I’m going to side with Martin on the reply vs. comment discussion. If you’re an avid RSS-feed reader, I don’t see how you could want it any other way. Ryan said at the last WNP that he was a cave man when it comes to RSS. So, maybe this should be put up to a vote (RSS feed users versus non-RSS feed users).
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of having all replies to a post in one place, but that means I’d have to sacrifice the ability to stay on top of all posts and replies easily in my feed reader. When I only have so much time in the day to read posts and replies, every little second counts.
I vote for replies as posts until we get the forum software that Marsh and Martin are talking about.
Maybe there’s a way to use “labels” (you can assign a label to a post as you’re writing it). See how I’ve assigned the label “one topic per post” to this reply? You type “one topic per post” in the upper left-hand box in the main window, hit “search blog”, and voila: all the entries relating to that particular topic in one location.
I’m open to other suggestions, too, such as the email alerts. How does that work? Tell us, oh Master Marsh!
Oh, and I also agree with Martin (and duly note) that I shouldn’t have had a 1-4 list of observations. It should have been 4 separate entries.
7 comments:
To clarify. I believe Marsh *mentioned* forum software but I don't think there is inertia in that direction.
I'm not a heavy RSS user, really, but if you've ever had an electronic conversation, I can't believe you would want it any other way! Imagine email exchanges with multiple people if there were no way to include the text of the email you were replying to without opening the previous email and cutting and pasting by hand!
Cluttering the blog with eight new posts discussing a single topic, none of which contain the text of any of the other posts in the conversation, seems completely nuts. I refuse. I want to click a topic and read the conversation, not click a topic, click another topic, click another topic, click another topic...all with other topics in between that I have to sift through and skip over if I want to read a coherent, unbroken conversation.
Really, what I can't believe is that rss readers don't allow you to view comments on a blog entry as easily as they allow you to read new posts! WTF? If this tech doesn't exist, then forget making games, I'm gonna quit my job and start a company that makes a sensible RSS reader, because that is silly.
But not quite as silly as trying to have a conversation on a single topic via new posts. Do not want. Even this conversation is already annoying because we have Martin making a proposal down there somewhere and Royal replying to it up here somewhere.
So yeah. I have a strong opinion. Shocker... :)
Well, I wasn’t saying it’s not a dumb idea. I guess we need Marshall to weigh in here. If the email alerts works the way you say it does, then maybe that’s ok. Sounds like a lot of emails, though.
I’m willing put up with commenting as it is right now. But if you think you’ll be commenting on an older entry (one that doesn’t show up in the first 4 or 5 posts on the main page), it won’t be seen by anybody. I’d recommend in those cases to create a new thread.
I also vote for you quitting your day job and starting a new one making “Ryan Spain’s Sensible RSS”, or RS’s SRSS. I could be your first employee, Vice President RS of RS’s SRSS.
ahahahah I vote for Royal becoming VP RS of RS's SRSS.
I will actually make a new post regarding the comments, emails, and feeds stuff.
Actually there is nothing wrong with the RSS readers or the RSS format. The issue is that the Blogger software does not include post comments as separate RSS items. To blame the technology is like saying "cell phone technology is stupid because nobody called to tell me that my cat has hairballs".
That said, I agree with Ryan, that it would be nice to have all posts/comments/replies all clumped together. However, if I had to choose between reading new content in a completely new post or having comments fall under an old post and not reading it, I'd prefer to have is as a separate post.
I think an ideal interface would be to see in in Gmail format (anyone know if the someone at Blogger knows anyone at Google? Oh wait...) so that you can see new replies to posts by bolding the topic and sorting it at the top of the list.
Or even just having a bulletin board-esque hierarchical tree that shows posts and replies underneath in bold for the ones you haven't read yet.
It really can't be that hard (TWSS). Some enterprising out of work Information Systems guy should do that in his spare time...
Also, this isn't such a major issue. Remember, you can just click the links for the posts you want and read down pretty quickly. None of us are on 56k here..
FYI, I just realized that I'm getting emails for new comments, but not new posts. I was wondering why I had emails for Martin's recent comments, but not for Martin and Joe's recent new posts.
So...can we turn on post notification for me as well, Marsh?
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