Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

A proposal to improve the current way of commenting in maemo.org by using the excellent Talk infrastructure.

Task:Comments2Talk

No less important, also a way to increase the awareness and participation among the post-ITt users in what is cool and fresh in maemo.org.

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

Interesting idea.

First off, if implemented, I would say have a new thread created automatically for new applications. This could be done with some kind of "DownloadsBot" account, and all new threads would go in the Applications forum, I assume. The new thread should contain all information the downloads page does, including a link to the downloads page.

As for major version releases... I think it's a simple matter of comparing version numbers. All applications should be required to follow the versioning scheme (major).(minor).(bugfix)-(package revision), as is stated by the packaging guidelines. Then, we just check if the major version number has changed. If it has, start a new thread, because old comments probably don't apply anymore. For minor versions that fix a bug someone commented about, people can edit their posts.

The next question is: do we want to use these threads only for review, or also for general discussion about the application? If only for review, a new forum specifically for these threads should be created. I would recommend this case, because I imagine the last five or so comments being embedded on the application's page.

Of course, all these comments assume that this system will actually be implemented. Is there a reason for moving over? Is there a specific problem with the current system that we want to fix by doing this? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I see the "bridging the community" point, but is this really better?

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

I am interested in working on this task, not sure how, but ideas and grunt work, count me in.

This goes for http://wiki.maemo.org/Talk:Task:Maemo_brainstorm also
pb

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

Thanks!

There has been a first round of internal testing to polish the roughest edges before calling it an alpha and publish the super-secret URL here for wider feedback. You can ping Henri and Oskari in the maemo-community lists or here (Henri = bergie here and in #maemo) for more information.

I'm only a messenger and a fan of this feature.

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

I think this is similar to what I suggested a while ago for raising wareness about and commenting on the maemo community council's blog posts...

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

We use a combined forum/comments system on All About Symbian and it works very well.

Many people follow our content through the website, many follow it through our forums, and combining the systems allows these two groups to talk to each other seamlessly.

It also makes it much easier for the people posting content on AAS, because it gets their content noticed by all of the site's readers.

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

Ooops, actually all this comment was about the Brainstorm, not about the bridge betwen Talk and those maemo.org sections with comments. There is nothing done in this respect that I know. We will discuss it in the June sprint meeting, probably.

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

I created a plug-in to bridge the forums (vBulletin) and itT's blog system (Wordpress). I'm sure the same script can be adapted to any maemo.org system. I just need to give access to maemo.org's server to Talk's database so this can be done.

Another option is, we can run some parts of maemo.org on a blog engine like Wordpress (maybe the council's blog, news, etc) directly on Talk's server. I can just then run my plug-in to link the blog to the forums. I can take ownership of that project if needed.

What's good with Wordpress is, it has downloadable lightweight clients on most mobile devices, so it's easy to post an entry anywhere you are.

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

While it is easy to dream up this idea, implementing this isn't. Just because the sites look the same, doesn't mean they will automatically interface correctly! :)

There are lots of technical reasons why this is not easy.
- SSO needs to be in place, no matter what.
- 2 completely different systems need to know of each other. A news item for instance needs to know how many comments there are.
- Some kind of mapping needs to be done between topics on maemo.org and threads on talk.
- database on the other side of the world is slow at best. (A lot of round trips are needed)
- posting comments to talk while browsing on maemo.org can't be done with ajax. (cross domain/host posts aren't allowed)

So there would need to be some kind of replication or server side communication in the background. A lot of details to think of....

Doable? Yes
Easy? No ;)

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

I don't think it's as complicated as you might think, Niels.

• I will give access to maemo.org's server (IP) to Talk's MySQL database.
• PHP will handle connection direct to Talk's database
• Create a 'threadid' column for article and app tables to store the newly created thread id in Talk
• Comment count can all be queried directly from the database via the threadid
• Thread creator can be a special forum user like 'NewsBot', 'AppBot', or 'BlogBot', to bypass SSO requirement

If this is a problem on your side, I can create something on my side. All you need to do is call a hidden page when a new item is created in maemo.org, passing the id of an XML/JSON feed containing details of the new item -- like type (news, app, blog, etc), title, description, unique ID, etc., and I will create the new thread in Talk. You still need to connect to Talk's database though to query for the total comments, unless you prefer that I pass it via XML/JSON back to you.

No ajax needed if you have direct access to the database via PHP. You can use ajax though to get the current number of comments from a script that I can gladly create for you.

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

The latency I'm talking about is this:

maemo.org webserver has to do several queries to the talk database. If I ping your server from maemo.org, I get about 150ms delay.

If I need to do 10 queries(Which is probably far too low) it takes at least 1.5 seconds to get the data. And I'm not counting work and datatransfers at that time. If you have parts in your script where you need data that is fetched in a previous query, this will increase more. And all this time no data is sent out to the user.

Whenever you run your database server and webserver at different locations, you really start to see this effect.

Another question is, how would you render the comments inside a maemo.org page?

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

I understand where you are coming from Niels, but several things can be done to optimize performance.

If you are are writing to Talk's database, the delay is almost not important since the routine (when adding news, blog entry, or app) is called the same time when the entry is saved to maemo.org's server. And as I have mentioned, you can even call a Talk page so I can create the thread on my side.

Now if you are concerned about multiple queries on Talk's database then don't run queries. Let me feed you data and render them asynchronously (ajax), just after the whole page is rendered. I see that you are running jQuery on maemo.org. It should work nicely.

With regards to your question of rendering comments, no, we shouldn't render the same comments in maemo.org from Talk. The only info you need to display is the number of comments (e.g. 25 comments.) from the corresponding thread at Talk. A link on the number of comments will redirect the user to the discussion in Talk.

Before we talk about how slow it will be, trying it out first might be worth a shot.

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

(I'm actually learning some things from this thread.) ;)

Tim

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

That's^ actually pretty slick...

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

Yes, this part should not be that big of a problem.

As I said before, ajax isn't possible between domains, because your browser doesn't allow that?

If we only provide a link to comments, we lose functionality. The whole idea in downloads, brainstorm and news is that we show the comments underneath the item. Adding a click through is not improving it?

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

I do this everytime, reading RSS, XML, JSON, or directly loading the contents of a page from other domains into a DIV. Here are all the examples for jQuery (see Ajax Requests section): http://docs.jquery.com/Ajax

I think one of the goals here is to bring the discussion to one common place -- which is to Talk, well at least this is how I understood it from Quim: http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Comments2Talk.

If in any case, the comments need to be displayed, again it can be loaded asynchronously -- I can pass the whole comments set (by page, if needed) in XML/JSON.

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

It IS possible to have forum threads posted as comments on the site pages too, like I said before we do that on All About Symbian/N-Gage:

Here's a site page:

http://www.allaboutngage.com/news/it...ual_world_.php

Here's the forum thread for its comments:

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/forum...849&styleid=23

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

Alright, now I'm understanding the possibilities and limitations much better. Thanks for the discussion.

Niels really thinks that the comments should be visible in the same page, otherwise is a loss of functionality. Mmmm alright, but only to cede on something so you cede on something else. ;)

For instance, any problem if the comments are posted in tmo and only in tmo? (no interface for posting in e.g. Brainstorm).

Tradeoffs we could take:

- The comments are not fully synced in real-time. No problem if there are some minutes of lag. If someone wants to post she wil go to the thread in tmo and there will find out that there are more comments in the very last minutes. Not a big deal.

- Until we have SSO, users need to have accounts in maemo.org and tmo. Well, not a big deal either. Pure newcomers or lurkers will have enough rating a solution up/down in maemo.org. If you feel like commenting probably you want a tmo account anyway.

Are there more tradeoffs? I can't come up with any.

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

It's a laudable goal. Other possible problems with the solutions outlined:

• Accesssibility for blind/partially-sighted users, or those with JavaScript turned off/unavailable, will suck.
• Search engines won't cope well with the AJAX/iframe included content if it's done on the browser side.
• Pages could appear somewhat "oddly", as the content gets loaded and then the comments underneath.
• I most use the "quick reply" function - not having something similar on downloads/brainstorm/news would really hurt usability IMHO
• Without account synchronisation/linking for a lot of people (let alone SSO), I worry about the usability of trying to transparently present two systems as one. Username differences and how flexible are the ITT/talk profile URLs in a maemo.org account? Lots of possiblity for user error.
• How do we ensure that the context of the brainstorm/download/news page is presented when users just view through tmo? The Wordpress article copied the text - which seemed to work quite well for text-heavy stuff like blog posts; but what about downloads?

A use case:

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

I would be fine with a RSS-like system resulting in standard HTML pages.

Ah, the tough questions. :) Maybe Niels and you are right after all...

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

If JS is turned off, they won't see much of anything right now in maemo.org and tmo. ;)

No need for search engines to crawl the comments that are displayed via ajax as the actual text will get crawled direct from tmo anyway.

Maybe a fixed height with a vertical scrollbar?

How about allowing anonymous replies? This will not be globally throughout tmo, but just for forums that are linked to maemo.org articles and apps.

On the short-lived itT Software Section, what I dis was, everytime a developer changes the app's version, a new discussion thread gets created, displaying the short description of the app, as well as text of changes made on the current version.

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

We had a meeting related to this and other stuff with Tero today, and the plan is to open up the super-secret URL this week so we can get comments from a wider audience.

Dave is working on the plan about the workflow, and hopefully that will be published soon, so we can discuss not only the software side of Brainstorm, but the human and procedure side of it too.

As for using the Talk infrastructure for handling all maemo.org discussions (I'd take this to Downloads and News as well once we're at it)...

Definitely a good idea. Here we have a much more active discussion community than on the main site. And this way members would have only a single location to monitor for new comments and discussion.

However, as such integration requires both the SSO to be in place, and some other tasks, I'd propose first launching Brainstorm with in-site comments and later switching all commenting to use Talk.

Otherwise the Brainstorm launch will be overloaded with Talk-related issues, stealing focus from the actual point of idea brainstorming.

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

I'm not really eager about making comments just a JS widget... tools like Disqus are IMO quite clunky, as anyway then the comments interaction is "outside the site itself" which will not feel very natural or integrated.

What I'd do instead is make maemo.org synchronize the comments between a thread in Midgard database and the Talk database. This way users can comment and read via both interfaces.

See our current data model, it'd be easy to add a "Talk thread ID" for each item. Now we track commenting threads based on object GUID that is being commented as the comments widget in Midgard can be attached to any content type.

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

I agree that Disqus is clunky. It can be done better though. You can see better integration on say YouTube video comments (comments refresh when changing pages) and CNN videos (list of videos below refreshes based on category you pick).

This can be done. A potential problem that I see here is the bi-directional synchronization. A version upgrade on either Midgrad or vBulletin can easily create potential problems. I am for bridging systems but the lesser functionality on the bridge component, the better.

Going back to quim's main post, what is stopping us on dropping the current Midgrad comment system and moving all the discussion (news, downloads, brainstorm) in Talk?

Re: Proposal: Use Talk as framework for comments in Brainstorm, Downloads and News
 

Nothing in particular, it just needs to be planned and implemented properly. And even better if SSO is in place by then.