server-side marking of read messages

[Graham Perrin]

#2 of my top five wishes in March 2009.

For registered users, I'd like the application/server to keep track of messages are read.

In other words: not rely on client-side browser history alone.

Side note: if Nabble adds this feature, then bug
read messages appear unread 
will be reduced (will bug only users who are not logged in).

[Graham Perrin]

In a wish list I wrote:

2. For registered, logged-in users: server-side marking of read messages.

Please: is this anywhere on the roadmap for the near or distant future?

(Wondering whether the isolation of root applications can pave the way for things such as this …)

[Hugo <Nabble>]

This can become a module in the future. Users will be able to write custom modules when we release a public API.

[Harvey]

1 - Ability to disable "post by email."

Posting by email cuts down on advertising impressions.

And it causes stress when people think they are receiving a private message and reply with personal messages.

2 - In NEWSPAPER: Would like to be able to change the Name of "Subcategories" to something custom. In our case "Regions."  Also would like to have the copy snippet that shows on the home page be custom - not necessarily the first few sentences.

3 - Also for the NEWSPAPER: The ability to have a "DRAFT" mode. So you can work on a story, and save it in Nabble before it is viewable by the public.  We are working around this by having a subcategory that only authors can see. It looks like a pretty workable solution, but it may seem exclusionary to some.

I'm going to wait on the rest of my wish list until templates is released. I have a feeling a lot of what I want will be available to me then.  (Custom Title Tags!)

[Hugo <Nabble>]

Instead of marking which message was read, a simpler solution is to save the date of the last visit so that the system can highlight messages posted after that date. Is this solution good for you?

[Graham Perrin]

Highlighting messages that are posted after a certain time is (unless I'm missing something) equivalent/comparable to treating everything past as read.

A date of last visit approach will suit some but not all use cases.

For some types of forum/application, I usually pay visits that are infrequent and very brief — attending only to things that must be prioritised. Then eventually for that same forum/app, an extended phase of me ploughing deeply and happily through a backlog of things that I have not previously seen. Then again, a phase of visits that are infrequent and brief. So for me, a date of last visit approach would too often give a false impression (read) for the majority of items (truly unread).

My own working habits may be edge case (peaks and troughs of activity that are extreme), but there must be many less extreme/edgy use cases, where people spend:

* time on a project
* time off a project
* time on
* time off

— and so on.

A gold standard solution is probably server-side tracking per user, so that the user can seat him/herself at any computer and gain the truest possible view of what's unread. I see that as gold because it's one of the few areas in which a feature of Nabble doesn't match mainstream alternatives.

Bronze might be, a Converse UI in which the gold standard is marred by a single ambiguous icon, which when clicked accidentally, marks the entire forum as read — with no undo.

----

If server-side tracking is an issue (performance?) then instead, how about
HTML5 client-side database storage?

I don't imagine that it would be easy to implement, but it would be smart. Silver standard :-)

Thanks

[Graham Perrin]

Hi Harvey

You might like to move your wish list part of this thread to the wish list.

[Hugo <Nabble>]

Hi Graham, we do have server-side tracking per user at this point. Whenever a user visits a thread, the system checks if the user has visited it before and highlight (in bold font – threaded/list views only) posts created after that date. The current date is then saved as the last visited date for that specific thread. On the forum front page, that date is also used to paint links as visited/unvisited. You can try visiting this forum on two different computers and you should see the same link colors on the front page (topic/post links only). Please make sure you are logged in when you make this test.

[Graham Perrin]

Hugo <Nabble> wrote

… we do have server-side tracking per user …

Oh, this is great news :-)

When did it begin? Did I miss an announcement re: introduction of the feature?

One of the reasons for me recently spending less time in Nabble Support and other Nabble apps/forums was, I thought the old routine (relying on browser history alone) was still in place.

… at this point …

The feature is here to stay? Or quietly on trial to see whether/how it affects performance etc.?

Many thanks
Graham

[Hugo <Nabble>]

Graham Perrin wrote

When did it begin? Did I miss an announcement re: introduction of the feature?

It started in january and we didn't announce this in our news app.

Graham Perrin wrote

The feature is here to stay? Or quietly on trial to see whether/how it affects performance etc.?

It is here to stay. With templates, forum owners will be allowed to change how unread messages are displayed. We just paint the color of the links because we don't want to force icons and other signs on the forum page (like other forums do), but users will be able to change that.

[Graham Perrin]

Edit: sorry, I misunderstood an earlier point as meaning, marking an entire forum/app as read.

Marking just the thread as read is ideal