Moderation Tools

jawele

Ok I'm almost done.....thanks to the help of the community :) so I've almost done the split discussion but for the merge the problem is that vanilla orders comment by date and when you do a merge your merge will mess in the other discussion so possible solution: 1 order comment by id 2 write new date to comments the solution 1 is the most correct I think but it's too much for me... I will need to add a delegate to CommentManager_GetCommentListand and inject $s->AddOrderBy('CommentID', 'm', 'asc'); then I will need to save the selected comment as it was a new comment (to get the new id) and delete it. solution 2 I just write the current date of editing to the original date and that's it. anyone have some suggestion on why I should not implement solution 2?

jawele

so after thinking a while I will not use any of the possible solution mentioned before as they're pointless... The normal usage of merge is to use it on newly created discussion and where the destination Discussion ID is an old discussion otherways it doesn't make sense and it will be a mess. so I just made an if statement to prevent mess. ok now I handle split and merge the only thing now is knowing how do whispers work to manage them properly(now the split and merge work with out the whispers)... and after that I can say that the mod tools extensions are ready for a beta release... Untill now it has been like talking to a blank wall.... so please people if you want this extension to be released in the future let your voice be heard here ;)

WallPhone

23 messages (now 24) isin't too quiet, although it has been lately.

I am looking forward to this, as I'm sure many who requested this earlier are.

I have a few discussions where a comment should be moved from one discussion to the other--rather than merge, just take the one comment--is this possible with your extension?

Stash

Moving one comment, wholesale, from one discussion to another by means of a simple dropdown or AJAX autocomplete box, or even discussion ID would rule IMO.

jawele

thanks boyz for the heads up I was feeling alone... and thinking that this extension was only useful for me the whole point of making it, was for making it available to the community
Wallphone said:

I have a few discussions where a comment should be moved from one discussion to the other--rather than merge, just take the one comment--is this possible with your extension?

well this is exactly what merge does
the extension works this way:
in the discussion grid you got a "moderate discussion" link on each discussion plus each discussion got displayed the discussion ID(this is to know the discussion ID that you want to target with merge).
once you click on the "moderate discussion" you get teletransported to the "mod tools" tab (before that invisible, of course only visible to who has permission to moderate).
Once there you got the comment grid and each comment as checkbox " split or merge", on top of the comment grid (below the menu tabs ) you got the split discussion mod form and a link to switch to merge mode.
split makes a new discussion with selected comments.
merge moves the selected comments (one or as many as you selected) to another discussion.
ftm with merge I made possible merging only to old discussion otherways the new comment will mess with the order of comments in the targeted discussion (as vanilla orders comments by date) but I could do that if your targeted discussion is newer than the source discussion, then we will write the current date to the comment, like this the order of the targeted discussion won't be a mess ...
wow! I hope that is clear...

WallPhone

Awesome!

That intermixing problem stumped me. Never considered limiting a total merge to old threads. Maybe have a way to preview/undo a merge? --add an OR clause with the source discussion ID in the where clause... hmm...

jawele

well usually when moderators use merge is because someone started a discussion that is already started from someone else some time ago. so they merge it to the old discussion. now if you want to move a selected comment to a newer discussion, to respect the "sense" of the discussion the simplest work around is to write the current date so the comment will be at the end as expected... yes maybe a preview... or undo.... but in the next release... lol... ;) or maybe you want to do that part of it?

Stash

I'm not sure about the terminology used. Split and Merge didn't really do it for me. Move and something more elegant than Create new discussion from comment would make more sense to me, since that's what they do. Other people's thoughts on this?

jawele

well I used the same terminology that they used in the phpBB admin tools but if someone come's with a more elegant terminology I will be glad to use it ;)

jawele

*eez boyzzz.... I'm in a whisper nightmare.... I mean there are a lot of cases that can arise...I can't handle or imagine all of them.... or maybe the best is leave the whispers where they are when modding.... any thought on this??

WallPhone

That is probably best--as whispers only affect two users and they both will expect them to stay where they originally posted.

Exception would be a total merge... but I suppose the whispers could remain as the last posts in the discussion effectively making it a private discussion... On second thought, total merges should move whispers because they would be out of context if moved.

Total merges should have some sort of redirect in place to direct anyone who bookmarked or found a thread in a search engine...

I visualize a 'check all' checkbox that triggers a total merge.

As far as previews and such, will be glad to poke around the code and give suggestions, but am a bit busy at the moment.

jawele

yes this could be the solution.... yes for the total merge I will do the check all trigger... well nice that you want to poke around with the code and give suggestion :) ... and btw no hurry we could implement the preview feature in the next update release of the extension ;)

garvin

Was this made available yet? Or did I miss something?

jawele

I've been busy with my job, and also I've added a whole lot bunch of features, including move discussion to other categories, trash discussion directly from the discussion tab... start discussion as moderator(to set it directly as sticky or closed)... and a few mores.... they working, for me.... but I need to fix some thing before release a beta... I still have to manage whispers in the merge functions, make some validation to inputs, set the definitions properly for localizations, after that I will release it hopefully asap... I wont promise you a release date. The first release will better not test it on your main forum also(better test it on a dummy one before), as I did not understand properly how to implement the cool features that mark has done for us, extension developers, theres a lot of repititions in the code of the vanilla core in there, and probably (certainly) there's a much cleaner way to do it, but hey! this is a start! hopefully it will get better on the road.... will keep you informed... and hopefully announce the extension soon.... I apologize for the delay.

Tiggr

I would be very happy to test early versions! :-)

Bye
Tiggr

Tiggr

sorry, wrong post

jawele

Ok anyone who want to test the early version release, just whisper me your email... the code it's ugly and cumbersome and there's a lot of repeating in there.... but hey! I'm a PHP newbie, will be glad and thankful to all suggestions as I will learn and at the same time the whole community will benefit from having a nice little tool ;) Just one thing, that I want to make clear, as I already wrote on the plugin: DO NOT USE THIS ON REAL WORKING FORUMS!! USE IT ON A DUMMY TEST FORUM!! there's probably lot of thing that I can't even immagine that can happen so on this early test phase I will try to fix the bugs&problems that will surge...

jawele

they say no news good news.. looks like there's no issue atm :) can you confirm that boyz?

garvin

haven't installed it yet. will try and sit down with it this weekend.

WallPhone

I was a little confused at first, until I gave myself permission to use the tools! :-)

when using this with panel lists, the tools are scattered across the panel--some at the top, some in the middle and some at the bottom. I think they would be better all grouped in the same panel list--I love the show and hide function--keeps clutter away from the moderator's screen.

Split and merge both look like they should work... but they don't seem to do anything other than delete the category for that discussion. I have the 'broken' mod-rewrite installed so some of those problems are probably related to that...

Just scanning through the code, I see a lot of $_GET['blah']'s. Not sure if you know about them, but if you use ForceIncomingString (or int, or bool, etc), defined in framework.functions.php, you can specify a default value if nothing was passed... and it works for both GET and POST.