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Arc Forum: how to easily see replies to comments
6 points by lojic 6169 days ago | 11 comments
This probably applies to hacker news also, but I'll post it here since I'm more active on the Arc forum.

When viewing 'threads', a new reply to a comment can be easily buried far down the page.

It would be nice to be able to easily see when people reply to one of my comments or submissions. Maybe a combination of 'threads' and 'comments' where I can see a list of comments in reverse chronological order, but only for comments that are either a reply to one of my comments or submissions.

Is there a way to do this? If not, I bet it wouldn't be hard to add :)



4 points by akkartik 6169 days ago | link

http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/?arc :)

More documentation:

http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/about

http://blog.hystry.com

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1 point by lojic 6169 days ago | link

Maybe you could explain how this applies.

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1 point by akkartik 6169 days ago | link

It's like a combination of gmail and RSS that allows me to see updates in chronological order, and with all the context for each comment. The arc community's still small enough that I'm pretty certain to see people's updates, including to comments I've made. As it grows I can start filtering by stories or by commenters: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=71827

Like I said in the slideshow, it's just an extra set of mechanisms. I switch between the two interfaces all the time as I read.

Try it out, and if you don't like it I'd love to hear why. There's only a handful of people using it (but already a couple who like it a lot), so the app's really responsive to feedback :)

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1 point by lojic 6169 days ago | link

Well, I think this is a pretty simple and useful feature that should just be built into the forum - it's just a different ordering on the 'threads' link.

In other words, I want the content to be identical to what is on the 'threads' link, but in a simple, sequential list with most recent at the top. If your tool can do that, I'd love to see a URL to do it.

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2 points by akkartik 6169 days ago | link

Oh, so even if there's a child that's new you want the whole thread to move up?

That's a good request. Yeah, go to PG :) Doesn't make sense to ask people to login/type in a username a second time for my interface. And there's no other way to tell who you are.

Hmm, it might be doable as a greasemonkey script. But that'll only reorder threads on the first page..

Update: Heh, I just realized my system already supports it: http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/?arc,lojic

It shows all threads involving you in reverse chronological order. It doesn't show trees, instead it shows each leaf and the context includes path to root.

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1 point by lojic 6169 days ago | link

Cool, I actually found a comment on that URL that I had missed. The reason I missed it is because it wasn't in my 'threads' area because it was a reply to someone else's comment, not mine.

Apparently the 'threads' link won't show comments to your own submissions unless you're in a comment thread, but I'm generally interested in any comment to one of my submissions (hmm... that could get lengthy though :( )

Your ordering is quite what I had in mind. I was basically looking for:

  1) collect all comments that are either on one of my submissions or threads.
  2) sort in reverse chronological order

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1 point by lojic 6141 days ago | link

hmm... I think that should've been "isn't quite what I had in mind" :(

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1 point by akkartik 6169 days ago | link

:) Glad it works. I love it when my code surprises me in pleasant ways.

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1 point by lojic 6159 days ago | link

Ok, this is really starting to bug me. I'd like to check on responses to my comments, and there's simply no easy way to do that without scrolling all the way through the 'threads' page.

How hard would it be to simply provide an option on the 'threads' page to sort the comments on that page as a flat list in reverse chronological order? That would be so nice for checking on new responses.

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1 point by sjs 6169 days ago | link

If you click on your username to view your profile there is a comments link at the bottom of that page that has been sufficient for me to follow conversations. ymmv.

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2 points by lojic 6169 days ago | link

Isn't that just the same as the 'threads' link? New comments can show up way down the page, and I don't feel like scrolling through every comment searching for recent ones - it's inefficient.

In other words, if someone replies to an older comment of mine, I probably won't see it.

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