Compact Comment View

[facetofcathy]

Title:
Compact Comment View

Area:
Comments

Summary:
An even more compact view than the current top-level comments view, this version omits the comment text and the icon giving the reader a short list of the top level comments on a page.

Description:
Inspired by the Comment Indexing suggestion and green_knight's comment there, and by the new fully collapsed comment view on Livejournal.

Offer a comment view that shows top-level comments in a compact form.

Purpose:

The Compact Comments View would give readers a stripped-down view of all the top-level comments. This view omits the comment content and acts as an index for the page.

It provides a shorter list than the top-level comments view readers can quickly scan to find the comment they are looking for. This view shows who commented, the topic of a comment and how active the conversation is by including the number of replies.


The reader would see:

* the date and time
* the user name
* the subject line
* the number of replies
* an expand link

Not shown:

* the user icon
* the comment contents
* the track, reply, thread, parent or edit links

Format:

* Ideally, this information should take up one or two lines of text on the reader's screen for each comment

* The expand link should expand the top-level comment, revealing its content.

* Clicking the subject line should open the thread headed by that comment.

* The number of replies link should expand all the replies and the top-level comment, leaving the rest of the comments in compact view.


Of particular value to:

* Communities where subject lines are usually used--anon memes, prompt fests or kink memes, discussion communities
* Posts where top-level comments might be very long and readers want to read only some of them--comment fic fests, very active or structured discussion posts
* Readers who want to find comments by specific people, or only active discussions
* Readers with slow connections who want a faster browsing experience
* Readers with smaller screens or who use very large text

Poll #8900 Compact Comment View

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 60

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
18 (30.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
4 (6.7%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
4 (6.7%)

(I have no opinion)
30 (50.0%)

(Other: please comment)
4 (6.7%)

Comments

[ninetydegrees]

My with changes: I'd like to be able to collapse all comments then be able to combine it with 'Top-level comments only'. I can't remember if collapsing-all has ever been suggesting but it rings a little bell.

[green_knight]

The vibe I'm getting from this is that someone will have to sit down with comment handling and brainstorm all the various suggestions into a new comment display strategy.

[msilverstar]

+1

[zing_och]

*nods*

[cesy]

Yes, this. There are already a lot of options, and adding one more would tip it over into decision fatigue for me. In fact, I would love to have a style/skin that would hide the "Flat" and "Top-level" links for me, but they don't appear to have a separate class on the site scheme.

[azurelunatic]

Separate classes for each of the comment view control links sound like a thing for a revamped comment control display, then.

[musyc]

I'm voting other on this because I don't necessarily think it's a bad idea, but I think that the commenting options are already reaching "oh god what is this" confusion. I'm a fairly heavy user and relatively familiar with a lot of DW options, and I still have to take a minute to figure out the difference between flat and top-level (and still have a frequent moment of confusion when I hit a second page of comments and the option I chose on page one disappears ahhhhhhhhh what happened it's DIFFERENT AHHHHHHHH.). I don't object to collapsing comments in theory, but implementation and user confusion/"this is too hard, too much" fatigue is a worry.

[cheyinka]

My with-changes: I'd still want the thread and parent links to show, because I might be scanning for all threads started by a particular person and planning to open those threads in a new tab, or all threads with a reply by a particular person, etc.

[ex_mrs260625]

I voted other because, while I can see something like this being useful, the suggestion as it stands is too complicated, IMO.

[arethinn]

I like this as a more general solution to the problem described in the suggestion where the poster asked for an auto-generated/updating index that would be useful for anon memes.