It used to be that:
- if you were an active member,
- but your login had expired,
- and you visited a paywalled Article or Tip,
- you then had to login,
- but you were returned to your Account page and then had to find your way back to the Article.
Super irritating!
To fix this I have added a login form that appears on the Article, so you can log in without leaving, and as soon as you do the whole Article appears.
Much better!
If you notice any other irritations like this, please leave a comment below. I’m knocking them down one by one.
Hello John, this is not an irritation but a suggestion. Is it possible to see all the comments of a member? Since we can subscribe to the comments of someone may be it would nice to see his/her previous comments as well?
Hi Yigit,
This comes up from time to time, and while it’s theoretically possible it would be a lot of coding and also a potential performance hit because we would need to index the comments for search. No point in just giving users a list of comments with no search. Also, making sure the comment is within context of the thread it’s part off is a huge design challenge. And how would one interact with an isolated comment?
So probably not happening in that I have a huge number of projects in the hopper that would add more to the site for less time and effort. The other issue is that AAC is not a forum, and will never be—as my niece is want to say when faced with a horrible alternative “shoot me now”—but this might encourage forum type usage, so maybe not even desirable.
The point being that comments are discussion on a specific article moderated by the author, kind of like meeting with a chairman. Forums tend to be free for all and not anchored to a subject. The difference is a lot of why the discussion stays civilized around here. Or to put it another way, things tend to go off the rails, and off topic, and a lot of my time gets wasted saying the same thing over and over again, when the discussion gets separated from the original article.
Hi John:
This seems like the best topic thread to make a suggestion.
How about having a “favorites” file linked to accounts so that if a particularly relevant article shows up on the site it can be saved for future reference. This idea was triggered by the recent article on easily removable solar panels. I need these but not yet. The New York Times site has something like this for subscribers). I’ve no idea how difficult this is so might not be viable.
Tim
Hi Tim,
It’s doable, albeit not easy.
That said I’m alway loath to add features to the site with their attendant code weight, when the same function is, I think, covered well on the client side. In this case why not just use the bookmarks feature of your browser? Am I missing something?
John, I really enjoy keeping up with the comments on the site via the recent comments link. Would it be possible to increase the number of comments listed here, sometimes I’m not able to ready every day, and today for example it looks like we maxed out the list with just today’s comments.
Hi Tim,
I will think about it, but to be honest I have reservations about that page already because it encourages people to go straight to the comments without reading the article, which is not good for the quality of the discussion. It’s amazing how often I have to answer a comment that is clearly from a member who has not read the article. That’s kind of analogues to someone walking into a meeting after the core presentation and then joining the discussion. Irritating for all, particularly the chair.
Anyway, in the mean time, if you see a bunch of comments on one article just go to that article and scan through the comments (after reading the article, please) and you will find that in most browsers the comments added since you were last on the page will have a light blue background.
John, I understand your concern. How about a list for articles with recent comments? Linked to the article instead of the comment? Say the last 15 articles, listed by the date of the most recent comment? I get a lot of value out of questions people have on older articles.
Hi Tim,
That’s an interesting idea but it would take some tricky custom programming (I can do it, but I’m not fast) and right now I’m up to my ears with other projects and the sailing season on the horizon, (during which I try to limit projects of that kind) so not this year. If you want to remind me next fall, maybe I can look at it in more detail.