Topic: Member filtering widget [◇/◈] (SMF patch) - page 2. (Read 556 times)

You made a good patch but I have a suggestion and hope that you can go a bit further.

So far, you can filter posts made by one member in a topic but could you filter a back and forth (question and reply) between two users, please?

Like Foxup is an OP of a topic and LoyceV replies to Foxup's posts. Could you customize your patch to filter only discussions between two posters?

There is an issue:

• It is easy if LoyceV always quotes posts of Foxup for every reply.
• It is likely missing if LoyceV makes replies but does not quote posts of Foxup for some replies.

We can easily check the each post of a single user in a topic through Ninjastic.space. It isn't complicated thing to use this feature on Ninjastic. We need to use the 'Author name' and 'Topic ID' to see all posts by the user in a topic. Moreover, Ninjastic.space has few more advance options in their search feature.

BTW, your suggestion isn't bad at all. It will help us to view each post of a user in a topic by staying on the same page. But I think that Ninjastic.space is more than enough for this feature, isn't it?

I think that this feature is a good idea, and it will be interesting to see this in action. My only suggestion is the placement of the checkbox-like widget. It is too close to the "Report" link. Would it be better to place it in the lower left corner, next to "Ignore"?  That seems more logical to me, because it is supposed to do something opposite of what Ignore does.

Hey, everybody!

So, this is a different approach to the same problem I'm trying to address with my other patch/proposal: here.

As a refresher, that proposal was to add a pair of arrows to each post to easily skip to the next/previous post by the same member within a topic. Personally, I would appreciate a feature like that, because I've found that responding to someone's post without first having read their other posts in that topic, frequently leads to frustratingly redundant exchanges. Other members have expressed different reasons for wanting a feature like that, so I believe it to be a generally useful idea.

I'm quite proud of that patch, but while pondering the small usability flaw that it has (see that post for details) I came up with what I think is a superior approach: Instead of a pair of arrows, there is now a single checkbox-like widget near the bottom of each post. When you click it, it shows you only the posts in that topic that were written by that same member [1]. When you click it again, it reverts to showing you all of the posts within that topic.

In my testing environment, this approach feels much better to use than the arrows do, and it ends up being quite a natural way to navigate large threads because of how it considers the specific post that was clicked on, in both directions (e.g. you can be on a thread with 100 pages, click on the widget within a specific post, see only the 3 or 4 posts made by that user, and then when you "leave" that mode — by clicking the widget a second time — you'll end up on the page of the specific post that was clicked on).

Here's what it looks like in action (you'll have to imagine the surrounding posts; widget is next to "Report to moderator"):



After clicking the widget, the diamond will fill-in and you'll see only the posts made by Foxpup (showing just two here):



If you click the widget now, you'll end up back in "normal" mode where you can see everyone's posts again. Pretty nifty, no?

The sudden appearance of a little diamond thingy will mean nothing to people who haven't read this post, so there are a couple of helpful, context-sensitive tooltips that show up when you hover over the widget:







For the technically-inclined forum users: This feature is implemented by modifying SMF to handle an extra URL parameter ("u=") when rendering topics. That means it can also be used "manually" (i.e. without the widget) which I'm guessing will find some uses. For example, if you're curious if a given user (say, theymos; u=35) has ever posted in a given topic (say, WO; topic=178336) then you could simply visit: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178336;u=35 (though obviously this doesn't work just yet, because the patch hasn't been accepted).

I've sent the code to theymos. As always, feedback from anyone about this proposed feature is appreciated (but, please consider my thoughts: here). If discussion leads to new/better ideas, I'll obviously consider incorporating them, and will then send theymos an updated patch.

[1] If you click the widget on a guest post, then you'll see only the posts within that topic that were made by guests.