Geeklog

Please, please add a way of allowing yet controlling comments, even through something as simple as adding permissions in Groups. I switched to your software because of the inability to control this in Blogger comment add-ons, and I am somewhat disappointed that Geeklog doesn't allow this either. It's awesome.. but why this oversight? It could be so easily implemented.

Great, since it would be easily to implement, feel free to do it and pass on the code. Contributiions are always welcome. Dwight

Do I understand correctly? You went to all the trouble to switch your site from one CMS to another, because you wanted a certain feature, but you didn't take the time to figure out whether that feature was in GL first. And now the developers are supposed to drop everything they are doing and solve your problem?

You can go into the database and delete or edit comments if required, although that is certainly a kludge. If you want to be able to moderate comments, and you can't write the code, the next best thing is to enter it as a formal feature request, rather than just aksing for it here.

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=7371&atid=357371

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Kevin

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Kevin Horton

<<Rv8 writes>> Do I understand correctly? You went to all the trouble to switch your site from one CMS to another, because you wanted a certain feature, but you didn't take the time to figure out whether that feature was in GL first. And now the developers are supposed to drop everything they are doing and solve your problem. My 2cents. With all respect, I think this is a undeserved flame (albeit a low-heat one) of a user making a valid comment (about comments). I think you have to forgive their tone. We users aren't usually developers, and when it seems like things are an obvious need being overlooked, it's easy to sound pissy about it. I meant to mention the comment moderation too. Sure, nothing at the DB level is trivial, but with your rights system, neither should it be particularly challenging (or so it seems). I think this falls into that "core need" bucket that deserves serious attention. CMS users are often community builders, and good community requires moderation. Anything and everything that promotes, faciliates or controls that should get a lot of programmer mindshare, IMHO. As for the user suggesting an enhancement, please make note of the fact that before finding this comment, I was searching for just where such an enhancement request would be made. In most systems, the forum handles them. Here, as we know, we have no forum yet, but if you look over at that nifty nav column on the left, you won't see any section for "Feature Requests" or "Enhancements." But you do have a vague and confusing heading called "Got Geeked," which is cute, but means nothing to a new visitor. They have to think about it, and deduce only after looking at all the other sections, that it's probably a place to praise the product, or talk about new experiences. "Geeglog" is equally ambiguous. Why not "Geeklog Discussion, General, Free for all, Random Thoughts" or anything other than the meaningless heading you have presently. In my view, such ambiguities are a disservice to your new visitors, image and effectiveness. But not nearly so much as sounding irritated with a user giving you some valuable insight about a potential oversight or low priority. All such testiness does is discourage commenting and rebuttal. Many users (and people in general) are comment-averse anyway, and can be rather thin skinned, thus, they will avoid saying something potentially useful out of fear that the big, bad developers will be insulted, and they will be embarrassed, humiliated, or might get short-shrift in the future when they have a serious problem. In my experience with my million-plus users of an instant message application over the years, the very best ideas or feedback often came from the emails that began with lines like: * I've had it with this POS product. I'm just so... * I want a refund! * You people must be brain dead... * What the hell were you thinking? * You probably think this is stupid, but.... * I hope I don't hurt anyone's feelings, but.... * I don't know if this is appropriate.. Sure, 75% of the hate mail comes from people too lazy, or stupid to RTFM. But that's just a given in our industry. There are some that feel, as I do, that the manual or Help button should only be required in extreme circumstances, or when nested detail is required. A good GUI should remove the need for it whenever possible. I just feel it's always a good idea to try and divorce yourself from the user's emotion (and your own). There are diamonds in that rough to be found.

Oh.. btw. I really disfavor comment systems that prevent me from going back and editing my comment. Not only is it something friendly and forgiving of dumb mistakes or types, but it also cuts down on flaming. As with email and instant messages, most people rarely consider their words carefully until AFTER they press "DONE/SEND/ENTER/POST." Hell, if I didn't feel like inconveniencing the users who know better, I'd always have a message box that appears after submit (or during preview) that reads something like: "So have you really looked at what you wrote carefully? Frequent spelling errors and typos can make you look unthoughtful. As important, words have many meanings, and they can often be weapons. Even well-intentioned words can be easily misunderstood, or seen as an insult or assault. The clarity, quality and tone of your comment/post will impact the quality of its potential effectiveness, as well as the responses to it. If you want to change your comment/post, click the edit button NOW."

I have to admit that my earlier response was a bit over the top. I apologize to the original poster. I too would prefer that the comment engine allowed moderation, and editing of comments as options. As a user, and an non-coder, it would be easy for me to say that it should be a simple thing to modify the comment engine to make comments editable. But I can't recall seeing any GL sites where this capability has been added, which leads me to believe that it might not be as trivial as some would think. I did note that many (most?) of the feature requests in the Feature Request Tracker don't seem to be going anywhere. Most are not assigned to anyone to fulfill. This leads me to believe that either the Feature Tracker is not actively used by the developers, or that they are overwhelmed by the amount of work they have to do, so user requested features are ignored. Is there a shortage of active GL developers?---Kevin

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Kevin Horton

I can assure you that the Feature Requests are reviewed (and I'm fully aware that that list is embarrassingly long). Many of the requests would require a lot of work or fundamental changes in the way Geeklog works, so they will have to wait until Geeklog 2 (examples picked at random: XHTML support, several of the localisation issues). Others are, well, a bit dubious ("Add Tracking Info to Emailed Stories" - I think that one should be rejected, actually). Some are actually being worked on, but not necessarily quite as requested (e.g. "More detailed user information" is being implemented as an extension to the plugin API). Okay, so maybe someone should go over that list and make things like that more apparent ... Smaller requests have a good chance of being implemented, though - developers need that feeling of success from time to time ;-) Contributions are always welcome, too, of course. If you look through the changelog you'll find quite a few examples of contributed code. Anyway, I hope that explains things a bit ... bye, Dirk

Windbag, who cares what you think until you show you are more than just hot air. Blaine said the developers could use your assistance in the site redesign, and you were too lazy even to post back with a yes or no.

By the way windbag, phpNuke which is perhaps the mostly widely used open source CMS recently removed their forums, deactivated all comment capability, and removed all personal journals from their site. The real reason this happened, which the developer avoids telling here, is because they had a huge falling out and people are planning yet another splintering of the project. This is exactly what happens when a community gets too big and soars like you want Geeklog to do. It's obvious you have no real life experience in growing anything or you would have known this.