I've recently submitted a number of feedback posts, and would now like to track their status and read any replies. I don't see any way to subscribe to a thread or easily track unread replies to things I've posted. This is mandatory feature in any sort of discussion forum, otherwise it devolves into a Disqus/YouTube-style comment thread where I post an idea then never come back again.

I understand this feature is far from trivial. As such, I obviously don't expect to see a solution immediately, but it's one of main things currently preventing me from having any serious level of participation with the Handmade community.

It's already on the todo list :)

Edit: it says email subscription, but that also goes for being able to see which threads are new on the site itself.

Yeah as mentioned on stream by Casey and through the official Twitter account we're still in public beta (i.e. no formal announcement). However, I now think it a good idea to have a home-page PSA stating that fact. We're gathering reports of any and all issues through helpful members such as Dan himself. Real-world != Artificial Testing and this has been so far invaluable.

Kelimion
It's already on the todo list :)

Edit: it says email subscription, but that also goes for being able to see which threads are new on the site itself.

Brilliant! I overlooked that thread. Everything within sounds great.

abnercoimbre
Yeah as mentioned on stream by Casey and through the official Twitter account we're still in "public beta" (i.e. no formal announcement). However, I now think it a good idea to have a home-page PSA stating that fact. We're gathering reports of any and all issues through helpful members such as Dan himself. Real-world != Artificial Testing and this has been so far invaluable.

Can do. And I agree that real world testing is invaluable. Not that this is a 1.0, but I've yet to see a 1.0 version of anything that's perfect with no further patches needed until the end of time. The only way to achieve the level of software quality we're striving for is a trial by fire and iterate, iterate, iterate.

This shouldn't be confused as an endorsement for anything 'Agile'. I for one don't practice it. It's also not a condemnation of such a methodology. I'm just saying that "even the best laid plans don't survive enemy contact", or put into context of software development, "there's no substitute for real world tests."

We'd have loved to have soft-launched with a bit more polish, with all of the issues already mentioned gone before the public saw the site. Fortunately/unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the public was clamouring for preview access and that's what we given them. And yes, that includes warts. It says nothing of the planned level of features and their polish, though. We won't stop working on the site until we're happy with it ourselves, and we're probably our own biggest critics. :)

Kelimion
We'd have loved to have soft-launched with a bit more polish, with all of the issues already mentioned gone before the public saw the site. Fortunately/unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the public was clamouring for preview access and that's what we given them. And yes, that includes warts. It says nothing of the planned level of features and their polish, though. We won't stop working on the site until we're happy with it ourselves, and we're probably our own biggest critics. :)

Just to state it outright: I'm fully aware of the situation and I *love* the site so far. As I mentioned once already, the most impressive thing to me is the speed. Please, for the love of all things holy, don't add any feature which robs us of that most precious aspect.

--- (<- horizontal rule tag would be nifty)

On the subject of notification (which undoubtedly requires tracking the read state of each comment on a per-user basis), I would very much like an option which allows me to go straight to the most recently unread comment when I click on something near the post title.

The way phpBB does it is what I'm used to, but feel free to re-interpret the idea however you see fit.


Also, phpBB has a feature that I use religiously which allows me to list "All Unread Posts", including ones I haven't posted in (so, different from the subscription in that regard). This allows me to stay up-to-date with everything in an entire subsection that interests me. My workflow is usually to click this button once a day when I get home from work, and read everything that happened while I was gone. Then, throughout the evening and following morning I'll respond only to things which I'm subscribed to and which are time-sensitive, leaving everything else for the next "All Unread Post" flush.

dbechrd

Also, phpBB has a feature that I use religiously which allows me to list "All Unread Posts", including ones I haven't posted in (so, different from the subscription in that regard). This allows me to stay up-to-date with everything in an entire subsection that interests me. My workflow is usually to click this button once a day when I get home from work, and read everything that happened while I was gone. Then, throughout the evening and following morning I'll respond only to things which I'm subscribed to and which are time-sensitive, leaving everything else for the next "All Unread Post" flush.

This is what I am intending the Landing page to be like. Once we have more database support in place, I intended it to only show posts from those threads/blogs/projects you've chose to subscribe to, or replies to your own posts. Hope that helps.

dbechrd
Just to state it outright: I'm fully aware of the situation and I *love* the site so far. As I mentioned once already, the most impressive thing to me is the speed. Please, for the love of all things holy, don't add any feature which robs us of that most precious aspect.

I've worked hard on having a sane data model that allows for speed. It's already paid off to a degree, but it's still not as speedy as I'd like the site to be. Once the site's a bit more stable and maintenance is in Miblo's hands, I'll be working on the version of the backend I had in mind originally. That one has some tricks up its sleeve that allow for a static page level of performance while still allowing for dynamic content. It might also take a year to come together, which is why we'll have Miblo continuing to work on the current iteration while that branch is under development.

Edit: I should clarify that we can still squeeze more performance out of this branch of the site still. There's still a lot of tuning left to do. But beyond that, the new branch should blow even the tuned version of this codebase out of the water without breaking a sweat. :)

dbechrd
--- (<- horizontal rule tag would be nifty)

I'll add it to my todo list. Good catch.

dbechrd
On the subject of notification (which undoubtedly requires tracking the read state of each comment on a per-user basis), I would very much like an option which allows me to go straight to the most recently unread comment when I click on something near the post title.

The way phpBB does it is what I'm used to, but feel free to re-interpret the idea however you see fit.

I have an idea on how to implement the feature in a way that scales nicely, sketched out elsewhere. When I'm ready to implement it, I'll take a look at how phpbb and discourse do it, to see if they happened on something even smarter still. Thanks for the link :)

dbechrd
Also, phpBB has a feature that I use religiously which allows me to list "All Unread Posts", including ones I haven't posted in (so, different from the subscription in that regard). This allows me to stay up-to-date with everything in an entire subsection that interests me. My workflow is usually to click this button once a day when I get home from work, and read everything that happened while I was gone. Then, throughout the evening and following morning I'll respond only to things which I'm subscribed to and which are time-sensitive, leaving everything else for the next "All Unread Post" flush.

That is a nice feature, indeed. On the heap it shall go, Miblo?

dbechrd
Also, phpBB has a feature that I use religiously which allows me to list "All Unread Posts", including ones I haven't posted in (so, different from the subscription in that regard). This allows me to stay up-to-date with everything in an entire subsection that interests me. My workflow is usually to click this button once a day when I get home from work, and read everything that happened while I was gone. Then, throughout the evening and following morning I'll respond only to things which I'm subscribed to and which are time-sensitive, leaving everything else for the next "All Unread Post" flush.

ChronalDragon
This is what I am intending the Landing page to be like. Once we have more database support in place, I intended it to only show posts from those threads/blogs/projects you've chose to subscribe to, or replies to your own posts. Hope that helps.

I dig it.

All sounds great to me! Keep up the hard work, gentlemen, and thank you kindly for your rapid response times.

Edit: This is post #6666. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Fin.

abnercoimbre
Yeah as mentioned on stream by Casey and through the official Twitter account we're still in public beta (i.e. no formal announcement). However, I now think it a good idea to have a home-page PSA stating that fact. We're gathering reports of any and all issues through helpful members such as Dan himself. Real-world != Artificial Testing and this has been so far invaluable.

Nothing better than this. A user-involved process by clever developers who we can directly talk is far better than the alternatives. All in all, an excellent job so far by everyone involved. Very motivating stuff! ;D

Valmar
Nothing better than this. A user-involved process by clever developers who we can directly talk is far better than the alternatives. All in all, an excellent job so far by everyone involved. Very motivating stuff! ;D

Thanks :)