SubscribeDo a “clear” when marking a post for tracking?
When I use the “Track Comment” applet (?) to flag a blog post for tracking, it’d be nice if com.ments would automatically note which comments were already visible in my browser, and would then track new comments over and above those initial comments.
Great product, BTW; I use it every day.
Posted by D. C. Toedt in General on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006. You can follow any responses using co.mments, leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Assaf
August 31st, 2006 at 12:26 am
D.C.
Originally the bookmarklet recorded which comments you’ve already seen, and it worked pretty well. But a lot of people got confused by this behavior, so I disabled it.
Maybe there’s way to do that, without the confusion. I think the solution would be to somehow change the behavior of feeds, but it won’t be easy.
Michael Meiser
September 1st, 2006 at 12:50 am
First, I’m going on what 4 or 5 days using c0.mmments email. So far execution is pretty much flawless.. I love the way you quote all previous comments and a post summary in the first comments email.
I love how emails after that are much lighter as they don’t have to contain as much contextual informtion.
My only major complaint is related to this issue right here.
I ussually make my comment and THEN click on the co.comments bookmarklet. Co.comments still sends me my own comment as the first commment.. This is annoying. I only an email if there is a response. The first email shouldn’t come untill after someone responds to me.
There are two ways to solve this.
1) come up with a way to identify the comment from the person using co.comments. This could be looking for a simple keyword… i.e. I always sign “mmeiser”. This would then allow you to not shoot an email until after I’ve recieved a response but even better you could then highlight my comment… and just show “responses to your comment” instead of showing every single comment… which can be a LOT of comments.
I assume you use flickr…. the way they lay out their “responses to your comments”… is nearly perfect. It provides just enough context for you to follow and no more. Albiet… they only need show a thumbnail of the picture, wheras you may need to show a bit of the post.
2) The second option is much easier… When I click on the “track with comments” just not the last post made… you can do it by identifying the last post or by identifying the last timestamp and when the bookmarklet was clicked.
Either way just don’t send me an email until after someone has responded.
I think it’s safe to say… based on my voracious commenting here that I find your tool very powerful and very useful to the point of disruption. Yes, it’s a gloriously “disruptive technology”. I ussually don’t follow Yahoo groups or mailing lists so effectively.
I think the primary reason for this is revoltuionary and simple. It’s simply more damn fun commenting within the direct context of the post… not in the same old same old gmail interface or mail application, but out here in the wild… within the varied and colorful CSS wilderness where the blog creator intended the conversation to live.
My only want is for everyone I know to start using it… and get away from thos econversaton dungeons called yahoo groups, google groups and mailing list.
What is worth saying to one or a few, is worth saying to everyone, or it isn’t worth saying at all.
Assaf
September 2nd, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Michael,
I’m not sure I found out the perfect balance yet.
Showing all the comments, including the ones that came before yours, could be more information than is necessary. But it could also be considered context.
I know it’s helpful to me when I get an e-mail alert to refer to what happened before my post (a response may arrive days after). And a few users found it confusing when they would track conversations and not see comments they knew were already there.
I wonder if there is a better solution.
mmeiser
September 9th, 2006 at 1:14 am
Assaf,
I LIKE getting all the comments before mine. It’s good context.
That was not my issue.
The issue is that I don’t need co.mments to send me an email as soon as I bookmarklet something. It should take not of the comments already on the page… and then just send me an email when NEW comments are added. By all means… make sure the first email contains ALL the comments… just don’t send it to me untill there are NEW comments.
The problem is I ussually click the co.mments bookmarklet AFTER I make my comment. I then get all these emails from co.comments… and I’m like “sweet I got a resonse”… but then I open up the email… and there’s no new responses… it’s just co.mments sending me the comment I JUST freaking posted.
I don’t to be notified of the comment I just posted… I just posted it. I know it’s there.
Send me an email when the NEXT comment after mine is posted.
So that when I get a post from co.mments I know that it’s means a NEW comment and not just the comment I just posted five minutes ago before clicking on the bookmarklet
Am I making any sense?
Let me put it one more way.
My email bin is filling up with emails from co.mments and the majority of them don’t contain ANY new information I haven’t already read… If there’s no new comments since I bookmarklet’d a blog post then don’t send me an email.
This will cut down on confusion and spam TREMENDOUSLY.
-Mike
mmeiser
September 9th, 2006 at 1:15 am
I might have to stop using co.mments email responses if you can’t fix this problem.
I’m just getting to many unecissary emails with no new comments in them.
Assaf
September 9th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
I released the e-mail alerts feature early so I can get feedback on how well it works and what to improve. I made a few fixes already based on feedback and it’s time for another one.
Since you pointed out the problem before, I experimented with several alternatives.
The way it works right now, you get an e-mail alert for just bookmarking a conversation. That gives you context, but it’s just too much information. I agree with you, it’s not a good idea.
If I change it to send an e-mail only after new comments are posted, including the old comments in that e-mail, you get the context. It works nicely on short conversations, but I tested it with long conversations. You get too many comments in the first e-mail to figure out which are the new ones.
If I change it to send an e-mail with only the new comments, some context is lost. But after testing the alternatives, it ends up being the best solution. It’s the right balance between just enough information, and not too much e-mail overload.
Michael Meiser
September 12th, 2006 at 10:22 pm
If I may make a suggestion…
I like this option…
“If I change it to send an e-mail only after new comments are posted, including the old comments in that e-mail, you get the context. It works nicely on short conversations, but I tested it with long conversations. You get too many comments in the first e-mail to figure out which are the new ones.”
However, what if you limited it to the most recent X comments.
In truth… I never comment on anything with so many comments. THis is never comes up with me. If a post has over 50 comments, the prospect of having a conversation in the comments is pretty useless anyway. Of course this is purely my personal view. Others may completely disagree.
My problem as stated is simply getting email when there hasn’t actually been a new comment posted yet. It seems unrelated to the topic of the amount of comments.
Personally I do like to recieve “the whole hog”… however I wouldn’t think it unreasonable to include only the last 50 or so comments.
BTW, on a side note… something about your tracking page. You need a “expand all threads” link… sort of like gmail.
Oh, and it would be cool if you had the number of “new” comments since you started tracking a conversation… i.e. (50 comments / 5 new)
Keep up the good work. I’ve been blogging about co.mments and chatting with friends who are developers in the video blogging space. The gist of the discussion is heavily written about at intermediated.com.
Peace
Assaf
September 13th, 2006 at 12:03 am
Maybe the first e-mail would contain last 5 comments + any new comments? I like this idea!
I’m planning major update to the tracking page, this time with a beta to try out before the final release. It will include total number of comments.
Expand all thread is a really good idea, I’m adding this to the list.
Thanks for the vote of confidence and the great suggestions.
New features will be coming in October (besides e-mail which I’m working on right now), it will take a few more weeks to put out a reasonable beta.
Chris Poteet
October 4th, 2006 at 7:49 am
Assaf, this is my favorite “Web 2.0″ application. Just to be honest here!
Assaf
October 4th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Chris,
Thanks
Michael Meiser
December 19th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
You know, I haven’t jumped in here recently. It’s been months it seems, so I just want to say I still use co.mments every day. And I still love it like the first day I started using it. I’m not as much annoyed by this issue above either. I do have to agree with assaf though on this point.
>Maybe the first e-mail would contain last
>5 comments + any new comments?
>I like this idea!
I must say, I like that idea too.
What I’ve really come to love about co.mments among many other things is I know I always have an archive of every comment I leave in my gmail. Just knowing that wether my comments get deleted or I simply forget about them that i have a copy in gmail with all my other correspondence rules.
Michael Meiser
December 19th, 2006 at 11:33 pm
OH!
I forgot the reason why I cam back here.
One of my favorite webservices besides co.mments.com is Flickr, but… and it’s a really BIG BUT, Flickr has the worst comment tracking in its discussion groups ever. Sure when you leave a comment on a photo it has great tracking but in the actual discussion groups it is ABSOLUTELY horrible. Rather ironically it makes flickr’s discussion groups pretty much useless. As such I’ve seen more than a few switch over to using yahoo groups in tandem with Flickr’s photogroups.
Anyway, it’s funny, but co.mments.com doesn’t appear to work on Flickr Discussions at all. It’s one of the few places co.mments.com doesn’t work, and one place I could really use it.
Here’s an example of a page I can’t track.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/macintosh/discuss/72157594427331770/
Michael Meiser
December 19th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
Oh! And one final thing.
Is there some published specification, some microstandard for semantically marking up comments so they can be easily tracked by co.mments.com?
If so please publish or point me too it.
If not, I’ve got a bit of experience with microstandards, and XML standards like RSS and MediaRSS and I’d love to see a standard published on http://microformats.org/
Peace, - Mike
mmeiser.com/blog
mefeedia.com
Assaf
December 22nd, 2006 at 3:29 pm
We need to start working on a microformat for that.
Chris
January 17th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Assaf,
Many a time now I’ve been notified in my RSS reader that there is a new comment, but it is simply my own. It would be nice to implement the feature mentioned in this post.
soulgrind
February 20th, 2007 at 8:59 am
whenever i post to a thread it shows there being “25 new comments of 25″ or whatever.. which isn’t true, there should be “no new comments of 25″.
That means that if i’m looking at loads of new posts from an RSS reader, and then commenting on loads of them, I then have to go through every post in co.mments and check and clear them all, so in future i’ll be able to tell if there are any genuinely new comments (ie, maybe responses to mine) or not.
Any chance this could be fixed.
PS/ Tried this site and a few similar ones and this one is excellent.. if only it could fix this bug it’s be sweet.
Assaf
February 20th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
soulgrind,
You don’t have to clear the comments, they are automatically cleared whenever new comments show up.
Say right now there are “25 new comments of 25″. A few hours later the server finds four new comments, then it will show “4 new comments of 29″.