Seeing 'all' most recent comments

Peter,

you summarized it well in the two comments above to Phil and I but we have heard no more about showing multiple comments from the same thread on the community conversations page.

Are there still plans to consolidate the community databases to speed up and thereby allow you to show all current 'conversations,' 'threads,' 'recent comments,' in the community conversation page as is currently done (albeit slowly) on the dashboard? Anytime soon? This year?, next year?, it has been canceled? Thanks in advance for your update.

Thank you Peter. Good answer.

Hi RJBerki,

The conversation in the dashboard right now is showing the latest post, comments, etc...in the order of when it was posted. It will show multiple comments from the same thread. The conversations in the community is showing only the latest comment of the thread. You will only see the last comment made on a specific thread. We wanted to implement the dashboard change to the community conversation page, but because of how the conversation database is built right now, the community conversation page will take too long to load. This is why the dashboard conversation section is always the last to load when you log in.

Hi Phil,

ok for your grand plan, but this still doesn't answer your orig question. The dashboard is showing not only most recent comments but those prior (unless they come from the same thread) and the community page does not. Why the difference? Is it intentional? You did not remember it wrong, right now there are 3 comments showing from the page "different uses of 好" on the dashboard (if you're quick you will see it) I really dont care but the lack of effective communication here is unbelievable and very frustrating at times. I really tire of complaining. I wish we could get back to talking only about Chinese.

Okay Peter,

I'll wait and see what happens. Please post here if it appears that the changes are going to take a long time or there are other changes to the plan.

Hi xiaophil, I've spoke to our tech team and the reason your suggestions to show all current 'conversations,' 'threads,' 'recent comments,' in the community conversation page is because our current community data is store on several different database. To show all all current 'conversations,' 'threads,' 'recent comments,' would really slow down the website. We are in the process of consolidating the database so when we implement this change, the system will draw data from single source to optimize the speed of the page. We appreciate your patience.

Catherine, Peter or CPod

First of all, thanks for the changes you outlined above. But... as RJ said, that didn't really cover what I was talking about. I think things are getting complicated, so I will highlight our conversation:

1, I suggested a system to make it so all current 'coversations,' 'threads,' 'recent comments,' and so on show up (see: http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/9338#comment-180805). Notice: I said nothing about seeing 'all groups' here.

2, you said, "xiaophil, This is something we have wanted to do with the new dashboard... this is something we can feasibly do... So I will try to work out some details with the tech. team and report back here when a decision/plan has been finalized."

3, you said, "xiaophil- This change (seeing "all" recent activity, not just the most recent comment in a thread) is something the tech. team has been preparing since we discussed it in this thread. They're ready to publish it in the next day or two, so I just wanted to let you know in advance. I'll post again when it's been officially published to the site. Thanks!"

4, I said something like "great," but then didn't notice that the change seemed to be happening, so I wrote, "Just curious, has this change been postponed or derailed? "

5, You said, "The first change - all comments and replies being listed in the dashboard and conversations page - has already been published to the site."

6, I noticed that this change did seem to happen on the dashboard (unless I was mistaken because I don't see it now), so I said, "I don't know if you are aware, but it appears the changes have happened on the dashboard but not on the conversations page."

7, you didn't reply

I didn't push because I thought I would give you and the rest of the staff a chance to just do it, and also I didn't want to be a nag. Now however, it appears that this change has not been purposely abandoned, but rather since you and Peter are only talking about the 'view all groups' feature, I can only guess that it has been totally forgotten! (unless I am missing something.) Am I right that this change that was mentioned was forgotten? Or am I getting totally confused. Whatever the case be, the changes I have seen recently do not address what this discussion was about at all, which is what I was told would happen.

catherine

what phil is talking about is that on the dashboard you see MORE than just the MOST recent comment on a page. The most recent comment doesnt therefore block view to everything else on the page that was recently posted. (it did not work within threads however). Remember this? On the community page this NEVER rolled out. It was supposed to be both according to your comment and he told you immediately it wasnt working on both. It only worked on the dashboard. You never relplied.

Hey guys. I'm afraid there seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding here (Peter is referring to a related issue, but not the one I believe you're asking about). The tech team uploaded the "view all groups" feature to the site to test it a few weeks ago. Then it was taken down. Many of you noticed this. Well the "view all groups" feature is now available on the Community > Conversations page. One thing that the team discovered while testing was that when introduced to the dashboard, it made things radically slower on that page. As a result, this option will not be introduced to the dashboard.

The good news is that you can now view all site activity from the Community > Conversations page. From the drop down tab at top, just make sure you've selected "View all groups," and not "View all my groups."

Xiaophil you are correct. When I say "conversations page" I mean Community > Conversations (http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations).

Please let us know if this is not functioning properly for you. From here in the office it seems to be working well. Thanks!

Peter I'm sorry but that is an insufficient reply to Xiaophil's questions. So are you saying Catherine at the beginning of this month promised us something that wasn't ever planned? Or that she was mistaken in her understanding, or mis-phrased her information to us? Or that CPod had a change of plans after July 7?

Besides making the status clear (which you did and which is important), those points need to be addressed, for you (CPod) to be actually communicating with us. I hope I don't have to explain why. Thanks.

Hi xiaophil. After speaking with our tech team, here is what they told me regarding the conversations on our site. The dashboard includes the latest posts, replies and comments from the groups that you subscribed to. It will show multiple latests comments from the same thread. The default community conversation view is "All Groups". Here you will only see the last comment on a specific thread. I hope I've clarified our conversation listings for ChinesePod.

CPod or Peter

I wanted to leave a message here as my last message might have sounded more terse than I wanted. (When replying with my mobile, if I want to avoid having my message sent to the neverland, my wording has to be brief, which might give the impression that I am being more pushy than I intend.) That said, I am disappointed. Catherine said that the new changes would affect:

"all comments and replies being listed in the 'dashboard' and 'conversations page'"

I can't be sure that she meant the 'community-conversations page' as she only said 'conversations page'. But it seems to me that must have been what she meant because besides the dashboard, there is only the community-conversations page. Also, notice that I left a reply to Catherine that was never answered, which I don't mean to sound overly rude, but nevertheless must say is not uncommon here (and I am not pointing fingers at Catherine--just a general statement).

Now Peter replies with an answer that is not the answer to my question, but seems to imply that the change that I was told had already happen about three weeks ago, which hasn't actually happened, isn't even in the works. (Or am I reading too much into the comment?)

Again, I'm sorry, I don't want to be the pain in your rear, but the conversations section on the dashboard is very small, and I have to scroll towards the bottom every time. It just isn't convenient when there is a community-conversations page that is big and right there, or am I crazy? Do I sound unreasonable when I just want what as a customer I was told would happen?

When are you going to make all recent conversations also the default of the community page as Catherine said? No offense, I dislike using the dashboard.

The default view of the conversation page under community is to show the latest conversation from "all groups". The default view of the conversation tab under the dashboard is to show the most recent conversations from "all my groups".

CPod

Could we please have an update on this?

Oh right I see (July 1 - July 7). These haven't happened.

xiaophil- This change (seeing "all" recent activity, not just the most recent comment in a thread) is something the tech. team has been preparing since we discussed it in this thread. They're ready to publish it in the next day or two, so I just wanted to let you know in advance. I'll post again when it's been officially published to the site. Thanks!

To start it'll be all recent comments, posts, and replies. The concern is that doing it like this will flood the dashboard with replies, so the tech. team is trying to find a way to do with replies what we currently do with comments: the most recent reply in a thread will show up, not ALL replies in a thread. All recent comments and posts, on the other hand, will be visible.

I think CPod should update us with status on this in any case.

I also like what they are doing on the dashboard, but I wonder when it will be implemented on the community-conversations page? I am at the moment assuming that they are testing it first on the dashboard, and then implementing it here. I hope so. I won't use the dashboard. I have to scroll down and then the conversations part is just too small. That said, from what Catherine said above, it sounds like she thinks that this feature has been implemented on the community-conversations page.

I think I will point this out to Peter. I know he is the point man for problems. Since it isn't working as Catherine indicated, I suppose I can call this a problem (in theory).

Regarding your italicised comment, I made a suggestion regarding that some months ago. John said he would look into it. A couple of weeks later he commented on a random thread that this had been implemented. Someone pointed out that this was not the case. John's reply was that he had jumped the gun (not his words), that the tech team was still working on it, and that it would be implemented soon. That is the last I heard of it.

We had a lot of people respond positively to yesterday's (accidental) change. There's been a lot of discussion in the office about how we could find a middle ground (not as cluttered as yesterday's view, but also not as brief as our current format). We'll continue working on this and will keep you guys informed of any updates or changes we plan to make to how comments in the dashboard and conversations page are displayed. (BTW this is not deflection, we really are discussing this! I can't say when a change would happen, but it's definitely on our radar).

Catherine

I kind of liked seeing more of the comments on the conversations page. It was much easier for me to ascertain if I wanted to go to the page itself to look at the entire thread. Any chance you guys can let us see more of the comments? Perhaps a maximum of six lines or so?

Fixed now.

This is a side effect of a change that was made and is currently being fixed.

"Today when someone posts, i feel like I am being rude if I post a comment in a thread on the same page but far from the comment I am displacing because this guys post will now never be noticed by anyone."

Good, it isn't just me! I didn't think I was, but I'm glad to see someone else say this directly (although Zhen did hint at this recently).

I like seeing all of individual comments, although I think there possibly should be a limit as well. Perhaps 8 lines is enough?

ok Zhen, glad you like it. It was just unexpected and seems to go against their policy of clutter reduction.

RJ I sort of like this seeing entire comments; it saves us the trouble of entering the thread to read. You'd still enter the thread if you have no idea what that latest comment was talking about etc., but for someone already following the conversation closely in real time, I think it saves trouble. Longer comments do take up a lot of space on the boards; that might be an incentive for me to really work on keeping mine shorter. Maybe.

I'm with you regarding "In the old system when you went to a discussion page to read a post highlighted on the community page, you could then read the two or three posts directly above it until you reached one you know you have read before. In this way nothing was missed." and your concerns about earlier comments becoming displaced. More on that later ...

well Im hoping it was just an inadvertant side effect of some other tinkering but if so, this spotlights the importance of follow up. I see no harm in it except in very long posts but there is no benefit either.

In the old system when you went to a discussion page to read a post highlighted on the community page, you could then read the two or three posts directly above it until you reached one you know you have read before. In this way nothing was missed. Today when someone posts, i feel like I am being rude if I post a comment in a thread on the same page but far from the comment I am displacing because this guys post will now never be noticed by anyone. You would have to scan the entire page and follow each thread up from the bottom until you got to familiar ground. If posts that you have not read (in essence posts new since your last visit to that page) were red or in italics or something that would make it easier. Is it necessary to read all posts? No, but if you dont you dont know if you are missing something you do care about and comments important to everyone can easily be hidden by an insignificant spam post.

I can't comment on the reason behind the change (I didn't know about this one), but I think I kind of like it. There's till 20 comments on the page, so it hasn't actually reduced the number of banners, but just made the page longer.

It almost feels like a reader to me and I'm liking being able to read a whole comment right from the page, rather than reading a few lines, opening a new tab, then reading the comment again.

Although, very lengthy comments may be too much. Maybe we could have them collapse if they're over a certain length. (if that becomes an issue...)

I don't know if you are aware, but it appears the changes have happened on the dashboard but not on the conversations page.

The first change - all comments and replies being listed in the dashboard and conversations page - has already been published to the site. The tech. team is going to tweak the replies as per my request in order to address the issue noted above (reply threads flooding the dashboard/conversations page).

Catherine

Just curious, has this change been postponed or derailed? I see you guys are doing work on the website, but I don't know to what end.

Catherine

I think what you are talking about is like my example above (http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/9338#comment-180805), right? If so, I'm one happy camper. If not, I'll keep an open mind. I can't wait to see what happens.

To start it'll be all recent comments, posts, and replies. The concern is that doing it like this will flood the dashboard with replies, so the tech. team is trying to find a way to do with replies what we currently do with comments: the most recent reply in a thread will show up, not ALL replies in a thread. All recent comments and posts, on the other hand, will be visible. Let me know if any of this is unclear.

Wow! That's great news. I'm wondering, is it going to be "all recent comments" or "all recent threads (as what was later discussed here)"?

xiaophil- This change (seeing "all" recent activity, not just the most recent comment in a thread) is something the tech. team has been preparing since we discussed it in this thread. They're ready to publish it in the next day or two, so I just wanted to let you know in advance. I'll post again when it's been officially published to the site. Thanks!

Yeah, that is a solution. Thanks. But it appears that one cannot directly reply to another comment, so at the moment it means that means we cannot have our cake and eat it too. I'll have to ponder which feature I value more until CPod makes their changes.

one trick Sebire taught me is that on the mobile site they list the last 20 comments in chronological order. Unfortunately you cant log in there now. At least not with your hand held.

Well, that certainly is good news. Thanks!

And Jason, sorry about the typo with your user name above. Just noticed it. Haha.

xiaophil, This is something we have wanted to do with the new dashboard. There were initially some concerns at the technical end when the new dashboard was rolled out (I would try to explain them here but to be totally frank I don't fully understand them). But it seems that this is something we can feasibly do. And I agree with you that it would be a great improvement (especially for us when answering questions, etc.). So I will try to work out some details with the tech. team and report back here when a decision/plan has been finalized.

Actually, I came around to the idea that perhaps being able to track every thread is more important than being aware of every single comment. For example, even though I was a part of this conversation, I don't think every comment should be listed on the 'community conversations page':

http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/4587#comment-113225

Threads are really conversations (but sometimes a one person conversation), and in my opinion the point is not being able to follow each and every comment one by one on the 'community conversations page', but rather make everyone aware that a conversation is happening. If someone is intrigued by a conversation, he or she can click on the link on the 'community conversations page' and see all of the comments.

By the way, I don't think CPod has to worry too much about one lesson dominating the 'community conversations page'. Sometimes only one or two people comment on a new lesson before the afternoon. On the rare occasion that a lesson does dominate, that must mean the lesson has really sparked some interest, which I don't think anyone would mind.

I think it is great that your are finding ways to identify questions. That will definitely help things a lot too.

Anyway, thanks Jason!

this is sounding great Jason. A view all groups filter and a view threads chronologically filter would be ideal. Also lots of marking tools would be superb.

Very good points, and we're definitely taking it all into consideration. Thanks for the input.

I think this tech/bug group is turning out to be quite productive...

On a related note, we've been also talking about how to mark comments, most importantly, as questions. If we can do this, it would obviously improve getting answers quickly, but also be another way to skim long threads for language stuff.

Ah, wait, that would only be 6 entries, no? In your system, a reply to a comment replaces the comment as the headline in the conversations page, right?

It's definitely not a bad idea, but wouldn't the original comment still be invisible on the conversations page? (which is what you don't want, right?)

Best of both worlds are great. And I am certainly not opposed at all to that idea if that is something that will make all parties happy.

That said, I personally disagree that the community conversations page should be to merely to track which lessons and posts are being commented on. If a particular lesson is really popular, why not go with it? Activity is good as long as two people are not dominating it. It could be said that in my system, a few people could still dominate, but then again, so can they now. After all, many of the users, including one called xiaophil, are often in the present system all over the community conversations page. I think that in my system unique threads will flourish, and NOBODY'S question will be lost in the mix. That's what's needed. A lot of questions go unnoticed around here. Personally, I think the average poddie doesn't care about which lessons have been commented on recently. They want to get into the flow.

Hope this made sense. It was a stream of thought, cause I gotta go.

OK, I'm a bit confused as to what you don't understand in my comments specifically, but I'll try to explain what I said above again:

I think your suggested system is quite clever, actually. However, even in this system, the conversations page will push comments down the list rather quickly.

For example, when a new lesson is published and there are many people leaving different comments (or replies) on that lesson, each one will create a new headline/entry in the conversations page. This will push all other conversations on other lessons/groups down the line. So, a lesson gets published and 6 people comment, 4 people reply to different comments, that's still 10 entries on the conversation page. (even if each reply is only viewable by the newest in the thread) See what I mean?

The way it is set up now, is not necessarily meant for tracking all comments that are going on on the site. It is a way to see what lessons/groups are being commeted on.

That is why I think the current system serves an important function and should not be changed.

We could, however, implement the option of viewing all of he most recent comments/replies in chronological order as a filter. (and maybe this filter could follow your formula?)

I think if we do this, we get the best of both. What do you think?

Yes, that is correct. And I do appreciate you looking into it, and I do appreciate your effort in trying to satisfy us in general.

Ok I understand the issue now. You're saying that we can only see the most recent activity on a thread (1 comment or reply), not all recent activity on a thread in chronological order within in the community groups. I will investigate why this is (if there is a tech. reason for it) and what we can do to make sure all activity appears as it happens in the community section.

Actually, what I am referring to is not the comment that was deleted, but the fact that if a person posts on the bottom of any particular page, any previous comments made above cannot be seen on the community page. The only way for people who "might" be interested in any recent threads on a particular page, is to go to that particular page and read threads and individual comments one by one. It is very stifling for conversational flow at times. I don't know if I made myself clear. I find this a bit difficult to express.

Very strange indeed. Seems everything I've posted thus far this morning appears just fine. I've discussed your problem specifically with someone from our tech. team. He is looking into what's going on.

Hey,

It's good to see your ideas/criticism's outlined clearly. Thanks.

In my opinion, and this has been asked for before, the solution is the ability to filter the community page by all comments into all recent comments in any threads, rather than only all newest comments in each thread.

I outlined above why I don't think this a good default (long conversations between very active users would then dominate the community page and bury comments in it's own way, and this is what users have previous cited as a problem with the community page), but it would be a good option to have!

Options are always good. :)

Buga! Put it on Bugarup!

CPod

Okay, I just made a lengthy post and I don't want to do it again. So let me (try to) be brief:

What I don't want:

- A return to the old system where all comments are chronological

- Getting rid of threads

What I do want:

- To not only know about the most recent comment or thread on a particular page, but to know ALL the recent comments and threads on that particular page when looking at the conversations page.

What I agree with:

- The "see replies to me" function is useful

What I disagree with:

- That "see replies to me" is a solution to the problem I outlined. This is a community board. If people want to see what is on the community board, they should be able to (it is after all, a community board), but the current system buries threads and comments, making this difficult.

What I know:

- In the past CPod members have said that they are looking for a solution, and not only that, multiple solutions have been offered by the community, but the problem doesn't seem to be being worked on.

Dang it! I just made a lengthy reply and it disappeared!

Thanks. I'm not going to respond directly about a fix/straightening out, but I would like to comment on the current system/old system and more about the way I see it.

In the old system, if I clicked in to a thread, I saw comments chronologically from bottom up. That's great...but only if you're trying to read every single comment. (which the majority of users do not do) If, however, you're looking for replies to your comment, you have to sift through tons of messy @ comments, then search up the page for whatever comment they @ing a person about. That also involves scrolling and searching, and is particularly frustrating when you're looking for an answer to your question. (and thus, a different kind of 'burying'/lost comments). Because of this, the old system left a lot more questions unanswered.

As for the situation you've cited, I don't actually think it's indicative of bad design, or even really a flaw, but rather, Jenny being a very busy person. If a user, like Zhen has here, leaves a comment as a reply to person specifically, that person can easily catch the comment in their 'replies to me', and get to it when they have the time. The comment, as a reply, wasn't meant for everyone after all.

If a user wants to ask a general question to all users/staff, they can leave a new comment, which is far less likely to go unseen and is listed chronologically with other new comments.

So, even in situations with multiple replies going on where the main comment being displayed on the community page is changing, the relevant users participating in the threads will still be informed via replies to me.

So, the new system is NOT perfect, but I definitely think it's superior to the old one as far as burying comments/questions, and keeping users informed about conversations they're involved in.

Yeah, thanks Jason,

I know the tech stuff isn't your area of expertise too, and actually, I am trying hard not to point fingers specifically. I do know that what poddies see on our end can be vastly different from what you guys see in your end, i.e. we really don't know the challenges you face.

Okay, at this point I am talking to whoever is in charge or can influence the website design, not Jason.

That said, RJ does have a point. When CPod says things like "we are looking into a solution" and so on, but then nothing happens after a long time, it does appear to be deflection. I say "appear" because I am not quite as unequivocal as him. I am still giving you guys (and when I say you guys, I mean whoever is making the tech decisions) the benefit of the doubt, but it becomes harder and harder to as time goes by. It feels at best like CPod was too ambitious with their web design, and never was able to keep up with fixing flaws, but at worst it seems like there is a strategy to wait for customers to tire and therefore stop complaining, and voila, everyone is happy. But I don't think everyone is happy. Some problems here are so silly. In my opinion, this particular problem is not a difference if philosophy about how to manage a website. It is a flaw. Customers deserve to have a reasonable chance to see their comment noticed by other poddies, but as I detailed above, if one person leaves a comment on a page, but moments later someone leaves a comment on the same page but in a different spot, the first comment gets lost into oblivion. If anyone doesn't understand what I am saying, the following link shows a situation where I recently tried to avoid this problem:

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/subway-announcements#comment-179359

Now I can't help but think CPod doesn't think that this isn't a big deal because you guys only reply to others, you don't leave comments that you hope others respond to, but I assure you, it is annoying at times. What should I do if my comment gets lost into the vortex, reply to myself saying, "Hey everybody, look at this, please... pretty please"? At any rate, I will ask you guys straight out, will you please do something about this?

thanks Jason,

perfectly understand that it's not your area and that you're not evading. It would be really nice to have a clear cut answer at some stage from someone who can give such an answer. I sense that some of the discontent in the community has stemmed from not getting any response at all to some of these issues. Knowing where the issue stands I think makes it easier to deal with. Of course Catherine has been doing an absolutely sterling job lately of addressing these issues head on and it's much appreciated.

Ah, and I should add that I'm not so much involved in the design/tech stuff, so I can't personally comment on the feasibility of an option like that. (That is, I'm not evading the question, just not sure myself. :) )

OK, that makes a lot more sense then. I thought I remembered it being that way before, but it seems I'm mistaken.

We've talked about ways to mark/indicate/tag different kinds of comments, and I think this could help a lot with 'inner-thread burying'. Especially with questions. (the worst kind of comments to bury!)

Anyway, it's a process, and we'll keep on keeping on.

Jason,

I think you may have misinterpreted what has been asked for [but sorry if I'm misreading you]. I don't think anyone is asking for all comments individually to be listed on the community page. That never happened before and it isn't what is being asked for now. The community page both now and before only lists the latest comment in a thread [be that a lesson discussion or a group discussion thread,etc]. What is being asked for is the ability within a thread to see the whole thread in chronological order as it used to in the past for those that want this view also. Once again I respect the wishes of others and if this is not feasible then so be it..I can certainly live with it. But if there could be a setting option where each user can choose between the two then that would make it so much easier.