, 2004

I had a hysterical comment all in caps but I thought better of it.
posted by CunningLinguist at 7:33 PM on August 22, 2004

[Agrees with NortonDC.] If I see one more abuse of IT IS, or YOU ARE, I'm gonna kill myself. The preview section is the only way to abrogate most spelling and grammar errors. I don't know what Quonsar is talking about though. Maybe what he's saying is a good thing. (scratches head in confusion.)
posted by Happydaz at 7:34 PM on August 22, 2004

quonsar has a good point, as does vacapinta. Maybe on preview just the last ten comments could load?
posted by ashbury at 7:40 PM on August 22, 2004

Ok, in that case, let's have people go through 5 pages with only the preview button before they hit post. That will help even more!

I abhor apostophe-abuse and all the other fun oh-so-frequent abuses of language as much as anyone, however preview doesn't do anything about that. If you want to reread what you've written you can do that in the text box. The only thing preview is for is HTML markup and paragraphisation, the rest is what you see is what you get right there in the text area.
posted by fvw at 7:40 PM on August 22, 2004

Or maybe you could respond to what I wrote instead of what you imagined. I said it needs every influence toward reconsideration that it's got, not that it possibly could have.

But don't let the reality of what I said keep you from your brave quest to the lower barriers to passion-inflamed posting that are obviously keeping MetaFilter from being the thoughtful place it could be with just a little less thought and review.
posted by NortonDC at 7:50 PM on August 22, 2004

I purposely force a preview to force members to check things over, think twice, and respond to the last few comments if necessary. It's slightly annoying by design.
posted by mathowie at 7:54 PM on August 22, 2004

I smell a new tagline...
posted by NortonDC at 7:58 PM on August 22, 2004

NortonDC: He's slightly annoying by design.
posted by yhbc at 8:02 PM on August 22, 2004

Slightly?!
posted by NortonDC at 8:17 PM on August 22, 2004

Matt: what about lessening server load by only previewing one's comment + previous 3 [or 5 or 10]. As proposed by ashbury. That's gotta help - esp on the most commented/ longer comments threads.
posted by dash_slot- at 8:23 PM on August 22, 2004

If I see one more abuse of IT IS, or YOU ARE, I'm gonna kill myself.

Your overreacting. Its nothing.

And I agree - if anything, we need more forced previewing here. I could even go for disabling the "post comment" button for a certain amount of time (proportional, say, to the number of characters in the comment) after the comment is submitted for preview.
posted by Krrrlson at 8:32 PM on August 22, 2004

From Maureen Dowd's column today: "...the Bush modus operandi: Lay in the weeds..." Do they not have copy editors at the Times? /grammarant
posted by CunningLinguist at 8:36 PM on August 22, 2004

"It's slightly annoying by design." - I assumed as much. As a compulsive poster, I still approve. All play the boor at times - too much even.

What a shame that humans aren't equipped with this sort of implicit check, screens that drop down prior to dumb statements, screens with bright red text that cautions - "So, do you REALLY want to say that [ dumb, hurtful ] thing ? OK then - fire away !"
posted by troutfishing at 8:52 PM on August 22, 2004

Did somebody say tagline?

posted by wendell at 8:52 PM on August 22, 2004

What a shame that humans aren't equipped with this sort of implicit check, screens that drop down prior to dumb statements, screens with bright red text that cautions - "So, do you REALLY want to say that [ dumb, hurtful ] thing ? OK then - fire away !"
we become equipped, after learning our lesson a few times. : <
posted by amberglow at 8:58 PM on August 22, 2004

this slows the site down, [...]

Maybe, and I mean just maybe, bandwidth consumption isn't the primary concern here. Antilock brakes are far from the most fuel-efficient speed-reduction system, but thank god we have them.

[...] performs an uneeded database query and doubles the bandwidth consumption

a) uneeded in your opinion
b) doubles bandwidth consumption during the process of posting a comment. A sizable strain on bandwith perhaps, but far from the largest one. If we are really that concerned, hoz 'bout we do an NYT style login-only?

[On Preview: what everybody else said.]
posted by ChasFile at 11:41 PM on August 22, 2004

I dunno if quonsar has a point. Does previewing really slows the site down? Apache isn't bottlenecked here, just the db. Building a thread is a one-time task performed each time a comment is posted. After that happens, one time, it's just served out, more or less static, via Apache. The real database killer is the homepage, where everyone's individual new thread/comment counts need to be calculated differently.

Bandwidth and html serving has never been the killer here. Just database load.

/guessing

And preview is totally useful from a conversation standpoint.

/know from experience
posted by scarabic at 11:55 PM on August 22, 2004

troutfishing, maybe mefi could use a Eudora-style chilli-pepper rating on each comment. :)

I like ashbury's idea of previewing only the last ~5 comments. That's got to help the site's efficiency. How hard would it be to only call up the last five comments in a thread? Would it actually be easier than pulling up the whole thread, based on what scarabic says, or would they require the same effort.
posted by tracicle at 12:46 AM on August 23, 2004

I suspect the number of comments (and thus preview-page views) this place gets is vastly less than (like a fraction of a percentage of) the number of thread page-views. Based on that I doubt eliminating the preview feature or reducing the number of posts shown in a preview would have a noticeable impact on bandwidth consumption or DB activity.
posted by cell at 7:06 AM on August 23, 2004

I abhor apostophe-abuse and all the other fun oh-so-frequent abuses*¹ of language as much as anyone, however preview doesn't do anything about that*². If you want to reread what you've written you can do that in the text box. The only thing preview is for is HTML markup and paragraphisation*³, the rest is what you see is what you get right there in the text area.

1. Abuse appears twice in this sentence in one form or another. Consider using an alternative.

2. Instead of "about that", surely "about those things" as you listed more than one item, or better yet "about such things" to be more emphatic.

3. That's two things. Also, paragraphisation is not a word. Paragraphing will do.

You're right about abuses of language, though ;)

We all make cock-ups. Apostrophe misuse seems to be point one in the pedant's handbook. While a misplaced apostrophe can make me cringe, it is one of many common errors in English. I don't understand why people care about the one, but less about others. I don't mind when other people make mistakes. I mind when I make mistakes. I like to be corrected when I make mistakes. I like to correct my own mistakes more, though. When formatted into html my comments become easier to read than they were in the text box. Reading what I've written twice, and in different forms, helps me to spot errors that may otherwise have gone unnoticed. In the time taken to preview a comment, how many of us had time to cool a little, revise a point, add a thought or qualification, or simply think better and move on without saying anything at all?

Comment preview is vital and deserves to stay.
posted by nthdegx at 7:43 AM on August 23, 2004

The only thing preview is for is HTML markup and paragraphisation, the rest is what you see is what you get right there in the text area.

You forgot to mention the comma-splice.
posted by gleuschk at 8:19 AM on August 23, 2004

We can deal with all that. An honest typographical or evensyntactic mistake is understood, but the 800 identical replies or the incongruous fuck-you cankill a good thread long before its time.

It sounds like bandwidth is not the most important issue here, and so I second third twenty-seventh the Are-You-Sure-You're-Sure button, and not the Ah-Fuck-It button.
posted by chicobangs at 8:23 AM on August 23, 2004

(Not that it cures my apparently recurrent and chronic space bar management issues. Ahem.)
posted by chicobangs at 8:25 AM on August 23, 2004

9 out of 10 of my comments don't make it past the preview.

i'd much rather gain an "oops! god no, i take it back!" button after the initial post than lose the "preview before you can hit post" button.
posted by crush-onastick at 8:53 AM on August 23, 2004

matt should put an "i'm feeling lucky" button, and it should randomly either post or preview, just to mess with us. ; >
posted by amberglow at 10:16 AM on August 23, 2004

Or even better, a button that posts the comment to an entirely different thread.
posted by neckro23 at 10:29 AM on August 23, 2004

Oooooh - love the "oops!" button. (But it should disappear once somebody else has posted after you, so people can't delete something from the middle of a thread.)
posted by ook at 1:06 PM on August 23, 2004

If I see one more abuse of IT IS, or YOU ARE

It is to laugh. You are serious?
posted by norm at 1:26 PM on August 23, 2004

why do I read this shit?
posted by jacobsee at 4:02 PM on August 23, 2004

I think the preview should add random typos, so you have to check it carefully.
posted by nicwolff at 5:07 PM on August 23, 2004

It already does on mine. Nice feeture, that!
posted by chicobangs at 8:58 AM on August 24, 2004

Wow, my first MeTa callout. I feel special now.
posted by scottymac at 11:00 PM on August 24, 2004