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Post new comment vs. reply

Does anyone else find it very tempting to accidentally use the "Post new comment" area to reply instead of clicking reply under the message, since that feels like such a natural place to reply?

I've done this like 20% of the time (submitted a top-level comment instead of a reply).

If others have the same problem, I wonder if the interface can be customized somehow to avoid/lessen the chances of this?

By bdenckla at 2005-03-23 16:28 | Site Discussion | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 314446 reads

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Not alone

This seems to happen fairly often.

The obvious way to remove this temptation is to eliminate the "Post new comment" area, which would require new comments to be created either by clicking the "add new comment" link under the story/forum topic, or the "reply to this comment" link under an individual comment.

This is just a matter of changing a configuration setting (the current setup is the default setting).

Opinions?

By Anton van Straaten at Wed, 2005-03-23 17:25 | login or register to post comments

Please do it

In many discussions there are more top level replies than should be. It happened in the old LtU site and it keeps hapenning here.

By Daniel Yokomizo at Wed, 2005-03-23 20:11 | login or register to post comments

Give me access to the code and I'll hack in some AJAX

...that does some "progressive enhancement" for those with javascript turned on, such that they can be presented with a more intuitive interface. All I need to know is:

Object model of the page (I can get this by looking at View Source in the browser)

the API for the web service that you use to submit comments, including something like a parameter for what (1) post; in the (2) thread; the (3) user is replying to

It could then either be deployed as a greasemonkey script or as an upgrade to the site's service itself

By Z-Bo at Tue, 2009-12-01 16:17 | login or register to post comments

Not sure

I don't really think eliminating the new comment area is a good idea. Most discussions here aren't very long, and aren't very threaded (recent discussions being somewhat an exception).

For example, I could have posted this as a reply to Anotn's comment (since he raised the issue), or to Daniel's comment (since he likes it). Would it really make a difference? I don't think so.

LtU isn't supposed to be a general forum for PL discussion. We are first of all a weblog, with major items posted by editors. I think this is what made LtU what it is.

But as always, I am keeping an open mind, and am happy to learn what other think about this issue.

By Ehud Lamm at Wed, 2005-03-23 21:10 | login or register to post comments

Not a general forum for PL discussion?!

In that case, can you point me to a forum with discussions that match the quality of these on LtU? The #haskell irc channel is great, but what am I missing?

--Shae Erisson - ScannedInAvian.com

By shapr at Thu, 2005-03-24 01:30 | login or register to post comments

Backhanded way....

...for Ehud to prod the editors to post more stories. :-)

By Chris Rathman at Thu, 2005-03-24 01:37 | login or register to post comments

True...

I guess you know me quite well by now...

By Ehud Lamm at Thu, 2005-03-24 11:41 | login or register to post comments

It has a more narrow scope

It has a much more specific scope but maybe the types list is the sort of thing, certainly in terms of the quality of discussion.

By jim burton at Tue, 2009-12-01 11:13 | login or register to post comments

Somewhat OT: Threading

Some discussions get rather threaded, and then it becomes hard to see what comment a reply refers to.

Is there a possibility to get a "Parent" link, like on Slashdot?

By Ulrich Hobelmann at Thu, 2005-03-24 06:05 | login or register to post comments