I’m on the second page reading this thread. I got to take a break and I got a idea that may have been posted or could be common knowledge. The character trait icons, when you let the mouse sit over them, have the meaning pop up. Like when you want to preview a topic.
Yeah, that is a nice feature that we already have.
What about people who don’t use the extension? Will they be able to see what flags are set for them or others? In a broader sense, is it fair or right to allow people to flag others instead of allowing people to flag themselves? What about meta-conversations where two people with the extension discuss the flags and anyone who doesn’t use it ends up lost? Are you assuming both global adoption and global good faith?
This is sort of like a modern version of a scorefile, which was an individual’s rating of each person they interacted with. The twist is this is a shared ranking/flagging. If each person had their own database of what they had flagged a poster, that’s one thing. But what you could get is a person whose first impression of a new(to them) poster is colored by the flags someone else set, which the person who was flagged with those characteristics may virulently disagree with. I don’t have a problem with people using scorefiles as handy ways of keeping track of their own opinions based on their experiences. I just have more reservations when a third party is imprinting their opinion on posts without the actual poster’s knowledge or consent.
Of course I still remain shocked that Wikipedia is somewhat usable. When Wikis were first introduced I remember thinking “what a crazy idea, does data integrity mean nothing anymore?” I could just be showing my age here. Still, especially if the avatar thing gets implemented, the first couple times someone vandalizes the system I’m expecting you’ll have quite a headache.
Enjoy,
Steven
I can see three types of badges being useful, all with very different meanings:
- badges you apply to yourself that others can see, so you self-identify
- badges that anyone can apply to anyone else, so they’re sort of decided “collectively”
- badges that you assign to others but only you can see, so you can remember your impressions of them.
What we have right now is basically #2, except that the number of people who assign badges is very small (maybe just aaron, but he mentioned maybe opening it up to a set of people). Personally, I find this the least useful. Look at my badges: I’m labeled “linux guy” even though I don’t really identify myself as such. I do use linux, but I wouldn’t choose to make it my badge if they worked like #1 above.
I think the coolest system would be a sort of combination of #1 and #3 where there was some visual difference to indicate whether someone applied a badge to themselves or whether you applied that badge to them. You could even throw in aspects of #2 as well, even making it auto-generated based on how many people assign a particular badge to a given person. But setting any of that up would involve building a service where we sign up for accounts in order to maintain our personal sets of badges, and takes a lot more work to build than what aaron has come up with.
I actually haven’t bothered to install the script that handles the badges. The link awesomizers and post highlights and stuff are great all by themselves. I don’t need no steenkin’ badges. (Sorry.)
I think you’re misinterpreting the point of the flags. Flagging is just a handy indicator to help locate the followup posts of a particular user in the thread. It’s not meant as any kind of personal rating.
Unless you’re talking about the badges, though those are just a description of their personality and interests, also not intended as a personal rating.
I’m still waiting for #3. Wierdaaron mentioned that after he got the script up and running, he would put out a little tutorial for people who wanted to maintain their own “badge” database. I don’t know if he’s happy with his script yet, but I eagerly anticipate this tutorial: I don’t care what the collective thinks of anyone. I just want help remembering what I think of people.
Replying to subscribe.
Same same for me. #3 is the only one that matters. I wouldn’t call the others “unfair”, but I would call them useless or possibly even misleading.
I’ve been rather AWOL lately. Trying to get myself employed, and dedicating most of my coding time to things that I can actually put on a resume. I’ll get around to the script shortly.
Shortly as in before the sun goes supernova.
That’s the way of these things. They often start with a wind storm, and then die with a quiet breeze.
By the way, since this is the SDMB and all… the sun (our sun) will never go supernova. It’ll expand close to Mars or so, and then collapse as a white dwarf.
Oh, hello…
I just pushed out an update that adds a few features that make it easier to navigate posts within a page. More specifically…
Quick Links to Posts That Quote You
Having that soft blue highlighting of posts that quote my own posts was nice, but I wanted to be able to quickly tell if there were any new posts quoting myself, and to be able to quickly jump to them.
So I made a little box that appears on the bottom-left of a page that contains posts that are quoting you, with a direct link to each of them.
In that image, there are four posts on that page that have quoted me. Clicking each number will take me directly to that post.
Simple Navigation Between Your Own Posts
Sometimes in a thread I use my own posts as… guideposts for keeping track of how a thread is developing. Other times I just want to remember what I said in a page, and scanning the scrollbar up and down to look for the blue-highlighted posts isn’t simple enough.
So I added very basic navigation to skip between your posts on a page. Previous, next, that kind of thing.
And just to make things super easy, at the top of a page there will be a link to your first post.
These things only appear where applicable (the quote list box won’t show up on pages where you aren’t quoted, for instance) so they shouldn’t disrupt your browsing too much.
You can find the link to the update in the regular place (the status box in bottom-right).
Oh yeah, a while ago I pushed out an update that makes the status box stay hidden longer. You’re welcome.
Most excellent. Thanks, wierdaaron.
WeirdAaron, this script sounds awesome if you could hook me up with a link.
Hot damn. I’m in!
I used this script for awhile - it was one of the few things I miss dearly after switching from FF to Chrome (Chrome will run user scripts in many cases, but doesn’t seem to like this one :().
I dont think the mods (or I, for that matter) want the links public until it’s done and mod-approved. While it’s in development, it’s easier when there’s a small group of people using it, rather than having to account for the world-at-large. I’m not super concerned about it, but maybe a mod can baleet those links so I wont have to rename files.
My biggest concern is having a bunch of people running around with a painfully outdated version because they don’t know enough to keep the thing updated, and I later find some gigantic bug or security hole that sends your credit card numbers to nigeria.
Chrome does support userscripts, but this script relies on some greasemonkey-only features. There may be a way around this, I’ll look into it during my next lull. I’m not without motivation; Chrome is my default browser now, I just use FF for sites that I cant survive on without extensions or greasemonkey scripts. Like… this one.
Post reported (#102 too), and my apologies :smack:.
There’s some reason I shouldn’t be sending my credit card numbers to nigeria? 
CMC fnord!
Post #102 altered to remove install link.
Post #176 removed from thread – it can be put back in if necessary later.