<How to address Contrarian Arguments - part IIThe Oil DrumA quick technical update>

54 comments on Welcome to TOD 3.0!

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Engineer-Poet on December 24, 2006 - 9:23pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Since the link no longer works (and it's no longer available through my user profile) I can't be exactly sure, but it would have been something like this:

http://www.theoildrum.com/comment/2006/12/20/164511/49/86

The format for the links to individual replies has changed, if it's even valid any more.  The current system appears only to allow links to anchors within the full comments, not individual comments (and their replies).  This takes a lot more bandwidth and time to load.

On top of that, the link to reply to a comment no longer bears any resemblance to the URL for the post.

I'm quite serious about the comments being essential in the user profile.  If I can't tell the difference between a reply to me and some on-going chatter that I don't care about, I'm very unlikely to reload a huge page just to check.  This means that extended discussion threads in comments ARE A THING OF THE PAST until you fix this.

Also, the ability to edit comments creates the potential for all kinds of mischief.  I suggest turning it off.

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vtpeaknik on December 24, 2006 - 11:50pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Many people have asked for the ability to fix typos in comments they've already posted. Of course "mischief" may ensue if people remove, from their own comments, sections that got criticized later. Besides, no more joking about freudian slips? Not sure what's the best approach. Perhaps one should at least be allowed to append text to ones own existing comment.

What, no more "auto-formatting"? I loved that feature! Who wants to type HTML tags?

Also, after hitting "post" it reloads the whole story, that's very very slow if there are lots of comments and one has a slow connection. The old way, giving a small "thank you for contributing" confirmation page, was much better. I then went back to, and refreshed, the story page later when I wanted to, rather than right away.

Another issue with the new TOD is that a long page doesn't all load at once, it breaks after a certain length and there's a "next" link on the bottom. I think that would make it harder to check on all new comments in a long discussion, since they would be scattered among the sub-pages, and one would need to load them all, manually. I'd rather see it as one big page. If that's not possible or acceptable, can a "user preferences" thingy be set up so that users can choose how long to make a page before breaking it?

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Super G on December 25, 2006 - 1:07am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The ability to edit a comment should disappear once the comment is replied to. If anyone notices a deviation from this behavior, please let me know.

Very soon we'll be adding a WYSIWYG text editor that blows auto-format away.

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Kevembuangga on December 25, 2006 - 2:17am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Related (I think) to vtpeaknik concern :
Also, after hitting "post" it reloads the whole story, that's very very slow if there are lots of comments and one has a slow connection.

I noticed the disappearance of the "Parent" button which allowed an easy access to the primary source but also conveniently sliced out a thread sub-tree.
That would be very nice to reinstate something like that and not only for the sake of slow connections.
Alas, I expect this to be quite a non trivial change in the underlying cogs and wheels.

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LevinK on December 25, 2006 - 7:00pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The ability to edit a comment should disappear once the comment is replied to

Well... that's a bit better but still there is the case that someone is typing an reply and the author of the orginal post modifies it *while* the reply is being typed in (happened with me today).

Personally - I used to like the edit post idea before, because of my non-native English, but frankly in it's current version it can make things worse than before.

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Super G on December 25, 2006 - 1:05am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

OK, EP, your points are well taken. I'll address the comment issue as soon as I can. But please take note of how much of the site hasn't changed. Any changes you do see are most likely a reflection of an oversight on my part and not the result of a conscious decision by the TOD leadership. It took TOD 2.0 about a year to get where it was, so you can't expect everything in TOD 3.0 to work perfectly on the first day.

Feedback from everyone is encouraged, but I remind people that I am a volunteer who does this in my ever-shrinking spare time. I'm not making excuses--you should expect nothing but the best--but the tone you use will have a big effect on how quickly I get around to addressing your particular pet peeve with the new site.

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Engineer-Poet on December 25, 2006 - 2:08am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Don't think that I don't appreciate the work (it's amazing how little hassle there is, which shows how much brainpower goes into making it that way) but some features just aren't optional any more.  It may have made sense to postpone the migration until that could be done.

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hummingbird on December 25, 2006 - 12:03pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I commend Super G for all the hard work. I'm sure the glitches will get worked out, but it is amazing for the first day. Congratulations and thanks.

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