User comments on python.org

[Bengt Richter]

On Mon, 13 Oct 2003 13:07:25 -0500, "A.M. Kuchling" <amk at amk.ca> wrote:

>[CC'ing to pydotorg-redesign, and setting followups there, too.]
(somehow the email address got into the newsgroup slot for me, so I had to fix it)
>
>On Sat, 11 Oct 2003 19:19:41 -0500, 
>	Ian Bicking <ianb at colorstudy.com> wrote:
>> I don't really know how the Python site is set up now, but could 
>> comments be included inline as an SSI?  Like
>
>I don't think SSIs are currently enabled, but it wouldn't be hard to turn
>them on.  However, I have two worries about this:
>
>1) Fitting the comments into the page design -- a page with a lot of
>   comments would be really, really lengthy.
>
>2) What if people post obscenities or harmful material?
>   Showing comments by default would be embarrassing; if you have to
>   explicitly choose to view them, this is less worrying.
>   Python.org has a really good Google PageRank, I expect, making it
>   a good target for link spam, so this is something to worry about.
>   
>The Wiki has mostly escaped such vandalism; presumably it's unobtrusive
>enough that spammers haven't noticed it.
>
>> the page content and the barest of controls).  I think it would be best 
>> done as a separate wiki, maybe with a namespace that fits the library 
>> documentation structure better.  Or maybe both are possible.  It would
>
>Perhaps.  Wiki names can contain '/', so we can have annotations for every
>single page on the site by just using the full path name.  The question is
>whether we need that level of support; perhaps the docs are the only place
>where comments are valuable.  I do think that comments on the reference
>manual or the Distutils manuals would be useful.  (Possibly PEPs, too?)
>
>I did a bit of experimenting with the separate page, adding JavaScript to
>ht2html's output and adding an ugly 'view comment' link.  If we're
>interested in pursuing this, I'm willing to do the following:
>
>1) Make a set of experimental pages with comment links, so we can see 
>  what they look like and how they work in practice.
>2) If 1) looks worthwhile, then I'll make a new Wiki for user notes that has
>   minimal styling.
>
>What I'd really need is presentation suggestions: *how* to show the comment
>link?  
Have a look at 

    http://www.xml.com/axml/testaxml.htm

for a way of associating commentary with (it says, at least) unchanged original matter
(in this case the XML spec). It's pretty easy on the eyes. I don't know the implementation,
but I think that separation of pristine original from comment material would be good. The
above site probably has the advantage of heavy xml tagging in the original that the commentary
database can used for retrieving associated commentary, I would guess.

Since full comment generation for dynamic javascript-controlled interaction is somewhat
computer-costly, caching results of generating responses to comments would make sense,
I think, and I don't think generating it should be the default.

If the python.org server is able to insert an optional footer chunk just before the </html>
when so configured to do it for a directory or a file (I don't know if Apache can do that,
since I just made it up, but ISTM it would be a useful option ;-), then that footer could
contain a link for viewing commentary.

The link would go to a comment-server URL, e.g., commentary.python.org/coments.cgi,
The cgi program will see HTTP_REFERER from the page the user clicked the comments link on,
and it can either get a copy via HTTP, or look it up on the local hard disk if it's local.

The URL can also be used as a key into a database of commentary, where also commenter-accounts
could be maintained to keep out spammers.

With the original page plus a database of commentary, the problem becomes building a new
image of the original with unobtrusive commentary navigation. With javascript you could
do floating hint text from commentary title lines associated with paragraphs or other
elements you were mousing over. Clicking might put the commentary in a separate popup window.
Right clicking on a previous comment might mean pop a form to add your 2 cents. Right
clicking on the main page where no comment hint is being displayed would pop up the
same but with an option to give it a title, since it's new commentary.

All of this is pretty much paragraph oriented. Indexing locations, which have to be w.r.t.
unmarked text in the original can do some kind of soft hash of <p> sections in the original
as indices instead of using line numbers, so the data base can have the hashes as keys, and
not get thrown too much by updates in the original. Actual anchor targets and tag ids
can be used too I suppose (I'm just thinking out loud ;-) Anyway, you get the idea. If it
makes you rich, I want a piece ;-)

my 2 cents ;-)

Regards,
Bengt Richter