phpWebLog

By Brian Milby on Tuesday March 13 2001 @ 11:07PM EST [ General ]
I've just discovered a bug in the way that comments are handled. The problem with writing a fix is that there are a couple of different ways that the situation can be handled.

If you start off with comments enabled on a topic, and then disable them, how should that be handled? Should existing comments be displayed? Should additional comments be allowed if comments have already been posted?

I'm leaning towards displaying existing comments but not allowing new comments.

< Theme layout and I guess I'm dumb | hacker >

Glenn writes on Wednesday March 14 2001 @ 11:29AM EST: [ reply | parent ]

I noticed at one point that if you turn comments on globally and then off on a topic by topic basis it doesn't work and they will still be allowed. Have you seen this behaviour?

To answer your question though, could that decision not be left until that time? How about:

Comments: Yes, No, Posted Prior to yyyymmdd, Posted on or after yyyymmdd

Dunno, just thinking out loud. :-)

Gaudior writes on Wednesday March 14 2001 @ 12:03PM EST: [ reply | parent ]

I agree with Glenn.

Brian Milby writes on Wednesday March 14 2001 @ 12:20PM EST: [ reply | parent ]

What you have observed is the problem that I'm looking to fix. I don't think that a date should be needed because once they are turned off no additional comments can be added. I guess I could implement a 3-way option : comments on, comments off, display only. I think that this would be the simplest to add and the only addition that would not require some major changes.

jason writes on Wednesday March 14 2001 @ 03:17PM EST: [ reply | parent ]

I would suggest keeping it clean and simple. If a topic has comments, and you turn comments off, then the comments get deleted.

Gaudior writes on Wednesday March 14 2001 @ 03:59PM EST: [ reply | parent ]

I disagree, Jason. It would be a good feature to be able to keep displaying an article after the comment period has expired. Maybe I want to get comments only for 3 days, but allow everyone to see the results for much longer than that.

Brian Milby writes on Wednesday March 14 2001 @ 04:58PM EST: [ reply | parent ]

I think that adding a comment period may be a good feature to add later. At this point, I want to make the existing feature work predictably. The way that I solved the problem was to add a third option (as I mentioned above).