Announcing: favorites and flagging May 10, 2006 9:22 AM   Subscribe

I'm working on favorites and releasing what I have today. Think of favorites as an internal bookmark system, a way to keep a list of the good questions, great comments, or interesting ideas you've found here.

Right now, you can mark a thread on mefi, metatalk, or ask mefi as a favorite, and view it at the link in the header above (is the header too wide for small monitors?). All your stuff marked as a favorite is public and anyone else can see the stuff you've marked (this comes in handy later on).

I'll be adding the ability to flag comments later today and very soon I'll be doing something akin to the fantastic posts page on Ask MeFi, where the most favorited things over the past few days is highlighted on a single page.
posted by mathowie (staff) to Feature Requests at 9:22 AM (100 comments total) 37 users marked this as a favorite

Phew, I having been searching desperately for a "Favorites" link since I noticed the "+ add to favorites" a few minutes ago and went wild clicking on every thread I could. Thanks.
posted by youarenothere at 9:25 AM on May 10, 2006 [1 favorite]


Also, I'll be showing stuff that has been marked as a favorite, on comment pages. So you'll see that say, this post has been marked a favorite by 4 people and maybe this very comment by one person.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:26 AM on May 10, 2006 [1 favorite]


Cool but my first impression is that it doesn't handle the empty list so great: "Displaying 1 through"
posted by smackfu at 9:33 AM on May 10, 2006


Another enhancement to come later today: if you've marked something as a favorite, you'll see that when viewing the comment thread again. The little [+ add to favorite] will say [marked as favorite] or something like that.

Eventually, this will be replaced with an ajax call so you never have to leave the page and the text will just update when it gets stored on the server-side (any js ninjas want to write that using the prototype.js library?).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:35 AM on May 10, 2006


smackfu, I fixed that.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:37 AM on May 10, 2006


This is fucking awesome, Matt.
posted by jdroth at 9:49 AM on May 10, 2006 [1 favorite]


Fast fixes!

On another note, I guess user pages are cached? I noticed that the list of how many things you favorited is lagging a bit. Does the cache need to be invalidated when you favorite something?

(And another picky bug... the line that says "no favorites" in the profile needs an "and" before it. As seen here.)
posted by smackfu at 9:51 AM on May 10, 2006


And I was just about to post a thread asking what the deal with the new feature was... sweet. Thanks!
posted by GuyZero at 9:52 AM on May 10, 2006


Is there a way to un-mark something as a favorite?
posted by raedyn at 9:53 AM on May 10, 2006


Fantastic! Works like a charm (firefox 1.5. osx), and very fast! Thank you thank you.

Fellow Mefites: consider showing your love here.
posted by Rumple at 9:55 AM on May 10, 2006


Is there a way to un-mark something as a favorite?

There's a "Remove" link for each item on your favorites page.
posted by GuyZero at 9:56 AM on May 10, 2006


it's pretty fucking awesome, thanks
posted by matteo at 9:58 AM on May 10, 2006


I like this a lot. Thanks, Matt.
posted by veggieboy at 10:00 AM on May 10, 2006


!!!!

!!

(thanks)
posted by If I Had An Anus at 10:05 AM on May 10, 2006


v. cool!
posted by OmieWise at 10:07 AM on May 10, 2006


everytime I click 'Add to favorites' it seems to open a new window.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:17 AM on May 10, 2006


This is pretty cool.

Also, I just want to shout out for the "the link you entered has been linked to before in the following post" function. Just saved me from posting a double to the Universe People site. Search and tags turned up nada!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:20 AM on May 10, 2006


(is the header too wide for small monitors?)

Full-screen Firefox on WinXP @ 1024x768 with default fonts/sizes says no (about half the width of the screen). Anyone using a lower res in this day and age ought to be hunted down and shot anyway, so screw 'em.
posted by Ryvar at 10:20 AM on May 10, 2006


Oh, and yes, this rocks. Thanks.
posted by Ryvar at 10:20 AM on May 10, 2006


The MetaFilter CD project should be sticky! and at the top of various and sundry pages.
posted by tweak at 10:21 AM on May 10, 2006


but I will favorite it now
posted by tweak at 10:21 AM on May 10, 2006


awesome to the max!!
posted by chunking express at 10:22 AM on May 10, 2006


Does this mean I can stop putting periods in threads that I like?
posted by Kwantsar at 10:22 AM on May 10, 2006


Anyone using a lower res in this day and age ought to be hunted down and shot anyway, so screw 'em. - Ryvar

Yes, anyone with vision difficulties should be killed off.
posted by raedyn at 10:23 AM on May 10, 2006


Yes, anyone with vision difficulties should be killed off.

Natural selection lives yet in the vasted uncharted frontier of cyberspace!

In truth, I hadn't considered that.
posted by Ryvar at 10:27 AM on May 10, 2006


Very nice.
posted by R. Mutt at 10:28 AM on May 10, 2006


Wow, mefi, askme, and meta can all be saved... though my blue=mefi sense is taking a minute to adjust to them all being on blue. (not that i am complaining.)
posted by R. Mutt at 10:39 AM on May 10, 2006


Great feature!

As for width.. It seems to break at about 820 pixels for me. Am I not using the defaults or something? I like to use an 800 pixel browser window, leaves plenty of screen space for other things, but it isn't a big deal..
posted by Chuckles at 10:41 AM on May 10, 2006


Thanks Matt, I was wondering what the hell [+ add to favorites] was earlier this morning and like others clicked on it to no avail. Glad to see it's going to be a cool, new, and useful sounding feature!
posted by togdon at 10:53 AM on May 10, 2006


Maybe I don't get it.

I'm much more likely to use this as a "bookmark" rather than a "favorite". If it's called favorite, and people will see it listed as such on my user page, I think that's confusing. I suspect I'll be bookmarking more trainwrecks and slap-fights than hidden gems. Any chance we could call this bookmarks rather than favorites?
posted by y6y6y6 at 10:55 AM on May 10, 2006


y6y6y6, for some people, the trainwrecks are their favorite.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:58 AM on May 10, 2006


Good point y6y6y6. I suspect that I will use it mostly as a temporary place holder.
posted by R. Mutt at 10:59 AM on May 10, 2006


"favorite" is also deliberate. "bookmark" is a pretty souless word where "favorite" leads people to save the things they like (and not just the ugly flame-outs). It'll be fine as favorites, just internally think of them as bookmarks and I'm sure in a week or two you won't notice.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:01 AM on May 10, 2006 [1 favorite]


I see if you replace your user number in the url bar with someone elses you can see that person's favourites. So this is not like a private bookmarking system.
posted by Rumple at 11:01 AM on May 10, 2006


Also - This new feature rocks. As do the others which have been added recently. Thankyou.

And, putting my money where my thankyou is, I just sent Matt a donation. I hope others will join me in this tangible gesture of thanks.
posted by y6y6y6 at 11:05 AM on May 10, 2006


uh, preview... next time
posted by Rumple at 11:07 AM on May 10, 2006


Yeah Rumple, as I said it's all public so I can aggregate everyone's favorites and show those to everyone else (for most favorited pages, etc).

If you want truly private bookmarks, use your browser's bookmark feature. That lives only on your own computer and is automatically private.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:11 AM on May 10, 2006


Thanks, Matt. This is awesome.
posted by educatedslacker at 11:30 AM on May 10, 2006


Is the header too wide for small monitors?


It's fine here (1024 x 768 12" iBook, using about 75% of the screen width as both Safari and Firefox seem to default to). However, that line of the header (from Home to Favorites is now full, so that any further addidtions, including correcting the spelling to "favourites" (God Save the Queen) would cause problems. I'm not suggesting a pony freeze, just sayin'.
posted by nowonmai at 11:37 AM on May 10, 2006


This is a great feature ... but I'm not so sure about favourites being listed on the profile page. What if you want to keep an anonymous AskMe post of yours in there, so you can still find it when it falls off the My Comments/Posts?

Or what if you want to watch someone else's embarrassing thread because it applies to you, but you don't even want to be seen posting in there?
posted by bonaldi at 11:43 AM on May 10, 2006


bonaldi -- it's completely public and has to be to be useful for other things. Use your browser's bookmarks for private things.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:50 AM on May 10, 2006


This is the best fucking feature in the world.
posted by Anonymous at 11:54 AM on May 10, 2006


This is really really terrific. (I'm a little thrown, though, by the way it sorts your favorites by when you added them, not by date.)
posted by CunningLinguist at 12:08 PM on May 10, 2006


yeah, most recently added goes at the top. Maybe I'll drop the date display of when something was posted to the site -- that's kind of confusing and not obvious.

Eventually, I'd like to keep track of x comments added since you added this as a favorite, or maybe just (x new) since you last loaded the favorites page.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:13 PM on May 10, 2006


If anyone needs (reasonably) private computer-independant bookmarks, use Google Bookmarks with the FireFox extension. They're amazing! As for me and my mefi stuff, I'll use MeFi favorites.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:14 PM on May 10, 2006


How about letting us add tag pages to our favorites?
posted by blue_beetle at 12:23 PM on May 10, 2006


Eventually, I'd like to keep track of x comments added since you added this as a favorite, or maybe just (x new) since you last loaded the favorites page.

This is that would be the best fucking feature in the world.
posted by If I Had An Anus at 12:25 PM on May 10, 2006


Will there be a way to sort your favorites using tags? That is, turn it into a MeFi-internal del.icio.us rather than a MeFi-internal browser bookmarks menu?
posted by aaronetc at 12:49 PM on May 10, 2006


No tags on favorites, no. I don't want to reinvent the delicious wheel.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:15 PM on May 10, 2006


I'm confused. I thought it was going to work like the My Comments page so that you could "subscribe" to a thread without posting to it?

Maybe comments on favourited threads should appear on the My Comments page?

Anyway, it seems pretty useless to me as is. Sorry.
posted by cillit bang at 1:32 PM on May 10, 2006


cillit bang, it turned out to be a pain to track both links and comments on the same page using that template (it's kind of weird to do comments in that way).

Instead, I'm doing a RSS feed for every thread, to make it easy to subscribe to a post and get all comments, and the favorites system is mostly for internal bookmarking, to save links to stuff you want to go back to often.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:35 PM on May 10, 2006


I didn't mean that you would tag the favorites yourself, but that you could look at the favorites that are already tagged with [x]. Otherwise, isn't it going to become kind of useless once you hit a certain critical mass of favorited threads?
posted by aaronetc at 1:55 PM on May 10, 2006


aaronetc, the page currently paginates after 20, and I could make it go up to 50, then finding one of your favorites shouldn't be too hard. Doing a search within your favorites might also be feaseable.

On flickr, I have over 300 favorites marked and have no trouble finding old photos by going page by page.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:00 PM on May 10, 2006


Awesome feature! I really needed this. I currently have 114 Metafilter threads bookmarked on delicious and I felt a little bit creepy having so many saved on an external site. Now all I have to do is migrate them back here! Woohoo!
posted by saturnine at 2:31 PM on May 10, 2006


Love it! Thanks!

Is this somehow related to the loss of post/comment flagging? I went to flag that asinine Super Mario video, but was let down...
posted by mkultra at 2:39 PM on May 10, 2006


flagging hasn't changed.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:14 PM on May 10, 2006


Oh, my bad. For some reason, the visual cue was no longer registering for me.... :P
posted by mkultra at 3:41 PM on May 10, 2006


What's the bet that this thread is going to be one thread that almost everyone bookmarks?

Also, this is an awesome feature. Thanks Matt!
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:46 PM on May 10, 2006


And so a new level of lurking is born.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 4:15 PM on May 10, 2006 [1 favorite]


(obligatory "miguel!!" comment)
posted by hugsnkisses at 4:19 PM on May 10, 2006


(codes up giant flashing yellow backgrounds for anything favorited by MiguelCardoso)
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:54 PM on May 10, 2006


MIGS!!!!!!!!!!
posted by notsnot at 5:14 PM on May 10, 2006


AH THANK YOU!!!!!

I have over 500 threads saved on Bloglines for exactly this. A few saved on del.icio.us, and about 1000 or so saved on my computer.

This is a LIFESAVER. (Well, almost; now I have to mark at least 500 threads as favourites. If I want to add the saved-on_HD ones it'll take me forever. But still)

Thank you Matt!
posted by divabat at 5:32 PM on May 10, 2006


I just added comments as well, in a 50/50 split, posts on the left, comments on the right.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:37 PM on May 10, 2006 [1 favorite]


Goddamn, this is the bestest ever.
posted by 40 Watt at 6:03 PM on May 10, 2006


Brilliant, I've been using ClipClip for this up until now, but this is much easier.
posted by Jimbob at 6:32 PM on May 10, 2006


...But could I suggest shortening the link text? The line below each comment is starting to look like something you'd find on a phpBB forum.

How about just: [+fave]
posted by Jimbob at 6:35 PM on May 10, 2006


.
posted by stet at 6:35 PM on May 10, 2006


You know, so I can find this thread later.
posted by stet at 6:35 PM on May 10, 2006


The long link on each comment is not cool.
posted by smackfu at 6:37 PM on May 10, 2006


Or even [+] for the experts.
posted by Jimbob at 6:37 PM on May 10, 2006


Sweet!

Thanks!
posted by librarina at 6:39 PM on May 10, 2006


This is the prettiest pony since AskMe itself.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 6:59 PM on May 10, 2006


Matt, I tried to click on the link to the "Faces of the Fallen" Projects post from your favorites and it's broken. I added it to my own favorites and it's also broken there. For some reason, the "projects" part of the url is disappearing.
posted by chiababe at 6:59 PM on May 10, 2006


I like Jimbob's idea(s).
posted by brain_drain at 7:17 PM on May 10, 2006


I did the +fave on comments, good point. I might replace it with a tiny image eventually.

I also fixed that favorite projects bug chiababe mentioned.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:26 PM on May 10, 2006


+fave is much better. Maybe even ♥?
posted by evariste at 7:30 PM on May 10, 2006


That would look real nice, methinks.
posted by evariste at 7:30 PM PST on May 10 [♥] [!]
posted by evariste at 7:31 PM on May 10, 2006


Hi, Migs.
posted by yhbc at 7:41 PM on May 10, 2006


Thius is quite excellent.

Hi Miguel.
posted by dg at 7:44 PM on May 10, 2006


Thanks, Matt. There have been so many individual comments I've liked and have wanted to save as favorites... but now that I'm finally able to save them, I can't remember what they are. Pouring over Metafilter of Olde trying to find great but not-sufficiently-memorable comments is going to be a serious procrastination device.
posted by painquale at 8:01 PM on May 10, 2006


Oh... on our user pages it says how many favorites we've linked to, but doesn't distinguish posts from comments (it just adds them together). Could we get it to say something to the tune of "16 favorite posts and 2 favorite comments"?
posted by painquale at 8:03 PM on May 10, 2006


Same bug I mentioned above is happening on the favorite comments for AskMe as well.
posted by chiababe at 8:10 PM on May 10, 2006


pianquale, you have 19 favorites. 16 are posts, 3 are comments. That's what the totals below say.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:11 PM on May 10, 2006


Yeah. I meant that on my user page (not the favorites page), it says:

painquale has posted 19 posts and 457 comments to MetaFilter
and no threads and 55 comments to MetaTalk
and 10 posts and 187 answers to Ask MetaFilter
and no projects to MeFi Projects
and marked 19 favorites


I thought that, for the sake of consistency across all those lines, the final line could say "16 favorite posts and 3 favorite comments." But that might be unnecessary, seeing as both numbers on that line would link to the same page.
posted by painquale at 8:22 PM on May 10, 2006


awesome
posted by exogenous at 8:24 PM on May 10, 2006


What happens if something you have marked as a favorite gets deleted?
posted by bingo at 8:32 PM on May 10, 2006


Then clearly you have very poor judgement.
posted by Jimbob at 8:45 PM on May 10, 2006


Then clearly you have very poor judgement.

Flagged, faved, and farked.
posted by cortex at 8:51 PM on May 10, 2006


What happens if something you have marked as a favorite gets deleted?

At the moment, nothing will happen. You'll still be able to see it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:38 PM on May 10, 2006


[this is good]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:48 PM on May 10, 2006


Damn, stav, I was just about to write the same thing.
posted by cgc373 at 10:52 PM on May 10, 2006


This is very, very cool. Thank you!
posted by greycap at 11:29 PM on May 10, 2006


Two minor tweak requests:

1) could "Favorite comments from stavrosthewonderchicken" read something like "stwc's favorite comments" or "Favorite comments of stavrosthewonderchicken" (that is, I didn't make those comments, I just flagged 'em as faves)?

2) could we have attribution on the comments we mark as favorites? That is, for example, could "posted to MetaFilter at Jun-30-04 at 10:14 AM ACST" read "posted to MetaFilter by UsernameX at Jun-30-04 at 10:14 AM ACST"?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:56 PM on May 10, 2006 [1 favorite]


Just wondering: is it possible to search through our favourites? (Tags, site search, etc) I have nearly 500 saved and it may take a while to go through them all to find a specific thread...
posted by divabat at 2:10 AM on May 11, 2006


I'd like my favorites to be somehow marked as such in-thread. The easiest solution would be, for example, to hide the "+fave" link.
posted by Plutor at 6:46 AM on May 11, 2006


I don't if it matters, but now the header on every page is customized to every user, since the favorites link has your user number in it. (The other links use something like mycomments.mefi that are generic.) Might affect caching.
posted by smackfu at 7:25 AM on May 11, 2006


smackfu

He did say the faves pages were supposed to be public.
posted by raedyn at 7:38 AM on May 11, 2006


Would it be possible for my favorites to make me breakfast every morning? I'm looking for something along the lines of scramled eggs, a couple of sausages and a big glass of OJ (with pulp).

Also, could we get a link on each favorite to a list of other users that marked it as a favorite too? And possibly a statistical analysis to determine who shares the most favorites with me? And the least too, so I can decide who my arch-nemesis will be?
posted by blue_beetle at 11:38 AM on May 11, 2006


I've really wanted this for a long time, because my favorites periodically get lost when I update my browser, and this is easier than tagging all my links "metafilter" in delicious.
posted by xammerboy at 5:55 AM on May 12, 2006


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