A quick LWN update [LWN.net]

Reading comments

Posted Jun 5, 2003 13:30 UTC (Thu) by utoddl (subscriber, #1232) [Link]

Well, two things come to mind.

First, if you added, for example, an id="comment.1.2.3" attribute to the existing comments' <div> tags (meaning in this case "the 3rd reply to the 2nd reply to the 1st comment"), then each comment could have it's own URL. That way I could send a note to my bos that says "Hey, I posted a really clever comment on LWN; check out http://lwn.net/Articles/35049/#comment.1.1.1 to see what I said about you."

Second, if you did the above, then the "Comments (27 posted)" link at the bottom of an article could point directly to, say, "http://lwn.net/Articles/34740/#comment.1". After all, I probably just read the article, so why should I have to scroll down through it to get to the first comment. If you followed this scheme, I wouldn't have to scroll.

Reading comments

Posted Jun 5, 2003 14:59 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

FWIW, each comment does already have its own URL; comments are proper content items like everything else on the site. Your comment, for example, can be found at this URL.

The other item (not having to scroll down to comments) has come up before. It's on the list, and shouldn't be all that hard to do.

Reading comments

Posted Jun 5, 2003 18:58 UTC (Thu) by utoddl (subscriber, #1232) [Link]

FWIW, each comment does already have its own URL; comments are proper content items like everything else on the site.

I figured that out eventually. Actually, in my example above, http://lwn.net/Articles/35049/#comment.1.1.1 hits itself! Go figure. I just liked the dot notation because it shows where things are in relation to other comments, but <div id="#comment.35049"> would certainly work just as well.

Anyway, it'll be nice to have that facility working. Maybe when you get a slow news week soon...

...or when you open the source and one of us has a slow day. That's how this Open Source stuff is supposed to work, right? :-)

Reading comments

Posted Jun 5, 2003 19:02 UTC (Thu) by utoddl (subscriber, #1232) [Link]

(Well, no, it hits its parent, i.e. your comment. Still...)

Reading comments

Posted Jun 6, 2003 9:39 UTC (Fri) by jdthood (subscriber, #4157) [Link]

It would be useful if the weekly edition offered an
editorial selection of comments posted to the article
during the week. Although I find the noise level here
to be lower than on other sites, I would still like to
have the choice of reading only the most interesting and
on-topic comments. This would increase the value of the
newssite for busy readers. If you don't have the time
for this, perhaps you could set up a simple moderation
system.

Second, I would really like to receive (by e-mail) comments
posted in reply to my own comments, preferably with the
commentator's e-mail address in the Reply-To field. It
would be nice to know, too, that my reply to a comment
was reaching the eyes of the latter's author.

Reading comments

Posted Jun 6, 2003 17:12 UTC (Fri) by edgewood (subscriber, #1123) [Link]

I'd like to have the number of comments encoded in the Comments link. For example:


<a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/34693/?numcomments=14">

That way my browser do the work of figuring out whether there are new comments: if there aren't, the link will show up in the "link followed" style.

Reading comments

Posted Jun 6, 2003 17:19 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Others have suggested encoding the number of comments. It could be done, and is on the list.

There is one feature of the LWN site that we've never publicised, but which might be handy for people wanting to see new comments: http://lwn.net/Comments/ is a simple, time-sorted display of the most recent posts. Basic, but, perhaps, better than nothing.