dw_suggestions | Comment indexing

Title:
Comment indexing

Area:
commenting

Summary:
Build a thingy that will pull the subject lines and direct links from top-level comments on a post and output them in some kind of useful format (maybe a table or a list?) which can be inserted into the body of the post (hopefully under a cut-tag). Bonus points if it can be set to periodically run an automatic update.

Description:
This suggestion is motivated by my total lack of enthusiasm for spending an evening manually indexing a meme. I don't want to do that, that's a database query. Someone should build a thingy so the server can do this job for me.

Specific thingy-implementation-related issues should be conceptualized by someone with more thingy design and implementation experience than I have.

Poll #8881 Comment indexing

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 75

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This suggestion:

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Should be implemented as-is.
47 (62.7%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
1 (1.3%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
3 (4.0%)

(I have no opinion)
24 (32.0%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Automated version:

Retrieves links to top-level comments, and also the subject lines of those comments.
Formats the links, titles, and possibly also timestamp and username of the starter, possibly even current number of replies? timestamp of last reply? idk.
Posts, in a harmonious format (I have a bunch of thoughts about this, many relating to my thoughts on tweet-importers); possibly even by comparing new stuff since last update and highlighting the first $SOCIALLY_ACCEPTABLE_NUMBER of these outside a cut.

"Manual" version, potentially

Retrieves links to top-level comments only. Also retrieves pertinent info mentioned in the automatic version.

Taking the links from step 1, walks down the trees and retrieves all subject lines from these trees.

Presents all the sub-subject lines in some pleasing format for human review (because sometimes you want to use the fic title rather than the prompt title)

Stuffs it into the draft folder, labeled and sorted.

Thank you (and yes, I entirely agree about the need for a $SOCIALLY_ACCEPTABLE_NUMBER variable....)

My twitter-importer displays the first 5 tweets; LJ's displays 10; I can't remember offhand the number that the bloke who wrote my twitter-importer's version displays, but it's substantial but not all.

I have been known to drop people for crossposting excessively-long uncut Twitter lists. If I wanted to read someone's Twitter output, I'd be...reading their Twitter output. *shrug*

Comment indexing

Comment indexing: sketchy speccing

Re: Comment indexing: sketchy speccing

Re: Comment indexing: sketchy speccing

Re: Comment indexing: sketchy speccing