Plugin Idea: Heatmap Module

R_J

Once I've considered showing a heatmap in the user profile like the one you see on GitHub. It was not interesting enough and that's why I haven't thought about that a second time. Now I have been thinking about how useless the Facebook timeline is, but I've also remembered the heatmap - I think that could be a great plugin!

Right now I have some unfinished plugins and I do not want to start another. Furthermore that one would require some JavaScript skills and also some CSS skills - I'm not good at that. Maybe someone likes to create a module for the discussion controller.
I think a module for the discussions controller that consolidates discussions by creation dates is not as interesting...

peregrine

you mean a map of number of posts per user (comments, discussions, or both). in profile.

of number of posts to the forum for all users. (that would be more interesting). even if it were non-clickable.

so that would be lots of counting Count and record keeping per user.

it would be lot of info stored if you had a user with this amount of comments.

Interesting idea but how useful would it be besides curiousity.

one more thing to keep track of with split/merge and deletions and the necessity for running dba/counts and incoporating into plugin.

R_J

Only for the discussion controller, not the profile!

One new column in GDN_Discussion: CommentDates, holding a serialized array of all InsertDates of each Comment. Then render a table for month, day, whatsoever with number of comments per day, hour, etc determining the color depth. Make those items links to the first comment of the discussion with that date.

I think the comment dates should be stored in the discussion on CommentModelAfterSave, but yes, for dba/counts this is an additional task.

On each split/merge that field must be newly build up, but it happens rarely, so this shouldn't be a problem.

R_J

This would only be a useful navigation help for longer discussions. For smaller discussions, this doesn't make sense at all...

By the way: the guy behind esoTalk (a fork of Vanilla) created a timeline for a discussion. Maybe it is not his idea, but I first noticed it there. When you open a discussion you see a timeline and where the current comment is on that (easy because you have Discussion InsertDate and LastCommented, as well as the current comments date). But I do not think this is very useful.

Another approach for a in-discussion-navigation that I have seen somewhere is a floating box with "X of Y comments" that helps you keeping track where you are right now. But this also doesn't help you if you like to go the posts of the last week e.g. quickly.

peregrine

ok i thought you meant something like this count of discussions per day in the month in a panel

Bleistivt

@R_J said:
By the way: the guy behind esoTalk (a fork of Vanilla) created a timeline for a discussion. Maybe it is not his idea, but I first noticed it there. When you open a discussion you see a timeline and where the current comment is on that (easy because you have Discussion InsertDate and LastCommented, as well as the current comments date). But I do not think this is very useful.

Afaik esoTalk is not a fork of Vanilla. But I've also seen the idea there first and thought it was useful for some types of discussions.

R_J

@peregrine: seems like you are already hacking some code But no, I think having a heatmap for discussions is maybe somewhat nice, but not very helpful. Having a heatmap for one discussion could be a navigation help if you are looking at a long discussion.

@Bleistivt: oh yes, sorry. I should have done a little research. I only remembered I had taken a look at esoTalk some time ago and I don't know why, but I could swear it had the same codebase. This is obviously nonsense.
Maybe the impression settled even more because I've looked at esoTalks successor a few days ago and thought to myself that it looks like plain Vanilla with a nice skin and a couple of plugins. One is the timeline (which I found neither informative nor useful, because it doesn't show the relation in time to the whole discussion) and another is a floating comment box which is a very nice idea!

phreak

Cool idea, the implementation like it's done on esoTalk forums looks really cool. Here is a screen so everybody knows what we are talking about. I can support in CSS if it's needed. But first the idea should be honored with short usability appearance talk. Especially mobile could benefit from a smart integration of a kind of "discussion timeline".

Btw. the "Search inside discussion input" is also a very good idea. Inspiring design too.