Pony: "X users favorited" mouseover tooltip

April 13, 2015 10:28 AM

Might it be possible to have the tooltip that shows up when you mouseover the "x users marked as favorite" display the usernames that have favorited it up to that point. I expect you'd have to limit the total number to like...the first ten, or something? I guess it's a UX behavior that I expected but didn't see.
posted by softlord to Feature Requests at 10:28 AM (16 comments total)

Eh, that's a lot of extra data to query on every page load, especially when you start thinking about longer threads but even just for e.g. the front page where it's that much more work to make the db do every time. And we could technically get around some of that by doing extra work to like tie in an AJAX call based on some duration of mouseover and kick up some custom display, but that feels like overkill as well for something where it's info we're find providing but aren't trying to particularly emphasize.

So, server-side, making one click for that pretty specific and not-central-to-normal-site-interactions bit of information feels like a pretty reasonable tradeoff.

I think there may be a greasemonkey script that does something like this if you really want the functionality on a per-client basis, though; pb's trying to track it down.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:33 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah someone did write a Greasemonkey script to add this feature called HowlsOfOutrage.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:34 AM on April 13, 2015 [10 favorites]

FYI - HowlsOfOutrage works fine, but only on the non-updated portion of the page. Comments you brought up by clicking the XX new comments link won't show who favorited them until you refresh the page.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:40 PM on April 13, 2015

Why would someone need this?
posted by Joseph Gurl at 5:13 PM on April 13, 2015

Joseph Gurl: "Why would someone need this?"

"Need" is a hard word. Nobody needs to even look at MeFi. But if you mean "Why would somebody want this", the answer is: "Somebody (like me) might like to see who favorited a comment, and this (or, rather, in my case, 'HowlsOfOutrage') would shorten the process from 'move mouse to X Favorites part, middle-click, click on new tab, read names, click on Close Tab X' to 'move mouse to X Favorites part, read names'"

But, yeah, HowlsOfOutrage is what you're looking for, softlord, except for the "XX New Comments" thing, which is no big deal, you just refresh the page first.
posted by Bugbread at 5:41 PM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

If one of my comments gets a few faves I want to know right away if they are from the proper sort of people.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 7:06 PM on April 13, 2015 [9 favorites]

Yeah, I like being able to tell if it's a hate-favorite or just a regular favorite without having to click, so. ...

Howls of Outrage it is then!
posted by carsonb at 7:14 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, see, that kinda thing is a real drag. Pernicious, even, as a perpetuation of an "us versus them" approach to the community.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:51 PM on April 13, 2015

Your problem is with Favorites themselves, then, not what's being discussed here. And I think that ship sailed almost a decade ago.
posted by Bugbread at 9:05 PM on April 13, 2015

Maybe.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:12 PM on April 13, 2015

I love, love , love this greasemonkey script. The reason is because I think favorites are actually pretty socially excellent for a number of things. I can't help but feel that those who tend to write them off as some sort of a grudge match (although it certainly can be that at times) see them too shallowly. And they aren't for everyone, I certainly get that. But there's so much that can be seen beyond that surface impression. I've explained here and here, so I won't belabor it again. But for those who use favorites in similarly social ways, a script like this facilities a slightly-smoother interconnection with people at an emergent level that was probably beyond its initially intended use. And I kind of love favorites for that, rather than see them as a divisive thing.
posted by SpacemanStix at 9:18 PM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

If one of my comments gets a few faves I want to know right away if they are from the proper sort of people.

I agree that that's why it's a bad idea. The friction currently in the system is the right kind of friction imo.
posted by Sebmojo at 9:32 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

I use Howls of Outrage to look at my favourites to see if they're from people whose opinions I generally like and respect, because then I get the extra frisson of joy from having impressed someone worth impressing. Not that all the favourites from names I don't recognize don't also give me a frisson of joy, it's just not quite as huge.

It's not really an 'us vs. them' thing -- all the other people are probably fine people. (Well, most of them.) They're just not necessarily people whose usernames or opinions I have noticed before. Having seen them agreeing with me, however, I might pay more attention to them in the future.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:23 PM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

i just installed howls of outrage and this is gonna make cabal management SO MUCH easier. we're really gonna leverage our buy-in this quarter
posted by NoraReed at 2:08 AM on April 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

i just installed howls of outrage and this is gonna make cabal management SO MUCH easier. we're really gonna leverage our buy-in this quarter

Cabal, ^tInc.?
posted by metaquarry at 4:36 AM on April 14, 2015

Thanks for the reminder to update this. Saves tabs!
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 5:38 PM on April 14, 2015