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3.1 request. "Favorite Posts"


Wolfie

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I installed the favorites mod on my vbulletin about a year ago. It's pretty useful.

What would be even cooler is if you could have the option to display your favorites publicly on your profile. If I find a user to share similar interests, naturally I wouldn't mind browsing his favorite threads on the same forum I frequent.

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Filtering your 4/5 star posts? What about posts by other people, the posts that you want to be able to get to quickly without searching pages of search results?




What I meant was posts that you had rated 4 or 5 stars not posts of yours that had been rated 4 or 5 stars.

I can see your point about bookmarks but adding this into the pot gives the end user a lot to think about. Bookmarks, ratings, reputation, watched topics etc it all becomes quickly overwhelming. If you want to bookmark something then your browser/social bookmark sites are the perfect tool for the job. And come on realistically how many sites are going to move domains? Yes it will happen but should a new feature be added to cater for a tiny fraction of users on a tiny fraction of sites when similar functionality is already available.
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What I meant was posts that you had rated 4 or 5 stars not posts of yours that had been rated 4 or 5 stars.



I can see your point about bookmarks but adding this into the pot gives the end user a lot to think about. Bookmarks, ratings, reputation, watched topics etc it all becomes quickly overwhelming. If you want to bookmark something then your browser/social bookmark sites are the perfect tool for the job. And come on realistically how many sites are going to move domains? Yes it will happen but should a new feature be added to cater for a tiny fraction of users on a tiny fraction of sites when similar functionality is already available.



The drawback to external sites/sources linking to it is that over time, those links can become invalid for any number of reasons. If the URL changes even slightly, then the external link is no longer good. The URL can change for any number of reasons, be it a domain name change, folder location or even because the parsing method is altered in the programming.

The pro of keeping it on an individual site, aside from links being dynamically generated and will therefore always be valid is that if the content is removed, then where a link would be, there can be a warning that the content is no longer available (either deleted or they don't have access to it anymore). Not only that, but if it were made available for sharing with others, then those who view those favorites wouldn't see links that won't work for them. "I keep clicking the links but almost all of them are in areas I can't access!" Well, if it's internal to the site, then that can be prevented by not letting them see that particular link.

When you have one central source of all your links, then it can become a chore to maintain. If you want to tidy things up a bit, then you have an overwhelming number of links to sort through. If you only have to worry about links on that individual site, ie, the favorite posts, then you have fewer to worry about. Not to mention that if somehow, for some reason, you lose access to one of those external sources (such as your web-browser because your computer HD went bad, or a site goes down and never returns), then you lose it all. With this, if the board goes down, then the links wouldn't do you any good anyway, so in a way, the work of removing them is already done for you.

Let's also consider the fact that such a feature on different sites actually proves to be very popular. Look at places like Amazon, where you mark an item as "save for later". Using the same argument of using external sites, why not just do that instead of using an internal resource? If you use an external site to bookmark it, then others can see what you are looking to buy and that would be helpful to others. So should Amazon force people to use external methods for linking to specific products that they want to be able to easily access?

You mention about members feeling overwhelmed by the different features. How so? They're not forced to rate a topic, post, member, etc. That's all optional. As mentioned before though, just because someone gives a good rating to a topic or a + to a post, it doesn't mean that it's a favorite of theirs. They may feel that it was a high quality post thus the + or may feel it's a topic worth of 4 or 5 stars BUT not a topic that they want to always be able to find quickly in the future. There is the assumption that one means the other, instead of keeping in mind that different people do things differently. Also remember that the idea is to find a specific post, regardless of if the topic continues to get new posts or not.

There's also the statistical aspect of things. Let's say that someone is always providing help or useful information and their posts get a + here and there. Yeah you could look for all of their posts that have + points, but if you look at the total points alone, that could prove inaccurate because they could get - points too. If you look solely at the + points, then what if they got the points because people liked the post or what was said BUT it's not a favorite or wasn't helpful, only funny or something? It's likely something that people might + but wouldn't exactly want to be able to find later on. With the bookmarking idea, if people are clicking on certain posts and those posts are generally helpful posts, then it's easy to figure out who the member is with the larger number of helpful posts. You can't take away from the number of people who have bookmarked it, unless someone removes it as a bookmark. With the post rep points, if 5 people + the post and 5 people - the post, then it's at 0. With bookmarks, if 5 people mark it, then it's got 5, period. People aren't likely to bookmark a post in place of a reputation point so if they do mark a post, its usually because it's content they want to keep within easy reach of finding.

There are so many reasons for having it and it's one that would be useful for all levels of board usage (business, hobbyist, etc).

:)
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There are so many reasons for having it and it's one that would be useful for all levels of board usage (business, hobbyist, etc).



:)



:thumbsup: I just +1'd this post, because I strongly agree with it.

However, I have no desire to ever read it again so I wouldn't bookmark it.
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I'm not saying it isn't desired functionality and you've demonstrated quite well that there are situations where it would be useful but the implementation needs very careful thought. Simply slapping on a bookmarks feature on top of what's already there will just confuse a lot of users. If some of these things could be consolidated like gas been done with notifications in 3.1 then I'm all for it.

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Love the idea.
From time to time on this forum i come across some topics i really want to save for later, but dont want to add to my browsers favorites (i like to keep it tidy :P), and the favorites system would be perfect for this assuming you get a proper system for viewing and handling all favorites.

Beside, it's already in place in some of the official addons ;)

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Supposedly there's going to be social bookmarking pre-included in v3.1, which would be sort of nice, but still would be nice to have internal bookmarking.

Social bookmarks for those posts you want to share with others that may or may not be on that site.
Favorites (personal bookmarks) for those posts you wish to keep at an easy reach, store and 'maintained' on the board.

I see the personal bookmarks as being sort of like another form of the personal notes that a member can store in their settings, except that it's a list of links to posts on that board. Wouldn't need to contain the content of the post, only the date/time it was bookmarked, optional note for that bookmark, date/time of the post, author of the post, topic title of the post and obviously information to view the post (internal information like application and post ID, so it can work with other applications besides just the forums). Bare necessities but enough to be able to sort in different ways (post date, bookmarked date, author, etc) as well as remember why they bookmarked the post.

Would also be nice to be able to put them into folders too. :D

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Love the idea.


From time to time on this forum i come across some topics i really want to save for later, but dont want to add to my browsers favorites (i like to keep it tidy :P), and the favorites system would be perfect for this assuming you get a proper system for viewing and handling all favorites.



Beside, it's already in place in some of the official addons ;)



+ 1 I would love this on IP.Board.
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How many of your members actually use multiple browsers though and require their "favorites" to be remembered across browsers?




Seems like one of those things that just isn't valuable enough to bother spending the time on it for the base product myself.




I use 4 different computers. My MacBook, my PC, my jobcomputer and my schoolcomputer(which when I come to think about it is actually a different computer almost every time since we have computer rooms with 30 computers in every room..). I think most users use at least 2 computers. 1 at home and 1 at work.

On my Mac I use both Safari and FireFox, while on my PC I'm using both IE and FireFox.


Is true what you say, in fact I have over 9000 favourite in my browser. most of them are 3D. But are mine and are not share with anybody. The idea of .wolfie is good one because give the possibility to share with others the most interesting thread. Nobody will ever care to see my favourite 3D but will be very interesting to read yours or Josh's :)




This is ANOTHER reason. I don't want to add to my already messy list of bookmarks, favorite posts in the forum. On 1 forum alone that could get well into 100+ favorites. I'm a member of many forums. Ugh. Just the thought of it.. :P

This idea was originally about favorite posts but then converted into being able to create bookmarking lists of "favorite topics" and now back to favorite posts. I love the favorite posts feature and I definitely think it should be implemented. What's more is that I think users should be able to create different "favorite groups" - 1 for favorite jokes, 1 for favorite guides, etc, and then when favorizing a post they can put it in its belonging group. Each group can have permissions Public/Private so the owner can set some categories to public and some private.
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This is ANOTHER reason. I don't want to add to my already messy list of bookmarks, favorite posts in the forum. On 1 forum alone that could get well into 100+ favorites. I'm a member of many forums. Ugh. Just the thought of it.. :P



This idea was originally about favorite posts but then converted into being able to create bookmarking lists of "favorite topics" and now back to favorite posts. I love the favorite posts feature and I definitely think it should be implemented. What's more is that I think users should be able to create different "favorite groups" - 1 for favorite jokes, 1 for favorite guides, etc, and then when favorizing a post they can put it in its belonging group. Each group can have permissions Public/Private so the owner can set some categories to public and some private.



I have a messy set of bookmarks also and I've actually reached the point of avoiding adding to it unless it's really important. Doing it this way allows someone to bookmark a site, then on the site, bookmark/favorite the posts they want to recall.

One of the benefits of it being kept 'in house' is that when clicking on one of the fave's, if the post is no longer available to that member for some reason, they can get a message (deleted, no permission, etc) without loading a new page. Could also have an option to prune 'orphaned' favorites, to clean out the ones that are to posts that have been permanently deleted.
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I use 4 different computers. My MacBook, my PC, my jobcomputer and my schoolcomputer(which when I come to think about it is actually a different computer almost every time since we have computer rooms with 30 computers in every room..). I think most users use at least 2 computers. 1 at home and 1 at work.



On my Mac I use both Safari and FireFox, while on my PC I'm using both IE and FireFox.





This is ANOTHER reason. I don't want to add to my already messy list of bookmarks, favorite posts in the forum. On 1 forum alone that could get well into 100+ favorites. I'm a member of many forums. Ugh. Just the thought of it.. :P



This idea was originally about favorite posts but then converted into being able to create bookmarking lists of "favorite topics" and now back to favorite posts. I love the favorite posts feature and I definitely think it should be implemented. What's more is that I think users should be able to create different "favorite groups" - 1 for favorite jokes, 1 for favorite guides, etc, and then when favorizing a post they can put it in its belonging group. Each group can have permissions Public/Private so the owner can set some categories to public and some private.



I really hope the developers read this post. It would be a truly awesome feature.
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Forget about the whole bookmarking argument. It would be nice to have a simple way to mark posts or topics that you want to review or come back to at some point. That's why I suggest something as simple as Twitter's starring (well, they technically call it Favorites): provide a simple way to "star" a topic or post, and provide a list of starred topics and posts. Simple as that. No need to overcomplicate.

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Forget about the whole bookmarking argument. It would be nice to have a simple way to mark posts or topics that you want to review or come back to at some point. That's why I suggest something as simple as Twitter's starring (well, they technically call it Favorites): provide a simple way to "star" a topic or post, and provide a list of starred topics and posts. Simple as that. No need to overcomplicate.



That's basically bookmarking the post/topic. :rolleyes:
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However, I don't think that favorite posts and favorite threads should be on the same system. It'll just be messy then.
It's better, in my opinion, to have this favorite posts and being able to favorite a post, have a special page for favorite posts(along with categories) on your profile. Then have a seperate system for the bookmarking of threads. Read this:

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However, I don't think that favorite posts and favorite threads should be on the same system. It'll just be messy then.


It's better, in my opinion, to have this favorite posts and being able to favorite a post, have a special page for favorite posts(along with categories) on your profile. Then have a seperate system for the bookmarking of threads. Read this:



Be easier to just have it bookmark posts. If you want to bookmark a thread, you just bookmark the first post of that thread. First post of the thread is basically the thread itself (in a manner of speaking).
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Be easier to just have it bookmark posts. If you want to bookmark a thread, you just bookmark the first post of that thread. First post of the thread is basically the thread itself (in a manner of speaking).




True, but it will still be the same system. Which will be messy.
Sometimes you want to bookmark a whole thread, sometimes you just want to bookmark a single post in a thread. Perhaps you want to bookmark the first post in a thread but not bookmark the entire thread? If they do it like you said, the whole thread would be bookmarked if you bookmark the first post.

It's better to have 2 seperate systems. 1 system for the favorite posts where on each post there would be a "Favorite this" or "Bookmark this" button. And on the top of the thread beside "Watch this topic" there will be a "Add topic to collection" or "Bookmark topic" button.
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True, but it will still be the same system. Which will be messy.


Sometimes you want to bookmark a whole thread, sometimes you just want to bookmark a single post in a thread. Perhaps you want to bookmark the first post in a thread but not bookmark the entire thread? If they do it like you said, the whole thread would be bookmarked if you bookmark the first post.



It's better to have 2 seperate systems. 1 system for the favorite posts where on each post there would be a "Favorite this" or "Bookmark this" button. And on the top of the thread beside "Watch this topic" there will be a "Add topic to collection" or "Bookmark topic" button.



I think you're confusing yourself.

The idea is that you bookmark a post. When you click to view the post, it would load the thread anyway, taking you directly to that post. So in essence you are bookmarking a thread either way. It's just WHERE in the thread you are taken to when you go to the post.

It wouldn't be messy either. You mark (bookmark) a post, with the option to give a description or note so you remember WHY you marked it. The board automatically remembers things like the topic title, author of the post, date/time of the post and date/time of when you marked it (as well as which post it is, of course). You view the list of posts you marked and then you pick which one to go to.

Future features could include being able to add a bookmark into a post, ie, click to view your list and then click on one and it includes a link to the post (automatically doing the url tag with the thread title as the description of the link).

:)
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I think you're confusing yourself.



The idea is that you bookmark a post. When you click to view the post, it would load the thread anyway, taking you directly to that post. So in essence you are bookmarking a thread either way. It's just WHERE in the thread you are taken to when you go to the post.



It wouldn't be messy either. You mark (bookmark) a post, with the option to give a description or note so you remember WHY you marked it. The board automatically remembers things like the topic title, author of the post, date/time of the post and date/time of when you marked it (as well as which post it is, of course). You view the list of posts you marked and then you pick which one to go to.



Future features could include being able to add a bookmark into a post, ie, click to view your list and then click on one and it includes a link to the post (automatically doing the url tag with the thread title as the description of the link).



:)




While I understand your POV(point of view), I still have to stand by my point and say that it should be 2 seperate things.

Let's say I want to bookmark a thread called "Post a picture of yourself". I'm not interested in bookmarking any individual post. Not the first one either because I don't want to specify a specific post to bookmark, rather just bookmark the entire thread. That way I can choose to subscribe to a collection of threads(aka bookmark categories). Bookmarking a specific post does more often NOT mean that I want to be able to recieve updates regarding comments on that post(as is the case when bookmarking a topic). In that case I would just be able to favorize that post so I can go back and view it later. Perhaps I want to create a bookmarking category for "Funny posts" where I would put all my favorite posts that has funny jokes or just being stupid/funny. When bookmarking a topic it's more like I would bookmark useful topics such as "Post a picture of yourself" and "Introduce yourself" and put them in a category "Useful topics for newly arrived".

Like I said, while I understand your POV and trying to simplify things, I still think there should be seperate systems to handle bookmarking of individual posts and bookmarking a whole thread.

The idea about description is very nice though, I like that!
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That's basically bookmarking the post/topic. :rolleyes:



Exactly. No need to over complicate things and push back development. Just duplicate Gmail's star function, or vbulletin's favorites mod. Problem solved.

It also includes the flexibility Tanax is asking for, and the simplicity Wolfie is talking about. If you guys need me to post the vbulletin screenshots, let me know.
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Exactly. No need to over complicate things and push back development. Just duplicate Gmail's star function, or vbulletin's [url="http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=98808"]favorites mod[/url]. Problem solved.



It also includes the flexibility Tanax is asking for, and the simplicity Wolfie is talking about. If you guys need me to post the vbulletin screenshots, let me know.




Please do, as I have no idea of what you're talking about :P
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