Notification of "quoted post"

[Luke]

How does the quote notification work exactly? Does it only work if you click "Reply" next to someone's post? If that's the case, can it be a little smarter than this?

Perhaps look at the quote tags instead? When you quote someone it usually adds their display name into the bbcode. Maybe you could take these quotes and lookup those users (maybe make the request faster by filtering it down to the users who have posted in the topic)?

I know there are instances where I will quote multiple people within a single post. Or someone else does the same... But I don't always get the notification.

[Wolfie]

I know there are instances where I will quote multiple people within a single post. Or someone else does the same... But I don't always get the notification.

I've noticed the same thing. I'll see posts where I've been quoted, but I didn't get a notification.

[bfarber]

Yes. At presently it only works if you click "reply" on their posts.

We want to balance features with efficiency. We can explore parsing the quote tags for usernames during save and try to send notifications to all users, but it's not likely to make it into 3.1.0.

[Luke]

What about multi-quote? Does it work with that at all?

[Wolfie]

What about multi-quote? Does it work with that at all?

Luke, you know I respect ya and all, but the answer to your question is already in his post...

Yes. At presently it only works if you click "reply" on their posts.

We want to balance features with efficiency. We can explore parsing the quote tags for usernames during save and try to send notifications to all users, but it's not likely to make it into 3.1.0.

:lol:

[Luke]

He said that it didn't parse the names out of the quote tags, and that it worked when you clicked "Reply". I'm just making sure that tagging posts with the Multi-Quote button doesn't also work... Because if it doesn't, that should be a simple solution for now, shouldn't it? I mean it's using the post id to get the member id when you click "Reply". You could do the same when tagging multiple posts, and it wouldn't take any more queries. Would just have to send more than one notification.

[Wolfie]

He said it worked only when clicking reply on THEIR post. My impression is that click "Add Reply" doesn't work for it, but "Reply" will.

I would love for it to work on multi-quoted posts, so I'm glad you brought this up. :)

[Andy Millne]

You could do the same when tagging multiple posts, and it wouldn't take any more queries. Would just have to send more than one notification.

This wouldn't be entirely reliable either though. What if you click multi-quote on a few posts but then manually remove a quote from the editor? Somebody would receive a notification but the post would no longer be quoted.

Parsing the quote tags would be the only reliable way but like has been said already there are efficiency implications.

[Luke]

This wouldn't be entirely reliable either though. What if you click multi-quote on a few posts but then manually remove a quote from the editor? Somebody would receive a notification but the post would no longer be quoted.

Parsing the quote tags would be the only reliable way but like has been said already there are efficiency implications.

The same could be said about the "Reply" button as well though.

Parsing the names out of the post would be pretty trivial, but once you have the names you can make it more efficient by only searching for members that posted in the topic (instead of searching the whole member database).. In fact you'd have to do that because you'd have to find their post id.

[Tanax]

Why not parse it at the time you're POSTING instead of when you're clicking "Reply" ?
No need to do schedual checks to find posts where quotes have been used and they haven't had notifications sent already.

Just parse it at the time you click "Post", parse the reply and see if any quotes has been used, send notifications, add post to topic.
It can be problematic when you want to edit a post and add a quote though..

[Luke]

With editing you could do one of two things:

1) Ignore editing all together and just do it on new replies, even if posts are merged from double posting.

2) Compare the names in the original post with the edited one and send notifications to names that exist in the edited post that didn't in the original.

[Wolfie]

Regardless of how it's intended to be done, first, the queuing would have to take out quotes within quotes. Then after finding the members quoted within that topic, it would have to search for any remaining members not accounted for. Keep in mind that it's possible to quote a post from a completely different topic.

[Luke]

Regardless of how it's intended to be done, first, the queuing would have to take out quotes within quotes. Then after finding the members quoted within that topic, it would have to search for any remaining members not accounted for. Keep in mind that it's possible to quote a post from a completely different topic.

I forgot to account for sub quotes, although it would only need to notify someone of the top-most quote. That's quite easy to accomplish with regex if you include the end quote tag.

I wouldn't necessarily worry about quoting a post from another topic, although it is a nice thought. If you did that you wouldn't be able to link to the original post, which is done in the notification details (which I never view). But then again, I wouldn't want to know where my post was, I want to know where their post is. But for a quicker lookup, I'd rather ignore those and focus on topics that I'm actually participating in.

[Wolfie]

I forgot to account for sub quotes, although it would only need to notify someone of the top-most quote. That's quite easy to acomplish with regex if you include the end quote tag.

Just use the current filtering to narrow it down to only use the primary quotes (first level).

I wouldn't necessarily worry about quoting a post from another topic, although it is a nice thought. If you did that you wouldn't be able to link to the original post, which is done in the notification details (which I never view). But then again, I wouldn't want to know where my post was, I want to know where their post is. But for a quicker lookup, I'd rather ignore those and focus on topics that I'm actually participating in.

Don't know why, since the necessary information would already be included.

[Luke]

Just use the current filtering to narrow it down to only use the primary quotes (first level).

That's what I just said. Would be an easy regex.

Don't know why, since the necessary information would already be included.

I just realized something - the post id is included in the post as well, probably for the snapback.

[/code]

In that case you could do one of two things: Use the post id # to look up the member. Or you could just include the member id in posts from now on:

[code]

[bfarber]

I do tend to agree, it would be nice to at least support multi-quotes. I don't think parsing for quote tags is an appropriate method of doing it in the end - people can manually add quote tags, and when I do personally, I don't generally add name='' post='' and so on, so it ends up mostly unreliable. What we could do, though, is when you multiquote, grab the author ids at that point (or post ids, whatever) and store in a hidden form field on the post form, and then when you submit the post, use that to determine who to send notifications to.

In any event, this will most likely wait for 3.1.1 or later. I hate the thought of starting to tear up the posting routine for something relatively (note, I said relatively) trivial this late in the process. With my luck, I'd end up breaking posting or quoting or something that's actually pretty important. :P

[Luke]

I do tend to agree, it would be nice to at least support multi-quotes. I don't think parsing for quote tags is an appropriate method of doing it in the end - people can manually add quote tags, and when I do personally, I don't generally add name='' post='' and so on, so it ends up mostly unreliable. What we could do, though, is when you multiquote, grab the author ids at that point (or post ids, whatever) and store in a hidden form field on the post form, and then when you submit the post, use that to determine who to send notifications to.

In any event, this will most likely wait for 3.1.1 or later. I hate the thought of starting to tear up the posting routine for something relatively (note, I said relatively) trivial this late in the process. With my luck, I'd end up breaking posting or quoting or something that's actually pretty important. :P

I'm not saying now, but could you put the author id's in the quote tags themselves and fetch them out that way? I don't even bother adding name='' if I manually quote something. I often just copy the entire beginning quote tag when I break someone's post up. I don't remove anything.. And if I do use a new "[ quote]" there is at least one in the post already. A regular expression, like the one I posted above yours, should be sufficient.

[Wolfie]

That's what I just said. Would be an easy regex.

I meant, the current method could possibly be made into a function (if not already) so that if it's needed, it can be called on, instead of writing duplicate code. Would also make it easier to upgrade if the regex is changed, as it's only one place being changed to affect both functions.

Use the post id # to look up the member. Or you could just include the member id in posts from now on:

I like it. Then the member ID could be looked up so the current display name is used instead of the name supplied in the quote (admin optional, so busy boards could have it off to reduce server load). I've wondered why the quote doesn't use the timestamp to display the relative date also. Would love to have it show the date using the timestamp when available.

Parsing the quote tags could be done where it has to have the post ID, then the post ID's could be looked up to get the member to send the notifications to. No post ID = no notification. Prevents false notifications from being sent out.

I'm fine with that. In fact, I'm glad about that, because then it means 3.1 won't be delayed further. :D

If you decide to try to add it for v3.1.1, I'd be more than happy to try to guinea pig it for you :D :D :D

[Luke]

I like it. Then the member ID could be looked up so the current display name is used instead of the name supplied in the quote (admin optional, so busy boards could have it off to reduce server load). I've wondered why the quote doesn't use the timestamp to display the relative date also. Would love to have it show the date using the timestamp when available.

Uh... bad idea. That would cause waaaay to much server load. There is a reason why the name is cached into the tag.

If you use the member id in the quote tag to send notifications then you don't have to look the posts up. You'd have to remove the "my post" part (which I'm fine with) and just provide their post that is quoting yours (snapback can take you to your post). To be honest I'd rather have "quoted a post you made" be a single link going to their post rather than "quoted" be linked to their post and "post you made" link my post... I accidentally click "post you made" all the time when I mean to click "quoted".

Either that or you could use the post id to look up the member id... But it makes more sense to me to just use the member id in the quote tag (which you'd have to include).

Getting rid of the date='' part would make sense to me... timestamp should be able to provide a formatted date. In fact, it works with the board's date formatting options a little better.

So you should just have something like:

[/code]

[Wolfie]

Uh... bad idea. That would cause waaaay to much server load. There is a reason why the name is cached into the tag.

For a slow board, it wouldn't matter too much. That's why I said admin optional. Off by default (of course), but could be turned on if desired.

If you use the member id in the quote tag to send notifications then you don't have to look the posts up. You'd have to remove the "my post" part (which I'm fine with) and just provide their post that is quoting yours (snapback can take you to your post). To be honest I'd rather have "quoted a post you made" be a single link going to their post rather than "quoted" be linked to their post and "post you made" link my post... I accidentally click "post you made" all the time when I mean to click "quoted".

Either that or you could use the post id to look up the member id... But it makes more sense to me to just use the member id in the quote tag (which you'd have to include).

The idea behind the post ID being used to get the member ID would be to prevent someone from being a prankster and changing the member ID to generate incorrect/false notifications.

[Tanax]

I do tend to agree, it would be nice to at least support multi-quotes. I don't think parsing for quote tags is an appropriate method of doing it in the end - people can manually add quote tags, and when I do personally, I don't generally add name='' post='' and so on, so it ends up mostly unreliable. What we could do, though, is when you multiquote, grab the author ids at that point (or post ids, whatever) and store in a hidden form field on the post form, and then when you submit the post, use that to determine who to send notifications to.

In any event, this will most likely wait for 3.1.1 or later. I hate the thought of starting to tear up the posting routine for something relatively (note, I said relatively) trivial this late in the process. With my luck, I'd end up breaking posting or quoting or something that's actually pretty important. :P

I don't think anyone said this should be in 3.1 though :)
Anyhow, what about if you manually add quotes? Or edit a post and add quotes(which then obviously is done manually)?

[Wolfie]

I don't think anyone said this should be in 3.1 though :)

It should be in v3.1 :D

Anyhow, what about if you manually add quotes? Or edit a post and add quotes(which then obviously is done manually)?

To keep it simple, I think it should just be when the initial message is posted. Could get tricky to do it on edits.

[bfarber]

It sounds to me like the idea is getting over complicated in the last several posts...

What I proposed would be relatively quick and easy to implement. Changing how the bbcode is stored is more work, consumes more database space unnecessarily (marginal, I know, but it adds up on boards with 10 million posts, believe me), and wouldn't really make the end result any cleaner than the method I proposed (capturing member ids based on the quoted post id). In retrospect, I don't think we could put those in the form as a hidden input field (hackers would abuse this to send notifications to everyone on the board of a new topic, I'm sure), but just looking at post id in the quote tag to get the member id should be fine. This is only done once, when submitting the post, so efficiency shouldn't be much of an issue.

[Wolfie]

It sounds to me like the idea is getting over complicated in the last several posts...

So is that a nay on having it use the timestamp (when available) to display the date/time instead of the way it's done now?

[Luke]

If you removed the date='...' from the quote tag and used timestamp='...' with the date formatting option it would actually save space in the database. I'm not saying get rid of date='' completely, as some people might want to put custom text there... But rather fall back to timestamp='' when date='' isn't available and make date='' omitted by default.

Using the multi-quote button to capture post ids are a good temporary solution. But it's still not very accurate... Using the already provided post id in the quote tag would be better because it's based on what is actually posted, not what is clicked. Plus you *could* make it work if you were to edit a post. Compare the original post to the edited one to fish out any new member ids.

As far as "hacking" I could technically reply to your post as many times as I want and send notifications, and I can do that right now.

Wolfie as far as quoting a post from a different topic, I've decided that's also a bad idea. What happens if a moderator quotes a post from a public topic in a staff forum? Then you'd have to check to make sure that the member being notified even has access to that forum. That would make things much more complicated, so it's really not worth it. That's why the post id must belong to the topic you're posting in for it to send notifications.