My pony involves managing favourites - help!

July 5, 2007 3:45 PM

Help me tame this pony...ok, so I'm a bit addicted to adding favourites. I know I have a problem, but gosh darn it, why does there have to be so much great stuff!? Does anyone have any scripts, apps, anything that can help me deal with the backlog of my favourites? I've googled and searched but haven't checked Projects as much - has someone created something there to deal with favourites? It would be neat to be able to export them or bulk add them to del.icio.us, or something...export them to an XML file (if that's possible) or CFM or whatever format and somehow create a hack to manage them. Does something to manage them exist? Is it on the horizon? Should it be? Discuss. Thanks muchly.
posted by rmm to Feature Requests at 3:45 PM (20 comments total)

There's been a lot of talk about quotes and favorites lately. Want to volunteer to set up a site where the most favorited posts and comments are referenced and searchable? Honestly, don't know what else could be done. Matt already has tons of feeds going.

But then again, most mefites are smarter when it comes to this kind of thing than I am, and maybe someone will come along in a minute with some code to sort this out for you!
posted by misha at 4:05 PM on July 5, 2007

As someone who has been on the receiving end of rmm's favorites, let me just be the first to bless both you and your addiction.
posted by quin at 4:40 PM on July 5, 2007

Go outside more often.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:47 PM on July 5, 2007

Favorites keep me from strangling myself with my mouse cord at my desk job every day. Needless to say, I have a lot of them. Would be nice to be able to get to them faster, instead of, you know, killing myself. Especially the older ones, back when I favorited with reckless abandon, and now need to be reminded of my blissfully ignorant youth (all of six months ago).
posted by iamkimiam at 5:10 PM on July 5, 2007

It would not be terribly difficult for someone to hack out a script which exports your personal favorites to del.ico.us -- a typical parse, scrape, and paste process. That's assuming you have a del.ico.us account, of course.

Minimal XML about the same, although you'd have to manually save it from a generated page afterwards, unless the solution went slightly beyond basic browser scripting. Other simple file formats aren't going to be much of a step up in difficulty beyond that.

Obviously, rampant featuritis is tempting on something like this (e.g. date-based, tag-based, active filtering, blah blah blah) but just as obviously, the scope of the feature set will impact your volunteer pool or pre-existing solution base.

Anyway, no big deal if you can get anyone to volunteer, assuming it's not already been done. Kind of interesting idea, although I'm burned out on MetaFilter-based scripts (/whisper-on plus I think favorites are overrated and badly implemented here /whisper-off). Still, if no one else steps forward, and you remain solutionless, post back publicly or privately mid- next week and I'll take a few hours to code up something basic for del.ico.us or XML, one or the other.
posted by mdevore at 5:50 PM on July 5, 2007

But first I'll learn to spell delicious.
posted by mdevore at 5:51 PM on July 5, 2007

Yeah, I'm getting kind of tired of seeing whether something has been favorited. I feel like an honorary admin looking at a flag queue, except it stretches for blocks and they all say "fantastic post/comment." I'm not sure if I'd mind some kind of threshold to display it by (the 100+ favorited ones usually are quite good) but maybe the threshold idea is too Slashdotty, and Matt didn't just call my house begging for a pony request.
posted by Tuwa at 7:11 PM on July 5, 2007

I suggest learning some taste.
posted by davy at 8:09 PM on July 5, 2007

And discretion. And judgment.
posted by davy at 8:10 PM on July 5, 2007

Random insult week is half over.
posted by mdevore at 8:12 PM on July 5, 2007

Maybe for rmm just flip it, have a button that is for "not favourite", to save a few mouseclicks?
posted by Meatbomb at 10:04 PM on July 5, 2007

Yes, Brandon, I'm trying to go outside more often - honest. And thanks for that, Quin.

And yes, I'm learning taste and judgment - also trying for 'kindness' and 'non-snarkiness towards others', but I'm probably failing at that.

mdevore, if you help me with it, I'll adore you forever. No rush on this - just when you get a chance at some point. I'd work out a UI if it helps. Thanks for the volunteering for help for this!
posted by rmm at 10:35 PM on July 5, 2007 [1 favorite]

I shall be unavailable for coding and consultation until Wednesday, ceding others here ample opportunity to win your ardor beforehand.
posted by mdevore at 11:08 PM on July 5, 2007

... also trying for 'kindness' and 'non-snarkiness towards others', but I'm probably failing at that.
You're in the right place, then.
posted by dg at 1:58 AM on July 6, 2007

I suggest learning some taste.
And discretion. And judgment.--davy

Guess you're not on rmm's favorite list, hmm?
posted by misha at 12:05 PM on July 6, 2007

Hey, I'm bored and can code something up this weekend. Drop me a line, my email's in my profile.
posted by thisjax at 11:28 PM on July 6, 2007

I'd love to see something that would let me search my favorites.
posted by yohko at 5:50 AM on July 7, 2007

I echo the call for a favorite search. I tend to use the favorites feature as a kind of bookmark, especially with Metafilter comments, so I can find them later, since saving them to my actual bookmark list would make it a useless clutter.

Hm, but favoriting a lot of Metafilter comments makes that list a clutter too. Can't win.
posted by JHarris at 7:51 AM on July 7, 2007

thanks, thisjax! That would be a big help. Thanks to everyone for the offers of help and suggestions.
posted by rmm at 11:28 AM on July 7, 2007

Now that I'm back, there (has|have) been (a) volunteer(s) for all the requested scriptish to-do things here. I need not follow through on semi-vague promises of actual programming effort to unneed the needy. Right? Right. Good.
posted by mdevore at 6:21 PM on July 11, 2007