donnacha

donnacha

38p

40 comments posted · 460 followers · following 2

14 years ago @ IntenseDebate Blog - Introducing WordPress.... · 2 replies · +5 points

Wonderful news, been waiting for this, congratulations.

I notice, though, that I now see to have two profiles:

http://intensedebate.com/PROFILES/donnacha

http://intensedebate.com/PEOPLE/donnacha

The PROFILES one is associated with my WordPress account but contains none of my ID comments or ID score.

The PEOPLE one has all my ID data but seems to have no connection to my WordPress account.

This is going to be confusing for a lot of people.

It would be good to see these profiles merged. I would like my avatar to display the WordPress badge and provide some sort of link to or indication of my WordPress presence but, also, display my IntenseDebate score.

14 years ago @ IntenseDebate Blog - Moderation Whitelist a... · 2 replies · +1 points

With regard to whitelists, it would be good if I could opt to automatically whitelist commenters who have been whitelisted by a lot of other people - surely one of the main advantages of a distributed commenting system is that you gather the data necessary to form a "web of trust".

It would also be good if some sort of translation functionality was built into the moderation interface - I often see comments that contain two languages: English that seems innocent/relevant enough, but then, also, a paragraph or two in some other language, clearly not spoken by the website owner or any of the other commenters. I generally presume it is some form of spam or propaganda, targeted at other speakers of that language, but it would be good to be able to check and ensure that I wasn't unfairly marking something as spam.

14 years ago @ IntenseDebate Blog - Moderation Whitelist a... · 0 replies · +1 points

Heh, I was delighted when I appeared in a screenshot in the post a few months ago about copying permalinks xD

14 years ago @ IntenseDebate Blog - New Pagination Setting... · 2 replies · +4 points

Nice move.

One twist on this that might be good would be if you could make it conditional on how ID is performing that day - of course, your aim is to make ID lightening fast at all times but, realistically, there will always be times when the service struggles, at those times it would be neat if the setting could automatically jump back to 25 rather than make the page-load take an inordinate amount of time.

In normal circumstances, however, 50 or 100 comments is great because users are much more likely to keep reading down a page rather than click through to a new one. Also, commenters on popular posts will feel happier than if their comment is knocked off the first page. Good all round (except on days when the service is slow!).

14 years ago @ Laughing Squid - Vegetables Are All You... · 1 reply · +2 points

I can't help thinking that this, the whole thing including the body, would make a wonderful roast.

Is that so very wrong of me?

BTW, good to see that you've switched to IntenseDebate, it's a wonderful system.

14 years ago @ Weblog Tools Collection - Is Automattic Evil? · 0 replies · +2 points

Anyone who thinks that Automattic is evil either hasn't been paying attention or has a selfish agenda of their own.

I am not easily impressed but I am impressed and intensely relieved that Matt has stuck to his guns and stayed true to the community, despite all the FUD that a small handful of malcontents have been throwing around. I am also impressed by his patience in repeatedly explaining what the GPL is and why WordPress, and all the advantages it gives each of us, could not exist without it.

It is astonishing that some people cannot grasp the simple logic of what he is saying, that they keep rising up again and again, like zombies, to piss and moan because they think that WordPress owes them a living, and don't have the imagination to see how much the GPL is offering them on a plate.

But the anti-GPL zombies don't matter, they can be ignored - in Matt, we've got a guy who really gets it, who isn't going to be swayed by shrill voices and is going to keep doing the right thing. WordPress is an incredible project, Automattic is a wonderful contributor to the project and we all benefit as a result.

14 years ago @ Stack Test - xczv · 0 replies · +1 points

test

14 years ago @ Stack Test - test · 0 replies · +2 points

test 2

14 years ago @ IntenseDebate Blog - New Plugins: AddThis a... · 0 replies · +2 points

Yeah, you really do!

I've left a comment on the blog post announcing the AtD ID plugin, thank you and congratulations.

14 years ago @ IntenseDebate Blog - After the Deadline Int... · 2 replies · +1 points

Wow. Seriously: Wow!!

This feature is an astonishingly useful addition to ID. A big "Hell, Yes!" to Michael, Raphael and the ID team.

I have a few first impressions that I'd like to share:

The "Checking Spelling" text changes to "Edit Comment" when you are in AtD mode - a more intuitive wording might be "Continue Writing".

It would be helpful if the transition between both modes could be made more obvious. For instance, you could give the text field a very pale yellow background when in AtD mode, reverting back to white when returning to writing mode.

It might also be a good idea to add an extra highlight to the "Continue Writing" button, to cue people who have accidentally entered AtD mode and are confused. You already have the transition between the two different labels but a slight color change or thin red border might make the change more obvious i.e. people will instantly know that the feature is "active".

This is just a random wild thought but, if you could make the button reflect the current mode more clearly, you could probably afford to lose the text labels altogether and just have the spell-check icon - just give it an obvious highlight when in editing mode, no need for the text, people will get the idea and it's generally better to avoid text in the UI if you can anyway. Removing the text would also leave more room for other plugin icons, thereby increasing the number of site owners who opt to use AtD.

The ID AtD implementation seems to be better than the one on WordPress.com, because it is quite easy to end up with some parts of the post field in WP containing the AtD red underlines even when you are back in writing mode, which might be a tad confusing for some people, not sure which mode they are currently in. So, the ID implementation seems a lot cleaner in that respect.

There does seem to be a slight bug when, within AtD mode, you click on a misspelling to see the AtD suggestions but don't pick one and return to writing mode. This sometimes leaves some extraneous text. For instance, I ended one of the above paragraphs with the words "site owners who opt to use AtD". In AtD mode, I was amused to see that the abbreviation "AtD" is not recognized, so, I clicked on it to see what alternatives it suggested. When I returned to writing mode, that sentence changed to "site owners who opt to use AtD.suggest(this);">AtD", clearly some sort of artifact from my use of the pop-up menu. This occurs in both Safari and Chrome under OS X, but not FireFox.

Again, thank you so much for continuing to improve ID, it is exciting to think about where Automattic will be in six months time with innovators such as AtD and ID onboard.