New Site Feature - Testers Needed
There's a new feature on codestore I'm hoping you'll find useful. You can now get email alerts when there's a reply to your comment.
This works by virtue of the threaded comments system I've implemented recently. Without that there's no way it could work, as it would be unaware of whether a reply was intended for you or not.
Whether you'll use the feature or not remains to be seen. All I know is that I'd use it if it were on other blogs.
Why?
I'm not really a big poster on other blogs. Mainly because I find it such an ineffective means of communication. When I do post something it's often in the form of a question to which I'd like an answer. So I have to remember to go back there from time to time and scan all subsequent comments to see if there's an "@jake" from anybody (hopefully the original author).
Oftentimes I find myself giving up on getting a reply and stop going back. Even on this site when I'm replying to a question aimed at me I find myself wondering if the answer will ever be read by the person who asked it. Sometimes, if they've left an email address, I'll email them a link to say "I replied to your question".
Wouldn't it be much easier if you could just wait for the reply to drop in to your inbox! That's what you can do here now.
Notes: Only one email is sent at a time, so there's no CCing of all in the chain. If you chose to hide your email address then it will always remain private from the others in the thread. I take your privacy seriously.
Testing
If you're up for it you can help me test it by replying to this blog and choosing the option to be alerted to any subsequent replies. I'll then reply and you then reply to say if you did or didn't get an email or if you have any suggestions for improvements.
Skip to the 
You can subscribe to an individual
Any reply to this will send an email to me. Hopefully
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Yes, I like the new Reply box that appears. There have been some good changes to this site over the past few days.
We should all take note.
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Test
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Comment count? Your Total appears different then actual.
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Yet another test...
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Aye, testing now.
Btw did you know that there is no repository for nuclear waste available all over the world by now?
Of course you know, but I think it is one of the most serious crimes being committed at our children nowadays that there are still nuclear plants running and being built.
Thus having said I think there may come some replies by mail soon ;-)
C'mon,
Mark
P.S. Hamburg - Celtic 1:0
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Woh there Mark. That's way too political for this site ;o) Politics *and* sport!
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Testing: I clicked on the reply button in the comment rss feed and it took me right to "Add your own response here". I'll tick the "Send me an email ..." also.
By the way, did you know that there is a world-wide repository for the waste products from coal fired power plants? You're breathing it now.
And, yes, you did provoke me to answer. Thanks. Good one!
Peace,
Rob:-]
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Testing? Yes, always ready to help.
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You should get an email about this reply Dragon? In it is a link you can click to add a subsequent reply...
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Top Stuff Jake.
Hoping to be replying shortly
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Hopefully Nick will get a reply to his comment as a result of mine. Does the feature only send emails when someone replies directly to your own comment, or to any additions to a comment "thread"?
Always happy to test web sites as I manage to break so many with an apostrophe in my name ;-)
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Alerts should be sent to anybody who wants them at any level up the thread. Made sense to me. Is that what you'd expect it to do?
You should both get an alert to this (assuming you chose to).
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I have got everything so far. My question is more - would Dragon get this because it is another 'branch' separate to where he posted a comment?
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No, I didn't get an email. Didn't think I would. I suspect Jake is walking up the Document.Parent list firing off the emails as he goes.
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Exactly right. Walk up the thread like so:
while parent.isresponse
'send email?
set parent = db.getDocumentByUNID(parent.parentUniversalID)
wend
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Michelle's reply duly arrived in my inbox.
Jake this is top stuff.
Publish Please
n
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And now the question is, do Nick *and* Michelle both get this comment?
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I did. Michelle?
n
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You might want to have a look at this. Getting a reply to my own response to Michelle...Whatever - You'll sort it.
This is fantastic stuff. Well done Jake.
n
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Are you building your own "Google Wave" here?
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Nah, if he was building Google Wave, he woul dbe submitting the comments back via Ajax and showing everything insitu without the round trip to the server.
Ooops, now I've given him more ideas to play with.
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That was just what I expected. Next question though - the comment box is now only about 2" wide. What happens to the layout when / if the comments get another few more levels deep?
This reply is already 8 levels deep and so replying at this level is disabled.
Ahah! Last question answered! No more comments allowed
This reply is already 8 levels deep and so replying at this level is disabled.
Google Wave it ain't Michelle.
Although I know Google said to themselves "What would email look like if it were invented today" and out popper Wave.
In my own little way I'm wondering "What *should* blog commenting systems look like today"...
This reply is already 8 levels deep and so replying at this level is disabled.
Getting lots of emails, very fast, and Google is grouping them as a single conversation which works very well for this single topic as the sender and subject are the same.
Because of that, maybe you should add the blog topic / heading to the subject.
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Good thinking Michelle. So gmail will only group emails about the same blog entry? Will add it in in the next revision.
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All your replies are belong to my inbox!
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well, this one at least?
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Hi Jake, I'm just testing.
.::AleX::.
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Reading this in an email Alex?
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Hi Jake,
"CODESTORE.NET" is every day more robust, useful and friendly.
Congratulations !
;)
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Thanks Alejandro! Useful and friendly yes. Robust? I'm not so sure...
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Nice feature!
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Okay. Looking good. Now some more feature requests.
1. Button at the top to expand all comments in the thread. My mouse finger got tired clicking on each and every response.
2. Button on each comment to expand all replies to that comment.
3. Button at the top to collapse all replies in the thread.
4. Button on each comment to collapse all replies to that comment.
5. Tick box at top to send me email on each and every comment in the whole thread. Basically a subscribe check-box. I should be able to come back and turn it off whenever I want.
6. Emails sent should have an unsubscribe link to turn off any emails.
Wow! That's a lot of details but I think it makes this a well rounded set of features.
By the way, if you have a "mail-in comment" feature, will it accept messages from anybody? If it does it sounds like a SPAM magnet.
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All very good points Rob. Those which weren't already on my own list of to-dos are now.
I can't imagine the mail-in feature becoming a spam target. Unless lots of sites do it I don't think the spammers will spend time working out how to flaunt it. To work they'd need to know the UNID of an existing reply.
If it did become a problem then I'd just have to apply the same spam-filtering rules to the mail-processing agent as to the actual form. Which itself is pretty basic -- is the blog itself older than X (4 at the moment) days and/or does the body of the comment contain "link=" or "href=", which catches 99% of it.
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SWEET!!!
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Nice feature (as usual), but how about making this feature exclusive to registered users. The registration process could then include an email verification part. Otherwise i might consider dropping a controversial comment using my mother in laws email address ;-)
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I don't think Jake wants a registration system beyond just saving your data in a cookie. So there's never been anything preventing commenter from putting in someone else's email address.
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Thanks for this feature! One less site to check back for answers to my comments :-)
If you want anotehr feature: subscribing to other questions or whole articles by mail... Sometimes there are really interesting articles and comments, which I want to read. And then foregt to check a few day after to see if there are new comments...
can someone at IBM please implemtn the sam, so that (almost) all Notes blog get the same feature? :-)
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I once implemented this feature and never found any problem with the agent throughout the warranty period of 6 months. The traffic was slow, about 3-5 mails per day.
I am testing the feature and shall keep you updated.
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You should get an email about this reply Prafull
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