Comments with attention?

October 25, 2005 2:57 PM

The ability to mark a comment for another user's attention: any use?
posted by nthdegx to Feature Requests at 2:57 PM (25 comments total)

Only for users who don't publish their email addresses.
posted by scarabic at 3:01 PM on October 25, 2005

It could be useful. I like the idea in an abstract sense "Hey, I bet nthdegx would like to see this". But in practice... well, maybe not.
posted by RustyBrooks at 3:11 PM on October 25, 2005

I can imagine a few small uses, but I don't see it actually breaking the usefulness threshold.
posted by cortex at 3:35 PM on October 25, 2005

This particular feature would be limiting. A Plastic-like private messaging system would be better. To prevent abuse and overuse, there should be no long-term storage & limited message length.
posted by Gyan at 3:36 PM on October 25, 2005

Some sort of general private messaging/flagging feature would be great, but one feels that it's a pony too far.
posted by fire&wings at 3:37 PM on October 25, 2005

I would flag every one of my comments for the attention of my hated enemies, whoever they may be.
posted by smackfu at 3:37 PM on October 25, 2005

I don't know -- it seems awfully close to the personal messaging feature of most common forum software.

For me part of MeFis charm has always been the flat minimalist IA and, while I'm sure I'm in the minority here, I believe that there is such a thing as too many features.

As nice and pretty as the ponies are it seems to me that an entire herd of them would, at a certain point, generate so much crap that the cleaning chores would quickly become burdensome.
posted by cedar at 3:39 PM on October 25, 2005

prediction: Drama would shoot way up, as it would suddenly be trivial to pass along "did you see what he said?" type guff. /prediction
posted by Tuwa at 3:39 PM on October 25, 2005

I would send every comment about Depeche Mode or the Smiths to jonmc, just to piss him off.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:48 PM on October 25, 2005

Yes, but I'd see they were from you, so I'd assume they were musical love letters.

(I kid. I'm a kidder)
posted by jonmc at 3:50 PM on October 25, 2005

If I were going to send you a musical love letter, it would be more like "Does the Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor" or "Dead Skunk", but that's all right.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:52 PM on October 25, 2005

It would get abused very, very badly very, very quickly. And that abuse would kill the site (and the site dies on me often enough as it is now).

See mr_crash_davis's comment above for a hint about how bad it would get.
posted by fenriq at 4:27 PM on October 25, 2005

I would flag all the posts for my own attention, and then ignore them.
posted by blue_beetle at 5:19 PM on October 25, 2005

It would certainly get quonsar to leave the site again. I imagine he and several other people would be literally deluged with noise. Only figuratively.
posted by Eideteker at 6:01 PM on October 25, 2005

Please don't do this. It could in theory make me liable for errors of omission ("Is it not your customary role, Dr. Ikkyu2, to serve as medical advisor to the MetaFilter community?! And did you somehow NOT see the alert directed SPECIFICALLY at you, and then proceed to WITHHOLD your advice in the case of this CLEAR MEDICAL EMERGENCY?! Gentlemen of the jury: Did ikkyu2 not even THINK of the CHILDREN?! You heartless bastard..") and I'd have to quit logging in here.
posted by ikkyu2 at 8:28 PM on October 25, 2005

plus i don't think i could handle all the love letters
posted by cortex at 8:45 PM on October 25, 2005

I would flag every one of my comments for the attention of my hated enemies, whoever they may be.

Yeah, this kind of thing is pretty much the first idea that leapt to mind.

Don't.
posted by dreamsign at 9:41 PM on October 25, 2005

Would somebody please tell ikkyu2 that my elbow is bothering me again?
posted by taz at 9:54 PM on October 25, 2005

Not such a good idea for comments, for the reasons others have suggested, but the ability to mark a post for the attention of another user might be nice.

The for:username tag on del.icio.us springs to mind - it would be goog if we could add a for:username tag to a given post, which would be hidden from general view but would make the front page show something like There have been 3 links and 17 comments posted since your last visit, and 2 links have been recommended to you by other users' when our pal Mr. Username next stopped by. It could be tied into the contacts feature, too, so you could choose to show only recommendations from contacts.
posted by jack_mo at 4:15 AM on October 26, 2005

e m a i l
posted by peacay at 5:24 AM on October 26, 2005

Yeah, what's wrong with email?
posted by sveskemus at 6:07 AM on October 26, 2005

Not everyone provides one; you can't be sure about who the sender is; spam blockers might block it; email may have changed without the user changing it in their profile.

Note that I'm advocating a system that has low potential for abuse:

1)limited message length (no chatty messages)
2)no long-term storage (messages get deleted 3 days after you read it first)
3)no embedded objects, including images (no musical love letters)
4)maybe, no HTML either (want to send a link, paste the URL)
5)if necessary, qouta on number of messages in your msgbox at any one time.
posted by Gyan at 11:10 AM on October 26, 2005

Not everyone provides [an e-mail address]

So basically, you think that people who have expressed their preference not to be contacted privately, by omitting an e-mail address in their profile, would welcome being contacted privately? Sounds dubious to me, man...
posted by kindall at 2:03 PM on October 26, 2005

kindall : "So basically, you think that people who have expressed their preference not to be contacted privately, by omitting an e-mail address in their profile, would welcome being contacted privately?"

They have as much obligation to acknowledge an unwelcome PM as an unwelcome email. I'm not advocating that the sender be made aware if the receiver has read the PM, unlike vBulletin and Plastic's setup.
posted by Gyan at 3:46 PM on October 26, 2005

taz: take two aspirin and flag your post to my attention in the morning.
posted by ikkyu2 at 6:41 PM on October 27, 2005