On the related note: how do you keep track of which comments are new since your last visit of the thread?
HN/reddit system with comments jumping around based on votes makes it hard just to quickly skim for differences.
Could there be a way to highlight not seen items? I found this a big help for information overload on the sites that do it (e.g. Google Reader, Bloglines).
However, I couldn't figure out how to do it elegantly (i.e. not needing to keep state on the server for each user) for prioritized threaded comments systems like HN/reddit.
For updates of a single page it's easy, you just need to bake timestamps for each item and page creation into HTML/JS and check them against the last page timestamp stored in the cookie.
But this system breaks down for multiple pages, as each one would need own cookie entry, otherwise any site visit would mark all new items as read.
That's btw MetaFilter's problem with highlighting new comments. Though there it's easier to follow the conversation due to linear nature of comment system.
Maybe the solution could be to have some dual way of accessing comments? Like prioritized threaded view for the first view and linear time ordered view for subsequent following?
I wrote a greasemonkey script to help me. It marks comments that have already been read. The way it marks comments is ugly and probably backwards (i.e. you probably only want to mark new comments, not the other way around). I did it as a proof-of-concept, mostly, but this thread convinced me to make it available.
I agree about the comment movements but it has been discussed here before. It would be nice to have the option to keep comments the way they are (moving) or to view them based on the time they were left.
If you know which comments on a page are new, then you also know which ones are old. The easy answer is to just gray out the older posts (only remotely challenging because the gray background of the page is about the color I WOULD have suggested for old comment text) -- and just leave the new comments as they are.
That allows you to easily skim the page for new content, while still allowing you to see the new posts in context.
A Digg-style collapse would also probably work, but for some reason, I see grayed out text more in line with the ycombinator mantra.
HN/reddit system with comments jumping around based on votes makes it hard just to quickly skim for differences.
Could there be a way to highlight not seen items? I found this a big help for information overload on the sites that do it (e.g. Google Reader, Bloglines).
However, I couldn't figure out how to do it elegantly (i.e. not needing to keep state on the server for each user) for prioritized threaded comments systems like HN/reddit.
For updates of a single page it's easy, you just need to bake timestamps for each item and page creation into HTML/JS and check them against the last page timestamp stored in the cookie.
But this system breaks down for multiple pages, as each one would need own cookie entry, otherwise any site visit would mark all new items as read.
That's btw MetaFilter's problem with highlighting new comments. Though there it's easier to follow the conversation due to linear nature of comment system.
Maybe the solution could be to have some dual way of accessing comments? Like prioritized threaded view for the first view and linear time ordered view for subsequent following?