Threaded comments: how do the others do it?

Bloke · 2011-07-11 09:37:14

For the benefit of those not on the Facebook channel, I’m reposting this plea here to try and get some ideas together.

——

I’m working on a threaded comments plugin. The public side is working sweeeet, nesting comments nicely and allowing you to reply to individual comments (even immediately after adding a comment — something that Txp can’t normally do without a page refresh). Collapsible comment threads should be achievable using third party jQuery tools, though I’ve yet to try it out.

But I want to improve the comment handling on the admin side. I want to allow you to comment / reply to a comment directly from the admin side (which is actually pretty easy). The tough part for me is showing the comment->article hierarchy / relationship in a way that makes sense and is logical.

I can indent the threads fairly easily in the current tableish view, but then what happens if you sort by a different column? Or search for some text and have a smaller result set? How do I reconcile these actions and still make the interface work and be genuinely useful?

e.g. when searching, do I show matching records and somehow visually indicate the comments are part of a nested discussion and allow you to ‘open’ that conversation up, even though the other posts aren’t in the result set? Or do I ignore the hierarchy in those circumstances and strictly show just the matching items?

And if sorting by, I dunno, a commenter’s Name, how would I represent the information? Nesting view only works when sorting by parent article, right?

Is a table view just totally wrong for this type of system? Should I be looking at a tree or some other structure? And if so how do I make it fit neatly onto the screen so it doesn’t just sprawl endlessly like the Categories tab when there are thousands of comments? And how do I then offer filtering /searching ability?

Any designers out there care to help me out on how to build a suitable interface? Or anyone just throw a few ideas at me and I’ll see what’s possible. How do other tools handle this? Anyone have any experience of other admin interfaces that I might *cough* plagiarise? Thanks in advance.

Last edited by Bloke (2011-07-11 09:40:15)

uli · 2011-07-11 12:08:57

Sorting
As far as my (limited) logic tells me, the normal hierarchical view is already sorted: by relation. So, sorting it by another criterion would destroy this hierarchy and would leave a flat structure.

Search results
Searching the hierarchy would remove (possibly important) nodes, so a flat structure here would be best in order to not confuse users. (Btw, I’d never expect more than a flat list of results.)

Ideas for both
In case there are title fields for replies, you could show a hierarchical title tree structure (on hover?), but probably noone ever fills these titles in or just leaves the preceding title and it all ends like re: re: re: re: re: subject.
Maybe it would help to show the parent node post for each search result (again: on hover?).

Wouldn’t it be better to offer intuitive frontside editing with all the goodies you plan for the backend (e.g. database search in case of paged discussions)? Like latching a work scaffolding/editors lightbox to the facade wherever you want to edit?

BTW, is this gonna be “Phorum reborn”?

Bloke · 2011-07-11 12:23:15

uli wrote:

the normal hierarchical view is already sorted: by relation. So, sorting it by another criterion would destroy this hierarchy and would leave a flat structure.

That’s what I thought.

Searching the hierarchy would remove (possibly important) nodes, so a flat structure here would be best in order to not confuse users.

I agree.

In case there are title fields for replies

I hadn’t thought about that. At the moment it’s a simple mod to add the notion of ‘parent’ to each comment. Since you can’t title a comment in Txp you can’t title a comment in the plugin. I could probably add it but, like you say, what’s the point? People are responding to a comment (thread) about a single article (topic) so if your comment is so off-topic that it requires a new title, my view is you shouldn’t be posting :-) I may be wrong here as I’m not exactly Mr Communicado. What’s the consensus on comment titles?

You could show a hierarchical title tree structure (on hover?)

That might be possible. I’d have to do it via AJAX I guess, which delays things a bit. I could try it out and see, but if one can’t do anything with the resulting information, then is there much benefit?

Wouldn’t it be better to offer intuitive frontside editing with all the goodies you plan for the backend

Maybe, but the same thing applies: how do I lay it out? Table… tree… and I don’t have all the nice widgety functions available on the public side (at least, not without a fight).

BTW, is this gonna be “Phorum reborn”?

Ahhh, no. Just comments. For now.

uli · 2011-07-11 12:41:06

Bloke wrote:

People are responding to a comment (thread) about a single article (topic) so if your comment is so off-topic that it requires a new title, my view is you shouldn’t be posting :-) [snip] … but if one can’t do anything with the resulting information, then is there much benefit?

That’s probably true for most discussions we can publicly access ;-)
My guess was you coded for an enterprise where you as the poster could offer a short summary about what aspect of the (possibly more global) discusion your post is.

CeBe · 2011-07-11 13:59:43

Bloke a écrit:

I can indent the threads fairly easily in the current tableish view, but then what happens if you sort by a different column?

You probably could take Mozilla Thunderbird as a model : all columns are sorting criteria, except the one named “threads” which is a flip-flop.

When showing threads is on, threads are sorted according to the criteria you choosed, and inside a thread messages are… threaded, right.

I don’t know if it’s really clear, let me try to rephrase : if “threads” is on, search all first messages, sort them, then under every message hook the answers in the order they arrived.
(don’t know if it’s better)

Bloke · 2011-07-11 14:34:41

CeBe wrote:

You probably could take Mozilla Thunderbird as a model : all columns are sorting criteria, except the one named “threads” which is a flip-flop. When showing threads is on, threads are sorted according to the criteria you choosed, and inside a thread messages are… threaded, right.

Uhhh, that’s sort of clear (I think). Do you have a screenshot please? I don’t use Thunderbird. Thanks!

CeBe · 2011-07-11 16:12:24

Bloke a écrit:

Do you have a screenshot please?

Sure.

Sorted by author, and

flat :

threaded:

Last edited by CeBe (2011-07-11 16:25:01)

Bloke · 2011-07-13 00:52:10

CeBe

Many thanks for the screenshots. Got me on the right track. I’ve modelled the plugin on the dual view Thunderbird flow and it works pretty well. When you sort by parent article (asc or desc) it switches automatically to threaded view with collapsible threads and indented child posts. Each ‘root’ post — of which there may be many per article — is collapsible. You can also reply to individual articles from the admin side, which is pretty handy.

Got some more stuff to pack in before it’s ready for field trials. Things like finding a way to mark a comment as ‘deleted’ so the hierarchy stays intact or offering you the admin option to completely delete a subtree by deleting its parent comment. I’m also considering a ‘+1’ feature to vote for comments, though I have no idea how to code it yet. But it’d be mighty handy for stackoverflowesque knowledge bases.

My Google+ Txp circle have just had a sneak peek of the screenshots so if anyone else wants a look, find someone with an account and beg an invite :-) More news as it surfaces, but in the meantime if anybody has any more thoughts on this topic, please let me know.

redbot · 2011-07-14 13:13:04

Bloke wrote:

I’m working on a threaded comments plugin….

I didn’t have the time to read through your post and following ones.
Just let me say this looks awesome, thank you Bloke for another great plugin!

stephan · 2011-08-12 21:02:03

Bloke wrote:

My Google+ Txp circle have just had a sneak peek of the screenshots so if anyone else wants a look, find someone with an account and beg an invite :-) More news as it surfaces, but in the meantime if anybody has any more thoughts on this topic, please let me know.

Any news on this plugin? I am looking forward to taking it to a test drive :-)

redbot · 2011-08-13 00:22:08

stephan wrote:

Any news on this plugin? I am looking forward to taking it to a test drive :-)

+1

Bloke · 2011-08-16 09:22:19

Still Work In Progress. Once I get the delete functionality perfected it’ll be available for limited beta. Probably a few weeks though as I’m doing other things at the moment, sorry.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2011-07-11 09:37:14

Threaded comments: how do the others do it?

#2 2011-07-11 12:08:57

Re: Threaded comments: how do the others do it?

#3 2011-07-11 12:23:15

Re: Threaded comments: how do the others do it?

#4 2011-07-11 12:41:06

Re: Threaded comments: how do the others do it?

#5 2011-07-11 13:59:43

Re: Threaded comments: how do the others do it?

#6 2011-07-11 14:34:41

Re: Threaded comments: how do the others do it?

#7 2011-07-11 16:12:24

Re: Threaded comments: how do the others do it?

#8 2011-07-13 00:52:10

Re: Threaded comments: how do the others do it?

#9 2011-07-14 13:13:04

Re: Threaded comments: how do the others do it?

#10 2011-08-12 21:02:03

Re: Threaded comments: how do the others do it?

#11 2011-08-13 00:22:08

Re: Threaded comments: how do the others do it?

#12 2011-08-16 09:22:19

Re: Threaded comments: how do the others do it?

Board footer