Useful Add On Request: Mark Post As Irrelevant

lowbenzo

I came accross this feature over on some similar style forums called http://www.yayhooray.com Basically, the topic starter (in his own discussion) and any admin/ mod are able to mark certain posts in a discussion as irrelevant. (a link next to edit would suffice with the same styling). Basically this would collapse the comment, so all other users would have to click "show comment" to see it, then when the click show it drops back to its normal position in the topic and you can click hide again. As its irrelevant to the topic. Simple css should do this. Anyone up for doing it? I'm sure it would help alot of people and also keep comments from going off topic in discussions. To see what I'm talking about take a look here: (Not sure if you can see it without being signed in? But you can register if interested) http://www.yayhooray.com/thread/78621/Yay-UK---Make-it-swap-it designorant has his post marked irrlevant.

JoshuaJenkins

Wow that's an awesome feature that I'd love to see as well.

lowbenzo

This would really be perfect for my forum as I've decided to move from phpBB to this as I can control posts far easier, my members tend to use the forums as an IM client eek :x

Mark

Take a look at the "comment protection" addon to see how to get a bunch of the tasks you'll need to tackle accomplished.

For example:

1. You'll need to add a new column to the comment table - there is a slick way of doing that in comment protection.
2. You'll need to add the new definitions for your new column to the database structure array - that's in there as well.
3. You will need to add buttons into each comment to mark irrelevant or not, that is also accomplished in this extension.
4. You will need to set up the ajax behind applying the irrelevance, that is also accomplished in this extension.

The only thing left to tackle after that is somehow applying the css to hide or reveal the comment. Right now I don't know of a way to do it. You might be able to do it with javascript - identifying all of the commentids that should be hidden and then javascripting them out of visiblity. I'm sure you can come up with something nifty...

lech

Bring back the points system!!11

Krak

I don't remember where I got the code but I use a similar thing in a dvd listing app I made. Where the details are hidden until you click a link then the description pops down, click it again and it disapears.

<script type="text/javascript"> <!-- function handleParent(parentId) { myParent = document.getElementById("Menu" + parentId) if (myParent.style.display=="block") { myParent.style.display="none" } else { myParent.style.display="block" } } //--> </script>

I used that with a link like

<a href="javascript:handleParent(<?php echo $row_dbDVDs['id']; ?>)"><?php echo $row_dbDVDs['title']; ?></a>

Then for the part that disappears

<div id="Menu<?php echo $row_dbDVDs['id']; ?>" class="DVDDesc">

Hope that helps in some way.

NickE

That sounds really, really annoying, not to mention open for abuse. Just take a look at Digg's comment system; I don't give a damn how off topic or drastically different someone's comment/opinion is, I don't want to have to click something to view it.

lowbenzo

'That sounds really, really annoying, not to mention open for abuse. Just take a look at Digg's comment system; I don't give a damn how off topic or drastically different someone's comment/opinion is, I don't want to have to click something to view it.' The whole point is you don't want to read it. It's not relavant to the discussion. Just because you would not like using it dosn't mean mine and perhaps other's users wouldn't like to see something similar. It isn't open for abuse at all, unless a topic starter wants to ruin his/ her own topic? Think before you speak. Krak that's exactly what I was thinking of... :)

NickE

No, not necessarily. Say, for instance, someone makes a really good post against the original poster's/moderator's ideas? It would be a pretty low thing to do, yes, but I'm sure someone'd be bound to do something like that. Stuff like that happens on digg all the time. Just mention one thing in favor of the RIAA, be it intellegent, idiotic or off-subject, and you can be sure that your rating is going to plummet. A rating system would also promote selective reading, and you'd start forming opinions based one what others think and not what you yourself believe.

Maybe a really unobtrusive system, that I'd be fine with, but once you start hiding comments just because some people didn't like the content is when it starts getting annoying.

lowbenzo

again - that's your opinion and every forum has it's own atmosphere. Ive been a member on yayhooray for over a year now and it's a great feature IMO and gets used appropriately.

NickE

I'm just talking from my own experience. I've never been a member of yayhooray, it could be much different. I'm just thinking of how it typically works out on digg.

imathis

There are some forums where a moderator could abuse this, but there are other forums where the users aren't immature attention craving fools/jerks. For example in a computer trouble shooting forum it would be very useful to give viewers the option to view only the comments that lead to a solution.

My suggestions for this add-on:

1. Do not enable the filter by default
This is a complaint I share with SirNot as it encourages groupthink
Add a "Toggle Filter" link in the side panel (like the "text-only" mode).

2. Allow Admins to edit the link labels
Allow the admin to choose the labels they want to use for "Toggle Filter" or "Irrelevant Post." In some applications defined labels may be inappropriate, and the admins may prefer to use a toggle filter link labeled "View Central Discussion" and a comment toggle link labeled "Not Central" or something.