Pony Request: Bring (new comments) functionality to Recent Activity

November 1, 2014 8:03 AM

One of Metafilter's most convenient features is how posts shown on the sub-site pages note that there are (x comments)(y new). It's great to hit the (y new) link and bounce directly to fresh content identified just for you based on your past history with that thread. Adding this functionality to Recent Activities would improve that page's usefulness under many common scenarios.

Right now it's difficult to use Recent Activity to see the fresh content for posts that either a) you've visited since making a comment, rendering the "your last comment" link less helpful; b) generate comments very quickly such that there are many more than the ten new ones shown; or c) continue to prompt comments for days on end, meaning that the post has long since fallen off the front page for its subsite, where one could theoretically go to find the (y new) link. The Jian Ghomeshi thread is a recent case in point.

Three ideas... 1) Could the (y new) link be added to the Recent Activities listings? 2) Or maybe instead, could the post title link be used to drop the user into the bespoke new content point a la the (y new) feature instead of taking users to the top of the post's page? [IMHO, using the post title link to go to the top of that post's page isn't useful for people using Recent Activities to navigate; they've already been there and are now following the conversation.] 3) If not, could that link drop you into the applicable subsite's list of posts at the appropriate place so the user could, at that point, click on the (y new) link?

Apologies if the above is unclear; I don't know the proper terminology. Thanks for your consideration!

posted by carmicha to Feature Requests at 8:03 AM (8 comments total)

2) Or maybe instead, could the post title link be used to drop the user into the bespoke new content point a la the (y new) feature instead of taking users to the top of the post's page? [IMHO, using the post title link to go to the top of that post's page isn't useful for people using Recent Activities to navigate; they've already been there and are now following the conversation.

You can click the timestamp of a comment in 'Recent Activity' to go to that specific comment in a thread.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:06 AM on November 1, 2014

You can click the timestamp of a comment in Recent Activity to go to that specific comment in a thread.

Yes, but if there's been more than ten comments you're still either scrolling down from where the "your last comment" link lands or scrolling up from the comment accessed via its timestamp. Neither work well in fast-moving threads.
posted by carmicha at 8:13 AM on November 1, 2014

Thanks for the suggestion, we'll give it some thought. My first thought is that I don't think we're likely to build any more features based on the "x new" links. We don't track which comments someone has potentially seen. We simply record the last time someone has started a new browser session and the "x new" links are based on that time. So the numbers will be more or less accurate depending on how you use MetaFilter. If you tend to keep a browser window open at MetaFilter throughout the day, that number is going to be pretty meaningless—though it still can give you a sense of activity.

There's a browser add-on script called MetaFilter Scroll Tag that tries to make these numbers more accurate by storing your last read comment locally. I believe it also adds the numbers to Recent Activity. You might give that a try.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:27 AM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]

I've wished for the same thing, also in the context of fast moving threads, though I haven't gone the step of installing the add-on that pb mentions. I'd be glad to see this pony show up some day.

Though my guess/understanding is that features like this, that require a database query involving data specific to each user (last visited time, in this case) add a noticeable load to the servers. I can understand not implementing this feature if that's true.
posted by benito.strauss at 11:24 AM on November 1, 2014

There's a script for that, as pb mentioned above, and it does work as described in Recent Comments. When I look at a typical post there, I see "51 total comments. 19 since the last comment you read[script link]. 38 since your most recent comment[defaultMeFi link], last 10 shown below... "
posted by maudlin at 6:32 PM on November 1, 2014

Well that greasemonkey script is pretty cool! Thanks for pointing it out, pb, and to plutor for making it.
posted by carmicha at 6:53 PM on November 1, 2014

Yes, but if there's been more than ten comments you're still either scrolling down from where the "your last comment" link lands or scrolling up from the comment accessed via its timestamp. Neither work well in fast-moving threads.

My alternate works-without-any-extras recommendation (really, as much as anything, my "do as I do" suggestion I guess) is kick open a tab dedicated to a fast moving thread you want to keep track of.

Most of the stuff I keep in RA isn't moving too quick, whether because it's not a crazy active thread or because it's a couple days old and so has slowed down even if it was quick at the start, and so reloading it every hour or so is more than sufficient to keep on top of the bulk of the threads I'm tracking. But if something in there is moving fast enough that every time I reload there's more than ten comments, I just mark that in my mind as One To Keep An Eye On and leave it in its own tab to grab larger bulks of comments via the in-thread "load new comments" widget and then basically ignore it in my RA usage.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:20 PM on November 1, 2014

What I do, if I'm following fast-moving threads, is to click on the time stamp of the comment I last read, then go back to that bookmarked page to pick up where I left off.
posted by SillyShepherd at 2:38 AM on November 2, 2014