Profile Comments

Lumeinshin

Hello all, I've been running a forum with flarum for a little over a year now. For the most part I think the features are there or are extensions. I have asked my users a few times since the my sites creation and a constant through-line has been the desire to have the option to leave comments on other users profiles and have a reply chain in there, nested or otherwise (I understand devs have in the past said that they dont think nesting is needed or intuitive with flarums current mention system so idm).

It would be good to be able for my users to pop to someones wall/profile and leave a comment, usually with an unrelated question that may otherwise derail a thread. (this is not a huge issue atm as the site is cozy but may be less desirable in future)

The extension would not need to be 'live' or require pusher or any such thing, just the same notify requirements as a thread (as far as I understand it)

Personally I would see this as a pretty key feature for flarum, however I can understand a desire to keep it minimal so i'd be more than happy with an extension
At this immediate moment I cannot put money towards it but if the extension idea is valued and undertaken I can contribute to a bounty after payday 😆

Preexisting post on 'activity wall'

Profile Comments rough concept
example whacked together in GIMP for what I think it'd look like

clarkwinkelmann

It wouldn't be very difficult to create a "hidden" discussion for each profile that doesn't appear in the list of discussions but only on a specific user profile.

But one potential issue with that approach is the number of comments. As we have seen in other instances, discussions that have thousands of posts can get laggy depending on the extensions used. I fear that, if used transparently for profiles, the discussions might get very big with no way for admins to lock or split it. Since a single thread would encourage a non-structured discussion, it might fill even faster than a regular discussion that has a single purpose.

The discussions being hidden from the main feed might also make regular moderation a bit challenging. If re-using native posts, flags approval and such would still be available but the posts would be less visible to moderators since they would only really go and read them when flagged. Maybe you are also expecting users to be able to moderate their own discussions, like deleting posts? This might also be a bit challenging but certainly possible.

Lumeinshin

clarkwinkelmann
I think a hidden discussion makes sense to me. I think it would need to have its own category though, i'm not sure if that makes sense but you would probably want to be able to separate anything related to it from the regular discussions in the backend (DB?)

if used transparently for profiles, the discussions might get very big with no way for admins to lock or split it.

i'm not too sure how we could get around that. My brain jumps to pagination but idk if that'd work for the way flarum does its backend stuff. Perhaps they should be split in the back, so say every 100 posts in the backend its a new discussion, or maybe do it for a time period.
I'm not sure if any of that makes sense technically or is possible with the way flarum is, so i'll leave my guessing for that there 😅

The discussions being hidden from the main feed might also make regular moderation a bit challenging. If re-using native posts, flags approval and such would still be available but the posts would be less visible to moderators since they would only really go and read them when flagged. Maybe you are also expecting users to be able to moderate their own discussions, like deleting posts?

As it stands right now my userbase is generally good at flagging posts of the spam'y variety and since using ReCaptcha at signup its not been anywhere near as much of an issue.
My first thought when thinking of profile comments is Steam profiles, as a user you are able to delete comments made to your profile or flag them for moderation, so i'd be happy with that. If that is more difficult than say just asking a user to flag it to admin that could also work. I'd be fine with just amending the rules to say that users can request deletion of a profile comment and it'd be honoured.. or something like that.

I imagine the best practice would be to try and separate profile-comments permissions from other stuff where possible, but maybe if that could be amended later whomever worked on it would rather get an MVP out

luceos

I would allow a seperate discussion index per user, similar to what Byobu does or did. Hide this list of messages unless on a certain profile, add a custom button to start a thread with that user.

Lumeinshin

I got paid a little early, so i'm able to put some money towards this 🙂 if an admin could add the bounty tag i'll try chucking some money in!

luceos
Yeah I see two ways of doing it, like this so you could have multiple threads per user, that way you'd be able to have the reply chain and such, or just essentially having one thread per user

Otherwise I think you'd have to be careful with things like the placement of the "start a thread with this user" button, to avoid causing clutter. If one were to go down the 'many threads per user' profile comments idea, we'd want to have most of the first post be the title/subject since we dont want them really to be a substitute for using the forum proper. So I think maybe simpler is better, and essentially we'd be making a rudimentary DM system otherwise (although i'm down to see that 👀 )

Profile Comments newest last

Profile Comments Most recent first
personally i prefer displaying comments most recent first but i mocked up what it could be like either way.

Since posting originally i've been thinking about it more and what I think would be best, although i'm open to tech reasons to do other things.

Each user gets 1 'profile comments' thread
Ideally each user can delete comments in their own thread, but for simplicity i'm okay to moderate it like other threads
Profile comments posts only show on that user profile/not on the homepage.
Profile comments are followed by default, so they'd get notifs on any profile comments made
IDEAL Ability to limit media use for this function. I'm not sure whether that one would be hard to do since it'd involve messing with other extensions/functions?

I'm thinking maybe having it be text-only may be best, partly to not distract from the main forum and partly to make it easier for moderation long term.
Feel free to let me know any feedback on those key points or any disagreements, for practicality reasons or otherwise 🙂

GreXXL

Lumeinshin I have enabled bounties for this proposal.

tolgaaaltas

Lumeinshin You might consider including a user review feature in this plugin. I mean users give it a rating out of 5 or 10. It was used to measure seller reliability, especially in trading communities. An average score may be shown on your profile. For this, I think the communities will be happy to make annual payments to whoever the developer will be. Even if it is not used for trading credibility purposes, it can also help to easily find out whether the community member is a bully or a friendly one.

Lumeinshin

tolgaaaltas I think that may be helpful for support forums or such, I think the current voting/like system works well enough for that function and a review feature I think would be better as a different extension that could maybe support a profile comments extension in future, ideally this is kept as simple as possible. For the most part i've never needed a star rating for user profiles, usually just a "+rep" and an explanation of the positive thing does the job on other sites

Nodeloc

Lumeinshin Just try Moderator Notes by FriendsOfFlarum , and set permission to all users.
,

Lumeinshin

Nodeloc I dont currently use Moderator Notes on my forum, but its an extension i've got my eye on for when I have more moderators, so ideally i'd like to have something purpose built for profile comments. I think its an important feature anyways so even if i could kinda get the functionality, it'd be good to see something more proper

Capybara

The fate of this idea is interesting. There is not enough personal wall in the profile, I would like to add something similar

BAANAN

Sad that this proposal didn't bloom. Is the bounty of 150 usd still up for it?

GreXXL

BAANAN yes the bounty has not been claimed by any developer yet.

luceos

Justoverclock you can still claim the bounty, it hasn't been assigned:

GreXXL the bounty has not been claimed by any developer yet

Justoverclock

i'll give it a try with this extension

luceos

Justoverclock we had this commissioned as part of a tryout of a freelance developer: mahdi3100/flarum-wall. It's available "as is", but I feel it needs a bit more work.

Justoverclock

luceos oh ok

luceos

Feel free to fork it, test it or 🤷

😊

Justoverclock

luceos at this moment im making this extension brand new if someone is interested (dont worry for the bounty i understand that is assigned 😉 )

for users that are interested, now i have

new table for profile comments, that have a realation with users
dedicated comment page under user settings page with modal to create a new comment

in development:

permissions
delete comment by the user that receive the comment

Lumeinshin

Justoverclock
Looking good so far

Umutcan

Justoverclock Can you leave a comment not with a button, but with a textarea waiting for us below? Exactly as it looks in the picture below. It might be better to call up the forum's message pop-up when you click on the write reply field.