In order for me to give timely responses to posts or questions I've made, there are some things I'd like to be able to do, but don't know how -- are there ways to do these already, or are these missing features.

Basically these involve classifying and sorting, messages into 'messages that may need a response' vs. not, with messages that may need a response being defined as a response to a node I've created, sorted in the distance of the node from the response (idea being that the more distance, the more likely it is to be to someone else, though it would still be of interest as to what was said). Any nodes at the same distance could be presented by date, from oldest (one with longest unanswered or unread period), to newest.

Most basic form of this feature would be seeing any node that I've posted that has an immediate response that I haven't read (most easily checked by comparing nodes created since my last visit).

Second main feature would be email notification of 'new nodes of interest' as defined above, with it sending only 1 email per node and holding future notifications for that specific node until I've checked that node. Also, of interested would be the ability to auto-subscribe to such notifications based on node creation.

I'm used to these on other boards and would think those features would be here in some form, but haven't been able to find them.

It's frustrating as if I am not on for a few days, and come back, it's hard to even find the threads I posted in, let alone try to find new postings to those threads...

So where are these features buried, or are they not available? If not available, pray tell why not? They seem very basic to a multi-threaded discussion board.

Many thanks!

one who like diddling in perl...

  • Comment on I have some questions concerning perlmonks usage...

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Re: I have some questions concerning perlmonks usage...
by duelafn (Parson) on Oct 04, 2010 at 21:28 UTC

    There is a "/msg me when there's a reply to one of my posts" option in your Message Settings - That's what I use as I am not a heavy poster. You also have a link to your recent writeups on your home node.

    Good Day,
        Dean

[reply]
      That's only direct replies. It's not easy to find replies to your replies - replies I'm generally very interested in.

      But hey, it's my own fault, isn't it? All those nice features I'd really want, like finding out who replied to my replies, or trivial things like keeping track of which articles I've read, they have been available for decades in Usenet readers. Perlmonks has a long way to go before it's getting anywhere near the functionality of the most basic newsreader I've ever used (well, with the exception of 'cat').

[reply]
        >>That's only direct replies. It's not easy to find replies to your replies - replies I'm generally very interested in.

        If you go to your personal node/homepage/whatever-you-call-it and click "write-ups", you get your ALL your posts -- starts or replies -- in reverse chronological order (newest first). So it's just a matter of clicking on the last few to see if anyone has replied to those.

        So while I agree, it would be nice to have a feature which literally lists replies to your replies/threads as they get posted (which may exist, I'll admit to having not playing with my settings much), considering the traffic on perlmonks is actually quite low (I think there are rarely more than a dozen new threads a day), this seems pretty trivial. If you are actually answering a lot of questions, you would have to be logged in most of the time and it would be easy to stay on top of that. If you are not logged in constantly, it's hard to understand how you could have so many urgent items here so as to require email notification.

        Perlmonks is also extremely slow, which I presume to be due to a lack of server resources -- which kind of caps the services you can provide.

        One thing I would like would be a "Most Recent Nodes" Nodelet instead of the "Daily Best". Something that reports Newest Nodes stuff but includes replies. Is there such a thing?

[reply]
Re: I have some questions concerning perlmonks usage...
by ambrus (Abbot) on Oct 05, 2010 at 10:48 UTC

    You could handle this functionality on an external server. You just have to write something like watcher except that it automatically watches replies to your nodes, and add some sorted html view function. If you want to write it, What XML generators are currently available on PerlMonks? documents the machine-readable interfaces of perlmonks you can use.

[reply]
Re: I have some questions concerning perlmonks usage...
by ww (Archbishop) on Oct 05, 2010 at 01:12 UTC
    Sounds as though you should make a point of reading the site's user documentation... starting with PerlMonks FAQ, The Perl Monks Guide to the Monastery, and (at least periodically) Tidings.

    Some of what you're asking for is better accomplished via self-help and the established features of the Monastery. Other parts are well outside the scope of 'anything likely to happen' unless you, yourself, develop it and submit it to PmDev for consideration.

    Consider your request for some sort of automated alerting to "new nodes of interest."

    • My crystal ball has been broken for some time. I don't know just how to code up a special purpose function to provide you with a custom list of "new nodes of interest."
    • Even if psi was working tonite (it isn't), I have neither time nor inclination to undertake such a large project, especially since -- to be worth the effort -- it would have to be generalized in a way that would allow any Monk to identify what s/he finds "of interest" and thus benefit from the code in question.
    And besides, there is a low-budget, low-overhead way to find "new nodes of interest:" it's right here. Follow it closely and you'll see just about every possible interesting new node.
[reply]
Re: I have some questions concerning perlmonks usage...
by MidLifeXis (Monsignor) on Oct 05, 2010 at 14:22 UTC

    See also Recently Active Threads. It may give you some of the threaded status information that you seek.

    --MidLifeXis

[reply]

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