Bug 49 in Zilla is for the re-enabling of the Comment Browser (seen currently here and here). I think it'll be an interesting task, so I want to do this.
I never used this when it was up, but when looking at the code for the pages, it imagine that it used to be something like this:
Get the comments received/posted per month. You input month, year, and user, and you'd get a list like this:
------------------------------------- date entry subject date entry subject date entry subject -------------------------------------
Which displayed the actual text of the entries you commented on, or you received a comment to.
I think it would look much better, and would be much cleaner if it was something like this:
Get a list of all comments received/posted. You input user, and you'd get a page like this:
[paging bar] ------------------------------------- user subject(link) date user subject(link) date user subject(link) date ------------------------------------- [paging bar]
Where it would display 100 per page, ordered by date (newer ones on top).
Technical Advantages:
- Uses paging functions built into BML/LJ code already.
- Only displays a certain number of comments per page.
- Less code. Cleaner.
Technical Disadvantages:
- Doesn't have entry text like it did before.
- Doesn't allow you to view only comments within a specified month/year combination.
But the main disadvantage I can see coming out of this, and which Mart pointed out to me earlier, is more of a social disadvantage. The disadvantage being that comments that users have posted in the past, thinking they would be hidden and obscure, will now be accessible and easy to find.
Of course, nobody should ever assume that a comment they post won't ever be seen again, but it's likely that there'll be some users who won't be thinking very highly of this feature resurrection for the reason above.
So what should we do? Allow only $remote to view their own comment browser? Allow a security setting for this? Leave it be? Something completely different? Thoughts? Comments? Et cetera?