Scratch

technoguyx · 2009-04-29 22:28:30

Have you seen the comment boxes? Well, you might have noticed you can only have 3 levels of replies. Example:

USER1: Message1
+- USER2: Message2
+- USER3: Message3

I find this limitation of levels annoying... Especially when, say, a person replies to a level 2 message, bringing up another topic. Example:

USER1: Do you think this project is good?
+- USER2: No it isn't. You need to fix the pen, it's too small.
+- USER3: You can adjust the pen level on the Options.
+- USER2: Oops, I didn't notice that. LEVEL 4 REPLY

This is why we need more reply levels, basically, we need to be able to reply to a reply, to a reply of a reply. And not using limited levels - In most sites of this kind the levels are infinite.

cheddargirl · 2009-04-30 00:32:06

Hmm, you know, I never knew that. Now wonder some commenters seem to comment on my level 2 reply when, by logic, it should be level 4 or higher.

I support this suggestion. I find it sometimes confusing because, in cases where more than one person has replied to a comment, trying to find who was speaking to who becomes confusing.

Paddle2See · 2009-04-30 05:40:03

Yeah, it is kind of annoying. I'm not sure why there is a limit...maybe just so the programmers don't have to deal with the screen location issues as the reply level increases. Eventually, the replies will run out of room on the right side of the screen. How do other sites deal with that issue?

technoguyx · 2009-04-30 08:38:22

Paddle2See wrote:
Yeah, it is kind of annoying. I'm not sure why there is a limit...maybe just so the programmers don't have to deal with the screen location issues as the reply level increases. Eventually, the replies will run out of room on the right side of the screen. How do other sites deal with that issue?

Well, in most of these sites there's nothing that disturbs the screen location (in our case there's this "more projects by the user" section). A solution could be either:

a) Reducing the offset, or
b) Removing the offset.

Reducing it to a tiny amount of pixels could be better, since the offset differenciates one comment from another making it clearer and nicer. And anyway, if you really need the limit, just make the limit higher - 5 to 8 is good.

cheddargirl · 2009-04-30 15:18:54

Paddle2See wrote:
Yeah, it is kind of annoying. I'm not sure why there is a limit...maybe just so the programmers don't have to deal with the screen location issues as the reply level increases. Eventually, the replies will run out of room on the right side of the screen. How do other sites deal with that issue?

One website that uses nested replies continue excess comments on another page:
Reply 1
Reply 2
Reply 3
(show more replies) <----This link goes to a page, and the replies continue there. If the replies continue to exceed that page, another page is created, and the pattern continues.

andresmh · 2009-05-01 13:17:36

One of the best models for this I've seen is in a website called reddit.com. We made a conscious decision to restrict it to 3 levels for the simplicity's sake but we might reconsider at some point.

BoltBait · 2009-05-01 15:42:17

andresmh wrote:
One of the best models for this I've seen is in a website called reddit.com. We made a conscious decision to restrict it to 3 levels for the simplicity's sake but we might reconsider at some point.

I wish you had randomly picked 4 instead of 3.