Nested comments are so last century

I’ve turned off the nesting, which was down to only two levels anyway. As effortless as nesting makes it to indicate the comment you are replying to, on long threads it becomes a serious endeavour to scroll up to the “Reply” link.

It makes more sense to use a simple comment identification system on every comment. Though I suppose an upwards search would suffice. Hmm. Ah, well, moving on.

– RT

The easiest way would be for the blog to number each comment, as at Real Climate, but on this blog, every comment is marked with the date and time. Easy and natural.

Identifying comments

@Andy Feb 10, 8:28pm

  • The @ symbol is required.
  • By all means abbreviate the user name: “Richard C (NZ)” might become “RC”.
  • Feel free to omit the month and day if it is today.
  • The time is essential.

Comments welcome.

Cheers.

Visits: 37

9 Thoughts on “Nested comments are so last century

  1. Richard C (NZ) on 14/02/2015 at 12:16 pm said:

    The comment URLs don’t work now RT i.e. we can’t cross-link to other comments in this blog or reference comments in this blog from another blog.

    I cross-link a lot from other blogs to this blog, now those links are useless. And any internal cross-linking is useless. This really defeats the ability to address a specific comment URL, a powerful communication and time saving tool.

    Also comment numbering, if available, e.g. Andy #12, is easier than the @ Andy timestamp stuff.

  2. Richard Treadgold on 14/02/2015 at 12:26 pm said:

    The links work for me, RC. Try flushing your cache/restarting the browser and let me know. I’ll turn nesting back on if necessary.

    Yes, numbering is easier than timestamps, but I don’t yet know how to incorporate it in the theme.

  3. Richard C (NZ) on 14/02/2015 at 12:49 pm said:

    Flushed the cache, restarted the browser, but no joy.

    I’ll try rebooting the system to reboot the browser.

  4. Richard C (NZ) on 14/02/2015 at 1:02 pm said:

    No, rebooting didn’t work.

    There was the same problem at JoNova before Jo introduced nesting. It was frustrating that we couldn’t cross-link comment URLs. Don’t why this happens at CCG and JN because SkS doesn’t have nesting but you can still access a comment by URL even if SkS Mods delete the comment (as they do) i.e. the comment is still in the blog database even though it is deleted from the thread. SkS apparently don’t know this.

  5. Richard Treadgold on 14/02/2015 at 1:12 pm said:

    As I say, they work for me. Please post an example of a link that doesn’t work for you and I’ll have a look at it. I’m about to go visiting family, so I’ll have to sign out until tomorrow, but I’m here for about 45 minutes.

  6. Richard C (NZ) on 14/02/2015 at 2:29 pm said:

    This link doesn’t work to a comment in the old nested system:

    https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/climate-science/temperature-records/comment-page-1/#comment-1283169

    This link does work to the comment you made above since removing nesting:

    https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2015/02/nested-comments-are-so-last-century/comment-page-1/#comment-1283799

    There’s a hotlinked CCG index in ‘Disproving AGW’ that I can no longer access directly by the URL:

    https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/disproving-agw/comment-page-1/#comment-26342

    The index still works because it goes to pages, not to comments.

    Very useful (that index and the RSS feed are my primary CCG access) but I can’t get at it directly. The RSS feed works to individual comments because they are all now in the new format. But it didn’t work to a comment in the nested system (gone from the RSS feed now new comments have come in).

    I suspect that the links that work for you RT are to comments made after the change. Those work for me too, it’s all the comments prior to the change i can’t access.

  7. Richard Treadgold on 16/02/2015 at 9:51 am said:

    All the links work for me except for the first. So I found the comment by tedious looking for the comment number and it’s now on page 2 of the comments, not page 1. So update your link and see if it works:

    https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/climate-science/temperature-records/comment-page-2/#comment-1283169

    I don’t understand why the link to the index you created doesn’t work. Any further thoughts?

    I guess you can’t access the older comments because the system has shifted them to a different page, which is odd because they should be in date order, much the same order as originally—unless comments were made a few months or years afterwards—is that the problem?

  8. Richard C (NZ) on 16/02/2015 at 12:44 pm said:

    >”I guess you can’t access the older comments because the system has shifted them to a different page,”

    Yes, that’s what it is RT. I’ve looked at some other examples and same thing. Pity, but it doesn’t matter too much because at least a broken link takes you to the right topic.

    The old index link was:
    https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/disproving-agw/#comment-26342

    No page number, only 1 page.

    New:
    https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/disproving-agw/comment-page-1/#comment-26342

    More than 1 page now, old link doesn’t work but still goes to the start of ‘Disproving AGW’.

    Unfortunate but not something that has to be re-instated for my benefit.

  9. Richard Treadgold on 18/02/2015 at 12:15 pm said:

    Sorry about this, RC. The material you’ve assembled and linked in the last few years is valuable, but it’s not lost and not all the links have been busted. I suspect complications could increase if I changed it back now. Overall the move seems for the best.

    One thing I’ve didn’t realise before: you can’t search for a comment number unless it’s explicitly displayed on the page; if it’s inside the html it’s inaccessible to the search routine. (Just quite interesting.)

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