Pony: pagination, and preview for the actual comment

February 6, 2005 7:27 AM

Last alluded to here: None of the redesign entries (unless I missed something) addressed the "comments by user" page, which is probably the clunkiest and least usable feature on the site. Long comment histories take forever to load (and tax the server); and you can't actually see any of the comments without clicking on each individual link. I think pagination, plus an ability to preview the actual comment, would be a great help.
posted by Saucy Intruder to feature requests at 7:27 AM (17 comments total)

I think people are getting a little carried away.

Let the man get something out the door!
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 7:33 AM on February 6, 2005

don't forget, if we put NOINDEX on these pages in a future incarnation, they might not keep showing up in Google searches when we're trying to track down threads.
posted by jessamyn at 7:35 AM on February 6, 2005

While we are getting a bit needy (myself included) the last week or so, there is a certain logic to reminding Matt of the issues still outstanding now, while's working on a redesign.

It's probably far easier for him to think about (and plan for, if not implement,) our various ideas now, rather than try to shoehorn them in at a later point.

Now, if Matt looks at this, shakes his head 'no', and moves on, such is his right, but I'd rather we let him make the call rather than decide it for him by not even posting the idea.

(Besides, I still want to see Princess Golden Prancer, for the same reasons said in the linked thread, so I'm glad someone else brought it up again)
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 7:39 AM on February 6, 2005

aye, pagination and NOINDEX would be great all around. :)
posted by dabitch at 7:42 AM on February 6, 2005

I don't mind folks talking about this again, but it's something a few pegs down on the To Do list. Pagination would definitely help and is something I should have done ages ago. I think if there were only 20-50 comments per page, it probably wouldn't be too taxing to pull comments out completely and display them on the page as well. I never thought about noindex, but that's a good idea.
posted by mathowie at 8:18 AM on February 6, 2005

re: NOINDEX

jessamyn's neutral tone belies the disadvantage of adding this to mefi: if the in-house search goes kaput! - well, imagine the Meta threads after that.

Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?
posted by dash_slot- at 8:43 AM on February 6, 2005

Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

I believe jessadmyn was referring to the "comments by user" page.

Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?
posted by page404 at 10:35 AM on February 6, 2005

dash, pulling the user page that lists just the comments by user means that all the posts they participated in show up in searches. Meaning, if you google for a thread about say, bicycles, you'll get every thread that mentioned, but also every comments by user for every user that also left a comment in that thread. I'll add the noindex now. It definitely makes the google search less helpful. I'd rather that only actual posts and comments were in the searches, not just references to them, like the user page histories.
posted by mathowie at 10:37 AM on February 6, 2005

Turns out this wasn't that hard to do. NOINDEX has been added to the post and comment history at MetaFilter, and pagination of every 40 records has been added as well. I lost the ability to list all your comments in each thread and instead the threads repeat for each comment you left, but I'll keep snooping around the code to solve that, then I'll apply the fixes to the other history pages for metatalk and ask mefi.
posted by mathowie at 11:53 AM on February 6, 2005

The new comments by user page makes it a lot less obvious which is the newest comment by a user in thread the commented in more than once. I like the

post
comment
comment
comment

structure it had before. I appreciate the design goal of lower server impact, but pagination with th old structure may also get us there.

Preview: oh, bummer.
posted by NortonDC at 12:05 PM on February 6, 2005

I appreciate the explanations - cheers.
posted by dash_slot- at 12:11 PM on February 6, 2005

Matt - The code for AskMe, which doesn't repeat the post for each comment in a thread, must differ from Mefi, which does repeat the posts. Is that helpful, maybe to compare the code (he said, having a very slim grasp of what that actually means).
posted by dash_slot- at 12:18 PM on February 6, 2005

yeah, the way the new query is done breaks the old query, behind the scenes. I'll fix it tonight if I can get the chance. For now, it's no biggie since it still works, just not as well as before in that respect.
posted by mathowie at 12:38 PM on February 6, 2005

Thanks Matt. Very cool, very cool.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 1:09 PM on February 6, 2005

I lost the ability to list all your comments in each thread and instead the threads repeat for each comment you left

Well there goes my MeTa bug thread. :)

Pagination would be nice, but if would be even better if it were put in some kind of context, like posts-by-month/year.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 1:31 PM on February 6, 2005

Any hope for ability to sort by comment date as well as thread date? The current page only gives an approximate view of where a user has been actively lately.

It's very hard to trace someone's behavior chronologically. Not only would that be useful and interesting for us, it could be a crucial help for administrators.
posted by scarabic at 3:11 PM on February 6, 2005

That has to be the fastest pony birth I've ever seen. Impregnation to birth in 4.5 hours? Must be genetically modified. Thanks, matt.
posted by Bugbread at 7:11 PM on February 6, 2005