Collapse comments

[susanreads]

Title:
Collapse comments

Area:
comments

Summary:
A button to collapse comment threads that have been expanded

Description:
Entries with lots of comments can have very long nested threads, and it's easy to lose track of how far you've gone once the parent comment has scrolled off the page. Expanding threads in place instead of opening a new tab for each thread is great; it'd be even more awesome if you could collapse the subthread you'd finished reading and get back to where you can see the structure of the conversation.
I'm not sure where would be the best place to put a Collapse Thread button: where the Expand button was, which disappears when the thread's opened, or at the end of each thread?

Poll #1266 Collapse comments

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 42

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
35 (83.3%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
6 (14.3%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
0 (0.0%)

(I have no opinion)
1 (2.4%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[sofiaviolet]

Perhaps place the "collapse" link in the same place as the "expand" link? When the comments get expanded, the "collapse" link replaces "expand," and "expand" comes back after the comments are collapsed.

[instantramen]

I like this.

[cheyinka]

Yeah, this seems like the easiest way to do it.

[aedifica]

+1

[thedivinegoat]

+1

[ldybastet]

+1

[snakeling]

+1

[pseudomonas]

Sounds intuitive.

[turlough]

+1

[triadruid]

Brilliant.

[ancientsavvy]

+1

[thorfinn]

I would like the "Collapse" link to be available on any uncollapsed comment.

Possibly that could be restricted to only uncollapsed comments with grandchild comments, but I think that should be ux tested before a decision made.

Note, uncollapsed comments includes comment threads that are expanded by default (presumably because they fall below the threshold rules for collapsing the thread), not just manually expanded threads.