Technical stuff
March 23, 2011 in Uncategorized
We have received a lot of e-mails regarding adding features to SaabsUnited and the most wanted feature is for you readers to be able to edit your comments.
There is an option in wordpress where we can force everyone who wants to comment to be registered and logged on to the website in order to comment. In this option the user can edit the comments but it sort of takes away the freedom of just posting a comment without having to go through a login process. So here is the problem, we can either have a comments function that works like it does today, or we can force everyone to be logged on and then the users can edit the comments. But we can not have both =( We are however working on a solution for that but its going to take a bit of time…
We are also working on a facebook “like” button as well as a hybrid function regarding the comments so that all comments posted on SaabsUnited is automatically shown on our facebook website as well. You can also comment directly via facebook and that comment is automatically sent to the right place on SaabsUnited.com. This sort of integrates Facebook and SaabsUnited adding more functionality without intruding on the way the SaabsUnited functions right now =)
If you guys have any other ideas of features you would want us to add to SaabsUnited please send us an e-mail and tell us about it! =)
StefanH STHLM said on March 23, 2011
Im really longing for the section where all the sales data will be gathered.
Im part of the “We who dare to refuse Facebook” so I hope there wont be an obligatory to be a member in Facebook.
TimR said on March 23, 2011
I can assure you there will be no obligatory facebook membership but what we want to do is to allow current facebook users to have more functionality by being able to comment directly via facebook as well =)
StefanH STHLM said on March 23, 2011
Very good!
Beren Erchamion said on March 23, 2011
I like this – plus you really do have to login essentially…or at least I seem to avhe to fill out the name, email, thing every time…what a pain.
steveW said on March 23, 2011
+1 especially the Facebook bit
TTAero said on March 23, 2011
I’m also one of those few that will keep away from facebook. And only for the reason that anything left on facebook will be owned by facebook and that someone else can change the rules for sharing the information as thay like. You do not longer have the ownership of the stuff.
So my comments to SU is for the SU reader. I will not hijack this forum for this discusion, so I’ll stop here.
I like the speed of new articles and I will keep SU as a starting point of the Internet! Keep up the good work Tim and co.
Carl-Henrik said on March 23, 2011
I’m working on the Saab Sales Data (SSD as we think we will call it) section. It’s a lot to do, and right now I have tons to do at work, so most probably I’ll work it out after April 2nd.
I’m also working on a post that will explain the concept and how we think it will work for all you readers here first, so you can give us an opinion before we launch it.
CraigSu said on March 23, 2011
I’m fine with requiring a login so I can edit my comments. This is standard operating procedure on the other car blogs I inhabit so I don’t see it as intrusive.
I do not however wish for comments I make here on SU to be automagically transferred to the Facebook page. If there is a checkbox to allow/disallow my content to cross-post to Facebook then I’m OK with that.
boby said on March 23, 2011
I’m fine with not being able to edit your comments. Afterall, when you are having normal verbal conversation you are not really able to “edit” what you just said, right? Why should it be different here? If you make a typo, so be it, big deal. If you regret what you just said – well perhaps you should think before writing/speaking.
My 2 cents…
CraigSu said on March 23, 2011
But it is helpful if you have a follow-on thought that would allow you to clarify or further expound on what you just wrote without having to write a reply to your reply.
Typos are certainly the responsibility of the owner, just like using an incorrect or inappropriate word in a conversation. Once it’s out it can’t go back in.
Nico said on March 23, 2011
I disagree with the editing function. If a dialogue continues regarding a certain post, it makes no sense in having the ability to change the beginning. “Replying” is what keeps the conversation going. Like I just did. If CraigSu changed his opinion, my reply would make no sense.
Nico
CraigSu said on March 23, 2011
But I don’t use the Edit feature to change my mind. That’s what the replies are for.
) I use the Edit feature only for clarification to avoid potential confusion on the part of the commentariat regarding the original intent of my post. Admittedly, this could also be accomplished somewhat by the inclusion of a Preview feature to allow posters to read through what they’re about to post to make certain it makes sense.
An Edit feature doesn’t have to be permanent for a post either. The other blogs I inhabit that have edit functionality use timers of anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. I understand your concern that commenters would be able to change their post in order to convey an “I never said that” mentality, but civilized forum members wouldn’t do that, IMO.
CraigSu said on March 23, 2011
Now I wish I had an Edit/Preview feature to change my emoticon! It should have been an O-face, not a Sad face. which the site apparently doesn’t interpret properly. I knew this would happen…LOL.
Troels, Denmark said on March 23, 2011
I guess we are some people here, who is not very strong en the English language. Being one of them I appreciate very much the possibility to edit my comments before posting!
Toby said on March 23, 2011
It is something I have asked for directly-what if you type hastily and post then re-read your comments and it makes little sense or is badly spelt or punctuated it would be nice to tidy up one’s remarks…its not strictly necessary..I should be a better proof reader in an ideal world, but its a nice to have…I don’t think it will be used to change arguments; that’s just carpricious and we’re all nice folks here.
I just pride my self on the use of the english language and it grates on me when I post and it looks amateurish.
tupolev141 said on March 23, 2011
I agree that not being able to edit your post makes you perhaps think twice when writing something, especially should emotions flare. However, when I write a post on the internet and I spot a spelling -or even worse, a grammatical- error I could kick myself, even if it’s not my native language. I’m afraid I’m a bit of a self-punishing spelling nazi
hughw said on March 23, 2011
I’m for editing comments and don’t mind logging in, especially if there’s a way to log in and stay logged in from session to setting unless you specifically log out. This functionality exists on several forums I belong to as well as the continental airlines website.
Lasse said on March 23, 2011
I am fine with today’s system. In my view, the current commenting function is fully sufficient. Access is easy whereever you are, the ‘reply’ function works fine, just as the ‘recent comments’ list on the upper right side of the page.
In my view, any login procedure would make commenting more complicated. Plus that I don’t see the benefits with being able to edit my comments. And I too would not like any automatic transfer of comments to Facebook.
GerritN said on March 23, 2011
I don’t really care, as long as the same functionality is present, editing is kind of low on my list of priorities.
Strangely enough this blog has stayed a decent place over the years without requiring people to register. Somehow the shouters, trolls, etc. have stayed away.
Integration with facebook is OK as long as the same functionality stays for the main blog. I have to use facebook a couple of times a week, but I’m not a big fan, I don’t care whether or not I have 5000 ‘friends’, my ego is big enough already. I second the comment by CraigSu that nothing that we right on SU should in any way be connected to facebook.
David Z said on March 23, 2011
I think that “somehow” is Swade. Until today, Swade has been the entire reason we have no trolls, etc. The Saab community is a particularly great community to start with, but we all know there are the occasional trolls and shouters on our beloved Saab forums.
In any case, would it make sense to put up a poll asking readers whether we want to be able to edit comments or not? Then after X days, a simple majority rule will decide.
TurboLover said on March 23, 2011
I’m very much againt log in, it hinders new persons to comment. Editing is not nececery
Henrik said on March 23, 2011
+1!
Niklas D said on March 23, 2011
+1
No log in please!
North Toronto Punter said on March 23, 2011
Join the train of those who do not want an automatic Facebook link.
Have craved an ‘edit’ function but wondering whether it will make me even more self- conscious (and disatisfied!) about my own postings. Because now there will be no excuse for a poorly written entry
.
If at some point, Tim, you can cater for both constituencies…
Michael said on March 23, 2011
+1 on Facebook link, I don’t like them at all.
Could only be used if there is much popularity gain from them. Anyway, it looks ugly and I usually block it. The purpose of “liking” is also unclear to me.
Jeff said on March 23, 2011
Maybe for now just post a reply to your own comment saying something like-
EDIT: I just realized….
Then one of the writers could go through and edit your comment for you as we read it. It’s sort of a half-baked solution for now, but I read every comment here, and I’m happy to edit comments if I’m asked to. Whatever makes everyone happy, I’m good with
derek said on March 23, 2011
GIven the choice of logging in or not editing comments, I prefer the current system. Too many passwords to remember.
martinsaab said on March 23, 2011
I am fine with the status quo, too.
Maybe an optional preview button before clicking “Submit” would be fine to avoid typos.
As soon as we get stupid or annoying entries, we can go to a register first” version…
(my 2 cents)
Belfast_saab said on March 23, 2011
+1 re the preiview button, sufficient and useful
No to Facebook replicating comments made here, fine the other way around.
Rostnes said on March 23, 2011
I really don´t see the point of making people log in to make posts. That makes it a little bit less userfriendly to use SU. Today it´s easy to read articles, comments and to make your own comment, just write whats on your mind.
Editing posts, come on……..it only makes it more difficult to follow a thread.
aZuL2001 said on March 23, 2011
Imho (in my humble opinion) SU is no Facebook.
If the writers of articles choose to crosspost that to facebook, then that’s their choice.
But personally i don’t need (to put it mildly) my comments on facebook.
Can’t imagine the added value of being able to comment from facebook on SU besides the big “it’s so easy / i’m so lazy” argument.
Editing comments is not a feature that i would put a lot of effort in. Let the user think before he/she posts.
Besides that, it’s potential killing for a conversation, as stated before.
Preview button could be useful, more useful then editing comments.
(one can always email the team to have a post trashed if it’s necessary i guess)
Another worthless 2 ct’s post
saabyurk said on March 23, 2011
+1. Now it’s worth 4 ct’s.
till72 said on March 24, 2011
+1 to make it 6 ct
Red J said on March 24, 2011
+47
Now we have $1
Should be enough to finance a No-facebook petition.
maanders said on March 23, 2011
I agree with those that like the option now of not logging in and still being able to post comments. I realize that a comment edit function would be nice, and I understand why (right now) it is only possible to offer that feature if users are logged in, but I don’t feel I need edit badly enough to choose the option of having to log in. (I know other sites do that, and I use some of them, but as many have said….it gets to be a lot of passwords to remember…unless you reuse passwords, which is never a good idea.)
You mentioned that you may be working on a solution (that will take longer) that would not force a binary choice for this feature. If that can be solved, that would be the best solution, but in the meantime, I am OK with the way it is today.
Wulf said on March 23, 2011
It used to be possible to edit your comments within one hour, even without a login. Or perhaps that was on trollhattansaab.net?
It would be nice to be able correct typos or other small errors for a short amount of time. But having to create an account and log in would limit spontaneous responses from many.
Some Facebook connectivity would be nice but having all comments available there would limit traffic to SU and the community feel here. I associate SU with quality and Facebook with trivial. Don’t mix up the two.
CraigSu said on March 23, 2011
What everyone opposed to the idea of logins seems to be missing is the ability to have your login/password cached. Maybe this is only a feature of Firefox, but for every site I visit that requires a login I tell Firefox to remember my login/password when I return to the site. I do not have to login to these sites again as Firefox will do it for me. Thus, I do not have to remember myriads of passwords for all of my bookmarked sites. If for any reason my site profile is corrupted then the website will email my password to me so that I can rejoin the site. Is Firefox the only browser that offers this feature?
Jake said on March 23, 2011
If you were to use a login-type service, use OpenID compatible accounts, please: Not everyone has a wordpress account, and some people don’t feel like making one.
Furthermore, I’m also one of the outliers who doesn’t, and doesn’t want a, Facebook account… I don’t mind my comments being liked/posted on SU’s Facebook page, as long as I don’t have to make an account.
I feel as though more people will side with me, or already have. (I didn’t have time to read all of the above comments…)
J Fan said on March 23, 2011
I’m against the register/login bit as, others have said, it might prevent newcomers from commenting. Sometimes on here we get some great info from some dealer or fomer Saab worker who just happened to come across this site. Also, everyday on the internet I come across sites/articles I would like to comment on, but most of the time, you must register or login to post a comment, which is when I think to myself ‘why bother?’ and leave…
I’m also against the facebook stuff, but if you guys want to do it, and it doesn’t affect non-facebook people like me, then by all means. I’m happy for the SAAB name to be out there in as many media as possible.
khrisdk said on March 23, 2011
It is possible to have all things.
Most can be done with one or two WP plugins
But everything has some kind of price either in additional restricions or loss of privacy.
I personally would like to have comments pushed from FB to WP, no WP push to FB, simply because it is not necessary and just fills up. You can go to the post from FB.
I don’t like like buttons, but love share buttons.
I would never ask people to log in to comment on WP, but let people choose to login with their FB accounts if they want as replacement for nick and mail.
Lots of options, and lots of possibilities.
But the main point is to make everything as easy to use as possible.
Thats what generates life
ivo 71 said on March 23, 2011
Personally, I’m not in favour of a log-in procedure each time I visit SU. It makes entry more difficult for first-timers and more annoying for existing members. I have, actually, left other fora for just that reason. If, however, a permanent log-in functionality is offered then I would tolerate it. Don’t really need an edit-function myself but if others do then I will bow to their wishes if this is the only way to have it here.
As to editing: you can always compose a posting in Word or whatever text editor you use, edit it to perfection there, even run it through a spellchecker if you want and then copy/paste it into the comment window. Doesn’t take more than a few seconds if you keep an extra tab with the editor open and switch between the two tabs. It’s ideal for longer comments. And rants
.
As to simultaneous crossposting from SU to Facebook: I am not on Facebook (or twitter or whatever other social media) and never will be due to privacy issues, as touched upon by others. If this crosspollination from SU to FB becomes standard practice on SU then I will have to stop commenting here, which is something that I really, really don’t want to have to resort to. I am not, however, against a button facilitating -one/off or automatic- cross-posting of your own brainfruits IF YOU WANT THAT. It’s the idea of ‘everyone’ and ‘automatic’ that I object to.
Ivo
CraigSu said on March 23, 2011
You know, technically speaking, in order to comment on this site you have to “login” by entering your name and email address before your comment will post. And you have to do this for every single comment.
The login that TimR is proposing in order to allow editing would mean a single login to the site only if you wish to comment. No login is required to view the site. Tim, please correct me if I’m wrong. I’m not trying to push the login for its own merits, I just want everyone to understand what would be involved in the process so an informed decision can be made.
On a side note, one of the things that I really appreciate about SU is the civility of the commentariat, regardless of how divided our opinions may be.
SaabR said on March 23, 2011
I personally don’t mind keeping the site the way it is. There are many times when an edit function would be mis-used, like mentioned above to change the whole point of the comment or conversation. As was also mentioned, look before you leap/think before you speak is the self-moderating nature of this site (for the most part!). As for the spelling/grammar police, who rely caerz if its’ rite on not? If the point i cler enogh, hte speling is ireluvat. My point is that, while I also am annoyed when (not if!) I make a typo, if the whole tone of a conversation can be changed or lost because a part of it disappears, I don’t see the value. You can’t edit in real life but you can certainly use your brain to preview yourself first!
Alastair said on March 23, 2011
Not sure if this is a feature of a SAABist psyche that many of us are anti-Facebook (myself included). I agree with Wulf in that I see Facebook (like Twitter) as total trivia whereas I see this blog site as the real deal for SAAB enthusiasts. Linking both in my opinion will attract the undesirables that we have so far been able to keep at distance.
As far as an editing function goes, if worried about grammar or whatever compose the blog in Word or whatever and copy/paste accordingly.
Tom said on March 23, 2011
I thought about this and after much deliberation: I’m in the no-log in camp. That’s how the other Saab boards are run and I don’t mind it at all.
Tom said on March 23, 2011
RE FB: Not sure how that will work but I am very much against meshing my blog postings with my FB account. If my comments showed up, or were somehow linked to my FB profile, I would opt not to post (which may be a good thing! ha!
).
Tiago do Vale said on March 23, 2011
I’m warm about facebook integration…
If “liking” or “sharing” a post allows us to publish an SU post (or a link to it) in our wall, I think it’s a good idea: it increases SU’s exposure and I’d support that greatly.
To have an SU’s post automatically published on SU’s facebook page is also a good idea (though preferably just a link to it, or it could decrease the site’s visits/clicks numbers).
But about the comments:
If SU’s comment system is integrated with SU’s facebook page (within its respective post, probably), I’m all for it.
If it is integrated with my facebook wall, I need it to be, at least, optional…
(Though I suspect the answer is “both”. If it is, I can survive deleting them from my wall, but I’d rather not have to do that.)
Tiago do Vale said on March 23, 2011
About login in: I don’t mind, it’s not a big deal.
Editing is a nice useful feature.
It can be used to alter the content of a discussion, but I don’t see that happening that much here.
A limited time to edit and an automatic stamp stating the editing time and author can help with that too.
Steve C. said on March 23, 2011
Great comments here on the edit featue and the linking to Facebook. If at a future time we can get the ability to edit our own comments without changing anything else, that would be ideal. I’m assuming an edit feature is to go back to a comment already posted and change it. Every once in a while I’ve wanted to go back and fix a typo but I don’t see an edit feature being used by the vast majority of commenters. A reply to one of your comments can serve to clarify a point after the fact.
Regarding Facebook, I’m one of those who don’t want to be a Facebook user. I’m trying to imagine comments from SU appearing there. I’m assuming it would be somewhat like what is shown on the right side of a SU page after scrolling down one page. It seems to me that comments from various current posts would be intermingled and there wouldn’t be any context like you get on a post page with all the comments.
Swade did some experimentation with commenting (we tried intense debade mode at one time) and we came back to what we have today that is something close to the original method. The buttons for bold, italic, links and quotes are handy “editing” tools.
Finally, the need to put in user name and e-mail does serve as a login of sorts. It allows me to use a gravitar and posts won’ t wait for moderation if you have been “approved.” I’m happy with the way it works.
Niki_D said on March 23, 2011
As I started reeding the komments there were 46 off them. Annyone ho oanted to edit their enties? Sorry, entries?
Sorry, but keep it simple. No log in. Only if some ‘objects’ started trashing the conversation.
I’m also a bit unsure why the link to FB. Don’t understand why.
smoke_jaguar4 said on March 24, 2011
Separate issue:
I’m visiting SU on my blackberry. The frontpage is mobile friendly. The articles, however, still render with the standard view. Would it be possible to extend the mobile view to the articles?
Alex said on March 24, 2011
hello all! sorry don’t read all comments… please make photos clickable… have problem with RSS on Android.. can not renew feed..((
Cheers from Russia.
Alex said on March 24, 2011
i told about this photo (http://www.saabsunited.com/2011/03/car-and-driver-waiting-for-saab-92.html) ..
Roger said on March 24, 2011
I don’t want to leave SU when clicking a link to another site. I just wan’t the link in another browser window or a new tab. Please correct this!
Börjesson said on March 24, 2011
I don’t do Facebook. I never have and I never will. Also, I’ve noticed on other blogs that all these Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us, AddThis, TweetThis and whatever buttons tend to slow sites down, so as far as that goes, I’m against it. But then again, I’m a retrogressive reactionary who distrusts anything new, so never mind me.
As regards editing, the ideal for me would be if you could choose to login with a WordPress account, OpenID, Google – the usual suspects – and get editing possibilities that way, but it should still be possible to comment like today, with name and e-mail but without login and without editing. Someone suggested a time limit on how long it should be possible to edit a comment, and that’s also a good idea. Editing should just be for fixing typos spotted soon after posting, and not for changing your mind long after others have already responded to your initial comment.
nicke said on March 24, 2011
i think you should leave it like it is, but no more BMW commersial as i see sometimes.. just wrong!
I love the site as it is.. if you type wrong, just correct it in a new comment..
editing in no good idea i think..