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About
I'm Ryan Lowe, a Software Engineering graduate living in Ottawa, Canada. I like agile software development and Ruby on Rails.
I write this blog in Canadian English and don't use a spell checker. Typos happen.
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» Full-time Ruby on Rails freelancer
» Full-time with Rails since May 2005 » Former committer for RadRails (now Aptana) » I also have a few Rails side-projects in development: 1. wheretogoinTO.com Toronto nightlife 2. Hey Heads Up! TODO list and sharing 3. Layered Genealogy family history research 4. foos for foosball scoring 5. fanconcert for music fans (on hold) Hiring Rails developers? I can telecommute by the hour from Ottawa, Canada »» Email: rails AT ryanlowe DOT ca
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Closing Discussion Threads
I should probably preceed this topic by saying I don't use traditional Internet discussion forums a lot. That may be an advantage though, since I'm not 'stuck' in that paradigm necessarily. It might be easier to look outside the box from my vantage point. On FanConcert a user can start a thread in a forum and others can post replies. To make my terminology clear: on FanConcert a thread is a specific topic of discussion and a forum is a grouping of threads under a broader topic, like an artist, venue or concert. Here's how I see it: the user that started the thread is trying to reach out, either to express his/her opinion or to ask a question. Other users may respond to the thread to give their own opinions or to answer the question. However, once the user is satisfied that the thread has served its purpose they should be able to close the thread and not allow any more replies. This could also be done automatically after a certain time period (like 30 days). The upside is that people move on and aren't always posting to the same threads. Threads would then stay a reasonable size so people can follow the discussion. Right now by default the user that started the thread is notified by email every time someone responds to the thread. Once the user is satisfied the thread has served its purpose, closing it means that he doesn't hear about it any more. If someone else wants to start a different thread about the same topic and continue the discussion, that's their decision. The downside is that someone could want to make a useful reply to a closed thread! Though that user could simply send a private message to the user that started the thread or start a new thread so that people searching for an answer would be able to find one. A minor upside from a site administration standpoint is that closed threads are easier to archive and cache, since they will never change after they are closed. But I'm really trying to consider the social implications. What do you think FanConcert should do with respect to closing threads? Posted at February 25, 2006 at 01:34 AM ESTLast updated February 25, 2006 at 01:34 AM EST Comments
I have implemented this -- if you started the thread, you can close it. » Posted by: Ryan at February 25, 2006 10:28 PMThis is perhaps thinking too out of the box, but what if as your typing in the subject, to the right of the textbox, you have an real time search (AJAX) that searches the all the subjects of the threads already made and displays the results to the right. Often times, people make threads threads that are dupes. Just a thought since we're thinking out of the box :-P I also like the closing of threads after a certain period of time. » Posted by: roy at February 27, 2006 09:13 AMI like that you are thinking of dupe threads and you're absolutely right. AJAX on the subject might solve one of the problems... ...another is once the dupe is already submitted: it should be easy to point from one thread to another. Like "this question was answered already over here". » Posted by: Ryan at February 28, 2006 03:58 PM |
