posted by pandronic on Fri 4th Apr 2008 16:39
Conversations If I find a story that interests me very much, I might look at the comments more than once. For example - I read them first when they are just 5, then maybe when they are 25 and perhaps finally when they are 66. The problem is that I don't know which comments are new so every time I have to read them all again.

A way of marking all of them as read and than displaying them with 50% opacity or with another border/background would be a great time saver.

What do you think?
Previous ConversationNext Conversation
Comments:
Comment by stestagg
by stestagg on Fri 4th Apr 2008 23:22 UTC
stestagg
Member since:
2006-06-03

IIRC, there are about 10,000 comments on Osnews, or maybe more. Keeping track of read markers for every user for every comment on the server would be a ridiculous performance hit.

Keeping a list of every comment in cookies on the client wouldn't work either, for performance reasons.

The only way to do this would be to record the highest current comment id, and then mark any comments with a higher ID as unread on the next viewing, but then how often do you update the reference id?

Reply Score: 2

RE: Comment by stestagg
by pandronic on Sat 5th Apr 2008 05:26 in reply to "Comment by stestagg"
pandronic Member since:
2006-05-18

Keeping the highest comment ID as a marker would work really well. And they could make a link like "Mark all comments as read" to update it only if the user uses this feature. Also they could delete markers from stories that are more than 7 days old, because it would be rather unlikely that those stories would get new comments.

Reply Score: 2

RE[2]: Comment by stestagg
by Alex Forster on Sun 6th Apr 2008 03:48 in reply to "RE: Comment by stestagg"
Alex Forster Member since:
2005-08-12

Every forum in existence does it.

PhpBB, the only forum whose implementation I am familiar with, simply marks everything that has been posted since the last time a user visited as unread, and then tracks via (I think) a session cookie what gets read. This way there is almost no added load to SQL.

Reply Score: 2

RE[3]: Comment by stestagg
by Alex Forster on Sun 6th Apr 2008 03:49 in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by stestagg"
Alex Forster Member since:
2005-08-12

Err, meant to reply to parent. Sorry.

Reply Score: 2

RE: Comment by stestagg
by Laurence on Tue 8th Apr 2008 10:14 in reply to "Comment by stestagg"
Laurence Member since:
2007-03-26

IIRC, there are about 10,000 comments on Osnews, or maybe more. Keeping track of read markers for every user for every comment on the server would be a ridiculous performance hit. Keeping a list of every comment in cookies on the client wouldn't work either, for performance reasons. The only way to do this would be to record the highest current comment id, and then mark any comments with a higher ID as unread on the next viewing, but then how often do you update the reference id?

All you'd do is record the last time that thread was visited thus any posts > last visit date = 50% opacity.

It's quite a good idea for those of us who view OSN in nested view.

Reply Score: 2

great idea
by RandomGuy on Wed 9th Apr 2008 20:47 UTC
RandomGuy
Member since:
2006-07-30

I'd love this feature!

Reply Score: 2