PSA: useful site feature

[liv]

This comment aggregator looks like it's going to be nearly as useful as a friends page. I'm not quite sure what the status of it is, if it's an official feature or if it's still under development or what; it's not documented at all. Anyway, very useful tool assuming it stays around.

Particularly since right now comment emails are not being sent consistently. The unofficial word is that this problem may be fundamentally unfixable, though people are trying.

Things to note:

• It's kind of limited for free users (only ten most recent comments).
• It lists only comments you've made and comments in your own journal. There's a view held among the senior geeks that being able to get a list of anyone else's comments is a privacy violation, even if the individual comments are public anyway. So it's almost certainly not going to be extended into a really useful feature of aggregating comments from any user you're interested in.
• There may one day be a feature that would allow you to get a notification whenever anything updates that you're interested in, but that's very much in the pipeline and at a 'don't hold your breath' level of development.

I think this could possibly be the first step to making LJ more like the good aspects of Usenet.

Comments

[nameandnature]

Useful. It'd be nice if there was a way of keeping up with new replies to your comments and journal entries. This interface doesn't quite provide that, since they're not allowing me to sort my comments (the second list) by date of most recent reply.

Clearly what's needed is some sort of LJ/Usenet proxy. I bet a bot like that would be popular with the admins :-)

[liv]

they're not allowing me to sort my comments (the second list) by date of most recent reply
There seems to be a serious technical problem which means that the site as a whole can't know when something has been updated. I don't know why this is since, of course, Usenet has managed something similar for years. But every time anyone suggests a feature that would involve noting new updates, the answer is along the lines of 'we'd love that but sadly it isn't possible'.

Clearly what's needed is some sort of LJ/Usenet proxy.
I refer you to RJK's comment below. Cos clearly he knows far more about this kind of thing than I do.

I bet a bot like that would be popular with the admins :-)
Well, if it could be written in a way that obeys the rules it would be perfectly popular. But I have no idea whether this could be done.

[khalidz0r.livejournal.com]

Wee, this looks like a really interesting feature. I would also make it show the comments you have recieved in other journals, which then would reduce the need to use email notification.

Gah, nowadays, I am totally not updated in terms of what's new in LiveJournal :P Uncool.

Thanks for the info :)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I would also make it show the comments you have recieved in other journals

Yes - in other words, basically making it equivalent to the current comments-to-email function. Other than that, I think it looks great; I'd just as soon be able to check a webpage as have fifty thousand comments cluttering up my inbox!

[liv]

making it equivalent to the current comments-to-email function
Yes, that would be perfect, actually. And there can be no complaints about privacy with that, since you're not getting any new information, just the same information in a slightly more convenient format. If you want, you can go and suggest this to the Powers that Be, since I've now found a place for feedback on the feature.

I'd just as soon be able to check a webpage as have fifty thousand comments cluttering up my inbox!
Same here, definitely. That's why I thought this was a new feature worth posting about.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

LiveJournalShouldBeNews (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~dans/chiarkwiki?LiveJournalShouldBeNews)

[liv]

Thanks for that link. Most of it's a bit over my head, but I can point out one thing that's changed since the latest update timestamp on that article: the RSS feed for free users no longer sucks. So if that's all that's needed for the proposal to be workable it may be possible now. All users do get complete RSS data.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The fundamental point is to decentralize, so merely livejournal+RSS is nowhere near the answer.