Subject:
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Re: Unifying LUGNET user types
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.general
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Date:
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Sat, 10 May 2003 00:12:30 GMT
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Viewed:
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778 times
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In lugnet.admin.general, Jake McKee writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Tobbe Arnesson writes:
> > > * do enhanced newsgroup browsing [future], including:
> > > * store articles in arbitrary named folders[3]
> > > * tracking of read articles across browsers
> >
> > YAY!
> >
> > (not that the other enhancements sound bad or less good but this is
> > something I've been swearing about)
Tobbe, I assume you're referring to the "tracking of read articles across
browsers" feature? Ya, note that these are tagged "future," meaning they
aren't on any short to-do list at the moment. I included these in the list
mainly as an example to help show the difference in member types. So no
promises about when that'll happen. However: about half of the code for
this feature is complete. This feature is something I keep on the back
burner and chip away at a little bit at a time when I get inspired or make a
breakthrough in a related area. For example, a side-effect of the December
2000 ground-up rewrite of the news search engine is that all the articles in
the system are now indexed internally by a global integer (which started
counting upward from 1 in 1998 and has just passed the 400,000 mark
recently), paving the way for efficient, giant bit-flag fields on a person-
by-person basis. Tracking the read/unread status of one million articles,
for example, only requires 128KB of disk space under this index method. I'd
give you more background on this but I can't seem to find the discussions
about it at the moment.
> Would this allow you to "bookmark" interesting threads you want to follow?
Jake, I assume you're referring to the "arbitrary named folders" feature?
That's a good question. The short answer is yes (but again, no promises on
a timeframe). The full answer is: The folder feature really has three
applications, one of which is essentially bookmarking:
1. The first applications is where you're viewing an article and you think,
"Hey, hmm, that's an interesting article...I want to save it," and you move
it to your personal "Save" folder. Or maybe you move it to a "Respond to
later" folder... or maybe a "Read later" folder. And then you can jump
between your own folders and view what's in them, and move things to other
folders or to the trash, etc.
This part is about 75% completed internally. The incomplete 25% is the
user interface (the drop-down lists for folder names and views and all that).
I have no idea how this'll look yet. Well, OK, I have some idea, but Suzanne
and I haven't worked through the details of it yet.
2. The second application is where you specify some criteria by which the
system _automatically_ places things into your folders. The first part is
all manual. This part is automatic. My hope is that you'll be able to say
things like "watch this thread" and "track all the follow-ups to my posts"
and "coalesce articles from these three groups into a virtual group in this
named folder" and "watch everything that's an official announcement from
LEGO," etc., etc.
This part is about 1% complete. The proof-of-concept on this was the
following:
http://news.lugnet.com/folder.cgi?f=PostedBy/LEGO
That's all the articles posted by someone from an @lego.com address in the
past month. It's kept up-to-date hourly. Similarly, there's this, which
you might find useful:
http://news.lugnet.com/folder.cgi?f=RepliesTo/LEGO
That's all the nodes below you on all the threads in the past month, and
it's also kept up-to-date hourly.
Again, as I said, it is my _hope_ to provide this in a general way that you
can configure as you please. This isn't a promised feature and it's barely
even a prototype.
3. The third application is where you specify that one of your folders
should automatically pull content from someone else's public folder. Thus,
I might set up a folder for myself that collected together anything that
(oh, let's pick three Space names) Jon Palmer, Mark Sandlin, and Tony Hafner
thought was interesting enough to throw into their public "Interesting"
folder. Now I've got my very own special spotlight-type display, custom-
tailored just for me. This aspect of the folder feature is one likely
initial way that the blogging/channels stuff we brainstormed about in 2000
could be implemented:
http://news.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=4750&t=i&v=b
4. Oh and I guess a fourth aspect is that, if you designate a folder as
publicly writable (or appendable), then _other people_ would be able to put
articles into _your_ folder for you to read! Shiri Dori and James Brown
summed it up best:
http://news.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=4858
http://news.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=4802
And, because the new Spotlight implementation (from last summer) already
uses the folder paradigm, the way that Spotlight gets into a sidebar or a
member page is by saying <<NewsSpotlight(lugnet.foo.foo)>>. That, however,
is merely a shortcut for a more general syntax where you embed any folder
(not just a Spotlight folder). Thus: Any folder that you can create, you
can embed in a page on LUGNET.
If this all sounds complicated, don't worry -- it's actually simple, but
just sounds complicated because of its power and flexibility. The interface
will be as simple, straightforward, and friendly as we can make it.
OK, finally, let me reiterate that this is -not- currently on a to-do-soon
list, although I'm sure a portion or two of the functionality will probably
go live within 3-6 months, since it's so close now already.
--Todd
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