Viewing x last active entries in a community

[yvi]

Title:
Viewing x last active entries in a community

Area:
Styles

Summary:
A new module that contains the last x entries that were commented on in a journal/community.

Description:
I saw this suggested on LiveJournal: http://community.livejournal.com/suggestions/950533.html and think it's a great idea.

I would like to have a module that can be added to a journal or a community in which the 'last x active' entries are shown - so the last ten entries that got a new comment. This is helpful for communities which sometimes get comments on older entries (fic challenges like dailyprompts, suggestion/help communities maybe).

This would be most helpful for communities, as for journals at least the journal owner gets an e-mail when a new comment gets posted, but a community moderator doesn't get one - you can't subscribe to 'any new comment in this community' and usually it's also not needed. But if people are trolling, you will never notice on older posts unless the poster of that entry tells you.

It can also help with spam detection, when that spam is posted to older entries. Since this is used on many blogging sites, I think it would be an added advantage for Dreamwidth.

As for the implementation, I think comments in a community are all stored on the same cluster and should be in one database, so it's a mySQL query based on the entryid and posting data.

Could be a paid community/user benefit, if needed/wanted.

(I am sorry if this is a bit muddled)

Poll #848

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 33

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
30 (90.9%)

Should be implemented with changes.
2 (6.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
1 (3.0%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[melannen]

Aren't there journal styles that would do this already? But yes, I definitely like this idea as something that doesn't require messing with styles, especially for community mods.

[yvi]

I unfortunately don't know any styles that do it.

[msilverstar]

For communities, that would be really helpful.

[ninetydegrees]

Public module (on the community journal) or private module (in community management)?

[yvi]

Public, that was at least what I meant. Reading back, my post is quite unclear in that regard (a module that can be added to a journal or a community and later lots of talk about moderators).

I didn't realize when posting that comm moderators already see the last x left comments (although not the last x active entries, and as most communities are free accounts the number is usually limited to 10) on the recent_comments page, so it might not be that interesting just for modding.

[ninetydegrees]

Thanks for clarifying.

I hadn't either. Thanks for the tip!

[av8rmike]

I just updated my comment on the linked suggestion, but I found the LJ community that had a "popular posts" widget: ask_me_anything (Hmm, that's supposed to be a comm, not a user). They're using some kind of external PHP scripts to build the widgets, but I haven't investigated how they work. It wouldn't be possible with straight S2, but we might be able to build something into the backend...?

[yvi]

Oh, interesting. I think it would definitely be possible doing that with a nifty SQL-thing in the backend. Selecting the ten recent comments that have dissimilar entry-ids, something like that.

[ciaan]

It would be neat to be able to view your reading page this way too, with most recently commented on entries at the top.