Drupal quite clearly follows the social networking paradigm of 'content plus threaded comments'. In other words, comments are an important part of a Drupal site. This is perhaps, for instance, why Drupal's forum software is so weak compared to dedicated forum software; every piece of content effectively becomes a forum thread.
So you'd expect the comments system to be strong and flexible.
But they're not:
· you have to let authors into the back-end to manage the comments.
· all authors can moderate every single comment, rather than just the comments under their own nodes.
The only module that attempts to correct this is http://drupal.org/project/usercomment
But reading the issue queue, it is barely functional, buggy and not maintained.
So here's what I don't understand: There must be many hundreds or even thousands or Drupal websites that have multiple authors writing content for them. How on earth are they managing their comments?
Editing, deleting and moving comments should be something done in the front-end, similar to the node creation process. Whoever designed the comments module completely ignored the whole point of using drupal, which is NOT to have to let normal users into the back end to edit and moderate their content.
I've only just got round to looking at the commenting system. I've had a bad feeling about it in the back of my mind for months, but I dismissed the apparent lack of comment management thinking that there must be hidden options somewhere that I missed, or that there would be a super duper module that everyone uses.
Is comment management exasperating anyone else?
Are there other (stable, production-ready) solutions that I've missed?
Cheers.
Comments
Edge case
I think websites where authors are allowed to moderate comments on their nodes are in the minority. I know I wouldn't want users on my site having rights to delete content from other people with the possible exception of blog posts.
As far as I know, usercomment is it. The fact that it is relatively unmaintained and no one has stepped up to take it over tells me that there isn't a big need for this.
You also have to remember that the comment module is extremely old. It's probably been around as long as Drupal and hasn't had a lot of love since then. The web was a different place in 2001.
Michelle
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Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.
Thanks for your reply. > I
Thanks for your reply.
> I know I wouldn't want users on my site having rights to delete content from
> other people with the possible exception of blog posts.
That's exactly my case-usage in all three sites that I've done in Drupal so far:
· 30-40 teacher blogs, each moderating/editing/deleting inappropriate student comments as needed.
· a business site where a handful of employees need to moderate the comments made below their own nodes.
· a family site where each member of the family is responsible for moderating spam on their blog comments.
In all cases, these people should not access the back-end at all; in fact they should not even know a back-end exists. That is really the ONLY reason I chose drupal initially - it's apparent simplicity in managing content through the front-end.
Are these types of sites and user really that strange??
Trying to stay positive about this 'setback' (about the hundredth so far), I'm going to try moving the administration menu out of the navigation block and into a block that only UID1 can access, so that even if users have the permission to administer comments, they won't see a link for anything in the back-end.
Then I'm going to try the http://drupal.org/project/comment_delete module. I'm assuming that the node authors will see a delete link within each comment - it's not clear from the description. This should at least let them delete individual comments. Albeit, they will be able to delete any comments from any nodes (which is not particularly desirable; I'll just have to tell them to behave themselves), and also they will not have the option to edit or correct the offending comments, only delete them, which falls quite short of what is needed.
Cheers.
Everything I say is opinion, even if interpreted as fact.
Sometimes I may be inaccurate or *GASP* wrong!
Sometimes I attack Drupal due to frustration. Get over it.
.
If usercomment does what you need except for the fact that it's buggy, then it seems to me the answer is to fix the bugs. Either yourself if you have the skills or hire someone who does. I don't know if sites with non-admins deleting other peoples' content are unusual but I suspect there would be a working solution if they were common.
Michelle
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Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.
> I don't know if sites with
> I don't know if sites with non-admins
In the social networking paradigm, such as facebook, youtube, myspace, etc, do you, as a non-admin, ever see the back-end? Does anyone who works at facebook or myspace ever have to moderate your profile or space for you? I think the point is that you're given tools to manage your own content.
Drupal *looked* on the surface to provide this, bearing in mind that it's motto is 'community plumbing'. However, with comments this aspect has strangely been ignored.
> then it seems to me the answer is to fix the bugs. Either yourself...
Believe me, I would love to be in better control of these sites instead of having to workaround every single little design flaw or short-coming in the scripts. Seriously asking - if I was able to give up a couple of hours per day to learn php and sql (both from scratch - I literally know nothing), how long might it take to learn enough to improve the comment module with better script than it currently has?
Bear in mind I don't seem to have much of a flare for scripting; I look at a piece of php and can't understand any of the syntax at all. I've also read this guide a couple of times: http://www.westciv.com/style_master/academy/css_tutorial/selectors/index..., and *still* don't understand css (well, I thought I did a bit, but nothing I try to do ever works).
> or hire someone who does
I can't afford to do that with every bug and flaw. I have also had large problems with multi-language, user registration, internal messaging, forums, subscriptions to content, taxonomy, inline images and media, wysiwyg and menus. If I were to pay to fix all that too, I might as well buy expression engine!
But out of interest, how long do you think it would take, and therefore how much would it cost, to fix the usercomment module or write a completely new module which added edit/delete buttons to comments for the node author to use? I notice that someone has supplied patches for the usercomment module; if the maintainer has gone AWOL, how do those patches get tested and applied to the module?
Thanks.
Everything I say is opinion, even if interpreted as fact.
Sometimes I may be inaccurate or *GASP* wrong!
Sometimes I attack Drupal due to frustration. Get over it.
.
No, but building Facebook isn't the norm with Drupal. Its social networking features are still rather primitive. The majority of Drupal sites out there is where control by non admins is limited. Doesn't mean you can't do SN with Drupal but it takes more work.
I haven't looked at usercomment and am not prepared to make an estimate on completing it.
I'm not sure what else to tell you. You're complaining that this software you're getting for free isn't working well enough and when I tell you what it takes to fix it, you say you can't do that. Well, then, maybe you should buy EE. With commercial software, you get commercial support. With open source, you are either dependent on code that others have generously donated or you dig in and fix it yourself.
If you are getting paid to make sites, then you need to be prepared to pay to make changes the client needs if you are not able to make them yourself. It's not unusual for front end developers to subcontract out the programming bits. If you do it as a hobby, like I do, then you either learn to code or find someone you can trade skills with or find some other way to get what you need. I've donated several hundred hours for free in my modules and tutorials and support and, in return, I can usually find someone to help me out if I get stuck. There's a lot of give and take in the open source world. And there's a lot of just take with no give as well but, then, you get what you pay for.
Michelle
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Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.
> Its social networking
> Its social networking features are still rather primitive
That's the thing though, isn't it. Drupal quite clearly wants to be able to do community stuff, and does promote itself as such, but then doesn't do it as well as might be expected.
> You're complaining that this software you're getting for free isn't working well enough
Sorry about that. I'm trying not to complain; just venting some frustration. For a noob it is frustrating to assume that the most important features have been implemented well and thoroughly, only to find out later that they haven't been. Also sometimes it is hard to understand how hundreds of people can be involved in Drupal, and yet development moves so very slowly. The other thing I've noticed recently is that a huge amount of D6 modules have been left in unstable or broken alpha or beta versions, with the last commit done over twenty or thirty weeks ago; not good when you were hoping to use a few of them to solve problems with core.
> when I tell you what it takes to fix it, you say you can't do that
I was serious when I asked how long it would take to become good enough to be able to tackle a problem like improving the comments module. If I tried to dedicate a couple of hours a day to learning php and sql, could I get there in a year or two, for instance (bearing in mind that I don't seem to have much natural aptitude for scripting)? At the moment I don't enjoy working with Drupal, but maybe my enjoyment would increase if I knew how to write a little php?
> If you are getting paid to make sites
Not really. It's an interest. I get some compensation for developing/maintaining the school sites in my own time, but it works out to less than 1€ for each hour that I spend on the sites. The others are favours to friends, done as 'learning projects'. My aim though, in three years, is to be able to think of web design and reseller hosting as a potential, 'emergency fall-back' if I'm ever left unemployed for more than a few months. Or perhaps it could eventually become a way to earn a little extra cash during the evenings/weekends. The question is whether Drupal can figure into that plan; at the moment I'm doubtful, unless D7 is completely kick-ass.
> I've donated several hundred hours for free in my modules and tutorials
Likewise I've spent 300+ hours trying to help people who know less than myself on the forums (they are quite hard to find!). Since I've only spent a further 700 hours actually working on my websites, that is actually quite a large chunk of time I've 'given back' (though, obviously not as much as you, worldfallz, VM, etc). I *am* actually trying to like Drupal, but it seems not to want me to like it.
Anyway, thanks for your replies. Much appreciated.
Everything I say is opinion, even if interpreted as fact.
Sometimes I may be inaccurate or *GASP* wrong!
Sometimes I attack Drupal due to frustration. Get over it.
.
I don't think it really promotes itself as a social networking platform. If you're going by the "community plumbing" slogan, well, that's ancient and goes back to Drupal's roots as a glorified forum. If you follow the showcase forum, social networking sites are really in the minority.
The problem is that what is important to you isn't important to everyone. Everyone has different needs from Drupal. What gets written depends on the meeting between need and ability + resources.
That's not a question I can really answer. If I asked you how long it would take me to learn German well enough to hold a conversation, could you answer that without knowing me? I can tell you that I came to Drupal with a coding background but basically no PHP knowledge and I wrote Advanced Forum as my first module. Some of the early code is pretty awful but I picked up both PHP and the Drupal API fairly easily once I started digging in with a goal in mind. If this module is really important to you, grab yourself a PHP reference and start digging in and see what makes it tick.
I wasn't really trying to get into a "who gives back more" contest. Just saying that helping out often earns you "karma" that you can call on when you need help yourself. Unfortunately, it's not an exact currency so there's no guarantees.
Good luck!
Michelle
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Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.
> I wasn't really trying to
> I wasn't really trying to get into a "who gives back more" contest.
Me neither... you'd win hands down. :) I was just trying to illustrate that although I have my gripes, I do try to give time back to the community, even though my skills are severely limited.
> The problem is that what is important to you isn't important to everyone
I don't know. I consider myself an empathetic person, but I just can't imagine thousands of drupal sites functioning very well, considering some of drupal's more serious shortcomings and flaws. Having to give users the power to administrate every comment on the site rather than just the comments attached to their own nodes is just one quite small example. That's like a 'WTF?' moment for me; I simply can't comprehend how any drupal site with multiple bloggers manages to function properly.
The 'comment delete' module, giving my bloggers 'administer comments' permission, and hiding the administration menu from them in a block has partially solved this problem. But it's still huge pain, because now they can administer *any* comments rather than just those on their own nodes.
However, lets not dwell.
Thanks for your input; I'm a better person for it!
Everything I say is opinion, even if interpreted as fact.
Sometimes I may be inaccurate or *GASP* wrong!
Sometimes I attack Drupal due to frustration. Get over it.