Always be able to comment on individual blog posts

[David Sturrock]

We need to maintain the ability to always be able to comment on individual blog posts. At the moment if the blog is included in the view as a single artifact, you can only post feedback on the entire blog, not against individual posts. Or have I missed a setting/option somewhere?

I see this blog feedback issue as critical otherwise we can't really claim to have a comprehensive blogging tool, as allowing comments at post level is a standard component of any blog tool. And to force users to individually "publish" each post in order to be able to receive this type of feedback just goes against any commitment we have to usability.

More comments on blogs at http://www.mahara.org/node/198

This bug was imported from eduforge.org, see:
https://eduforge.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=3011&group_id=176&atid=742

[Nigel-catalyst (nigel-catalyst)]

Quite right, we do need this.

We also need the ability to disable artefact feedback on blogpost artefacts.

[Nigel-catalyst (nigel-catalyst)]

I had a quick look at this - this is going to be a pain to implement until blogs are not rendered using javascript in views.

[Ray Merrill (rmerrill)]

Currently the system publishes a blog post by default. The user has to take an additional step to mark the post as a draft. So I don't see this as a usability issue. It's fairly standard in blogging software to allow users to keep posts as drafts until they've decided to publish it for others to see. It would be counter-intuitive and complex to explain various settings that would allow some users to see an unpublished post, in order for them to comment on it.

It's conceivable that some fraction of users are checking "save as draft" by default without reading the screen. However, this is readily reported on the list of posts within the blog and the user has a link there to immediately publish without forcing the user to return to the edit screen. From heuristics (feedback & forgiving), this interaction should be acceptable. If the incidence of unintended "save as draft" is high, this can be easily corrected by using dynamic interaction co-located with the checkbox ... when checked, a white text and red background warning can appear saying "This post will be saved as DRAFT. No one will be able to see or comment on this post until you publish it." Of course, when unchecked, the warning would disappear.

Concur that comment ability needs to be associated with the published posts. However, as with other bloggers, users need to be able to control whether comments are allowed and also whether comments will be visible immediately versus whether the comments will require vetting by the user before being visible to others.

[David Sturrock (david-sturrock)]

Agree with your comments regarding drafts and comments Ray.
The key issue is the ability to actually make a comment at post level - for published posts. As stated previously we must have this ability or as much as I love many other aspects of Mahara I simply can't promote it as a viable blogging platform.

But sounds like this is an impossible wish at the moment, unless we can find some $'s or developer time to attack the wider issue. Do you want to throw a time estimate at it Nigel? At least we have some idea of what we need to find.

Hmmm... so while we're wishing for the unlikely, wouldn't it be great to be able to track your own comments/feedback throughout the Mahara install - aka the Disqus model (http://disqus.com/).

Cheers
David

[Nigel-catalyst (nigel-catalyst)]

My best guestimate at this stage is somewhere between 5 and 10 days. In that time, we could do the following:

* Render blogs without javascript in views. Note there is a few issues here, such as whether a few posts should be shown before "pagination" kicks in, and whether we should have some kind of 'archive' links (e.g. previous months).

* Allow commenting. There are questions here as well, such as if the public should be able to comment on public views, and whether comments should be threaded or simply displayed in time order. The ability to comment should be changeable per post, and the blog itself should have a setting to decide what the default is (comments allowed/not allowed).

* Notifications for people when new comments are made on their posts, and notifications for other commenters too

* Disabling of 'artefact feedback' on posts, so there's only one way to comment on them. Also, potentially disabling 'view feedback' on views that only have a blog in them?

* Test and theme it all

What the above doesn't cover, is a separate way for users to see what comments/feedback they've made in a central place.

[David Sturrock (david-sturrock)]

Well I don't have $10K but could probably find $2k to get things rolling. Anyone else want to pool some $'s into this?

Rather than the central collation of user comments, probably a more realistic objective is getting Mahara to publish RSS feeds for views.

Obviously we would need to tighten the specification...

[A. T. Wyatt (aat-wyatt)]

My +1 for rss feeds out and commenting improvements (although I love being able to mark a comment private or public)

[Richard Mansfield (richard-mansfield)]

Feedback on individual artefacts has been available for a while now. I've just made it a little more obvious how to do it by adding a link at the bottom of blog posts that appear on the main view page to the page where you can add feedback on the individual post.