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"Who Read This Discussion" - worthwhile plugin or terrible idea?

DoyceTDoyceT Model Questioner ✭✭✭

Hi all,

I'm on Vanilla 2.1. My users are getting back from summer break and voicing a lot of excitement about the new forum. This is good!

They're also making requests and suggestions. This is... not always good.

One request: the ability to see a list of people who have viewed a discussion or comment - basically like the "Who Read the Conversation plugin (http://vanillaforums.org/addon/whoreadconversation-plugin), but for discussions.

I am, to put it mildly, a little leery of this, not least of all because the "who read the conversation" plugin seems to lag my inbox immensely, and I'd really hate to see that happen to all discussions.

So... thoughts on this? Is it as bad an idea as it seems?

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Comments

  • seems like alot of overhead, without much value to me, unless there is a real need to know. what happens when a 100 people read the discussion, and if the discussions are public, it wouldn't be accurate anyway.

    I may not provide the completed solution you might desire, but I do try to provide honest suggestions to help you solve your issue.

  • DoyceTDoyceT Model Questioner ✭✭✭

    Yeah.

    What it sounds like to me is a writer who's looking for validation that their instructor has seen the post and, thus, can now be fairly badgered to post a reply. :expressionless:

    I'm going to tell them that the lag effect on the server is too high to make it worthwhile.

  • R_JR_J Ex-Fanboy Munich Admin

    I would hate such a feature.

    But it would be easy to implement a WhoReadThisDiscussionModule and I guess it would really be a performance break for bigger boards.

  • DoyceTDoyceT Model Questioner ✭✭✭

    @R_J said:
    I would hate such a feature.

    Absolutely. I hate the idea, but I'm trying to treat all the requests as not-crazy.

  • This plugin would be really needed. Did it ever worked out?

  • rbrahmsonrbrahmson "You may say I'm a dreamer / But I'm not the only one" NY ✭✭✭

    My forum is small - small number of users and small number of discussions. I therefore do not expect a performance impact.

    If it were up to me, the implementation (from an end-user point of view) would be somewhat like the Discussants plugin -- a list of user pictures who saw the discussion, and for that list to be visible the user's role must have permission to see the list (e.g. admin and moderator can see, users cannot).

    The need is different that asserted above -- it's not the author who cares. What we have in one of the categories is a list of discussions that contain educational videos some users (not all) need to see (and of course, if they want to comment on). So tracking who saw what is beneficial to the admin to urge some users to complete their training (and yes, we know, they can just go in and out not really see the videos).

    I don't know if this means that this is a plugin rather than module, but I'm not sure what the term module means in Vanilla context.

  • rbrahmsonrbrahmson "You may say I'm a dreamer / But I'm not the only one" NY ✭✭✭

    Back to this issue. Does Vanilla actually track somewhere whether the discussion was read by a user? If so, where?

  • rbrahmsonrbrahmson "You may say I'm a dreamer / But I'm not the only one" NY ✭✭✭

    I think I found the answer - in the UserDiscussion table.

  • rbrahmsonrbrahmson "You may say I'm a dreamer / But I'm not the only one" NY ✭✭✭

    @gohunter , @DoyceT - take a look at the DiscussionReaders plugin I just uploaded. I believe I addressed the performance considerations.
    Thanks to @R_J for his guidance above.

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