7
votes
View all comments in a group (tildes?)
On Reddit, it's possible to view all the comments in a subreddit by going to the subreddit comments url. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/tildes/comments/
As a separate request, would it be possible to add a new comment sorting method. Perhaps an option to disable comment nesting and sort by new. It would make it easier to see new comments that are added to a post.
I'm not opposed to adding a page like that, but I think the "Activity" sort serves a lot of the same purpose by making it easy to keep up with what's currently active (I think it does it better, really).
I highly, highly recommend enabling the "mark new comments" feature on the Settings page. It adds an indicator to show you which topics have new comments, marks the new ones when you go back to a comments page, and even collapses all the comments you've seen before (unless you specifically disable that).
Nice! Didn't know about that setting. That makes my second request be less interesting.
TBH I have never really understood the use for the comment feed feature on reddit, other than for convenient data scraping... so I'm curious, @Apos, what do you find useful about it? It seems to me that once the site gets to a certain scale it becomes pretty useless for anything practical, at the human use level anyways.
The only similar feature I do use is showing all gilded submissions/comments in a subreddit, which I actually do think could be a good addition here by showing all Exemplary comments in a group.
There were times I used it for moderating: I would look at the latest comments in my subreddit just to see if there were any trouble spots. But, outside of moderating, I never had a use for it.
I never used it on Reddit but I've used it several times on HN where comments have a better SNR and you can frequently find interesting comments by browsing the feed. But HN doesn't have activity sort, so I don't know if I really have missed it on tildes.
Yeah, I can see using it for that, I guess. And with some added filtering features I imagine it could be even more useful for that eventually, e.g. show only negative trust, low trust or no trust (new) user's comments. show only X labeled comments. Etc.
p.s. I will add the suggestion to Gitlab in the morning. Am currently away from my computer and lying on my couch. :PAdded to Gitlab:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/454
I wasn't suggesting this feature had any utility here on Tildes! (I agree with you & Deimos that there doesn't seem to be a need for it here.) I was just sharing one use case for it on Reddit.
I realize that... but given the use case you provided I can definitely see it having a similar use here eventually too, especially if done right with some additional features attached to it (like filtering). I don't think it should necessarily be a priority to implement, but IMO it's still a suggestion worth adding to gitlab for later reference.
Other than for moderation like mentioned above, it's nice for catching interesting discussions that I would otherwise miss.
For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/
If you're interested in gamedev stuff, then you can catch some really good gems. You can read the most upvoted threads, or check the new threads once in a while, but you can miss some good discussions. You can think of threads as being focused on a subject, but when you check comments in a non nested way and globally, you can think a bit more about the individuals and what they have to say. Regardless how upvoted or downvoted they are.
Hmm, interesting. I don't think I would ever use it for that, but I suppose I can see the benefit, and to each their own. As mentioned elsewhere,
I will add the suggestion to gitlab in the morning.Thanks for providing your perspective.Added to Gitlab:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/454
I strongly support the OP's first suggestion. The benefits for moderation have already been mentioned.
I started using the mentioned Reddit feature in r/counting, and then found it very useful when visiting an active discussion-centered subreddit for the first time or after a long break, as it allowed me to see what the subreddit was currently talking about. For this purpose, it was much better than “new” and “activity” sorts.
While the “activity” sort will do a good job while Tildes is small, the page suggested would do better when the overall activity increases, provided that the number of comments per page is not too low.
I also support a page of this type for the entire site, in addition to individual groups.