Wiki forums

[admin (no pm's please)]

I do have some ideas that may be useful in general on non wiki forums.

Watch this space.
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[admin (no pm's please)]

I am please I have delayed this. The notes system is looking really good in my view.

Perhaps annoyingly I think that work may be finished asides from more testing, but all the same we need to wait till Saturday for the install. But that's life.

There may still be scope for more features in the week ahead.
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[admin (no pm's please)]

The comments feature is an interesting technical challenge.

We have to avoid the gratuitous increasing of database load that would result from most ways of implementing this well.

As it stands we don't show if comments exist for a particular post, which is obviously quite lame.

There are three ways of dealing with this.

1) Always check the comment tables.
2) Add flags to the post table for each comment type.
3) tag the post text if comments have been made.

We will do the option 3, since it is the lightest on resources. In effect we will have a pseudo bbcode at the bottom of a post that will say "Show Comments"  when comments exist. This will use web2.0 to pull in the comments.
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[admin (no pm's please)]

I think this is the point where sanity prevails. We have the means of adding comments to a post now, and of making inline wiki notes visible to people making edits. The last thing to do would be to allow separate comments on specific wiki versions. It might have some limited use, but would do little a wikinote would not do and we would end up having 4 places a debate might be happening.

1) In replies to the post.
2) In comments on the post.
3) In wikinotes in the post.
4) in comments on individual edits.

It is too much in my view. Much better to refine the first three, and make options on the comment portal as to what type of topic it appears in.
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[admin (no pm's please)]

Actually option 2 can I think be refined to allow for option 4 without the code getting nasty.
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[admin (no pm's please)]

All seems to be done.





We see here what might be over the top. We are viewing a wiki where people in the wiki edit mode can not only use the new bbcode type notes facility to make edits into the post, but can also read and add comments made against either the individual edit or on the wiki article in general.

This was done in the admin panel by copying the POSTCOMMENTS portal.

There is one main concession to the server! You see the comment count in brackets here. That feature is only available in a wiki view, otherwise we would see people using it on all their forums just for the sake of it, and there is a load factor involved. In a standard forum a post that has comments made on it, will have a link at the bottom if post tagging was selected.


Here we see the POSTCOMMENT settings.



I have made it so that when using the feature in a standard forum you have to specify the ID explicitly. Frankly this is again to push the idea that this feature is not there for the sake of it on all forums. It is pointless outside of particular circumstances and should be treated with respect.
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[admin (no pm's please)]

I have incorporated the WIKI portal setup into the default configuration people will see when they create a wiki forum. It seems daft to make them go through the hoops of copying portals and editing templates.
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[admin (no pm's please)]

A few more fixes in today, but aside from some final tests on deleting posts, I think all that remains is to construct some "help" on the new features.

It will be quite a major install Saturday, no database changes, but a lot of files involved.
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[admin (no pm's please)]

Given we have had two server issues over the last couple of days I have not made myself happy enough with the testing of the Wiki stuff, and really don't fancy the aggravation of a major install tomorrow

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