BuddyPress.org

I think it would be best to indeed show a link to the topic and let users reply there.. if a user is not a member of the group but a message where the link would normally be:

“if you want to reply on this topic, please join the group first”

Or something like that

Originally posted by Andy:

It may be worth considering disabling comments on these items and instead providing a link to be able to comment at the location of the original content.

I would like to see a BuddyPress admin option to disable activity commenting for components we deem not worthy of having it. I would use this option for blog comments and forum posts.

Although the “live” aspect wouldn’t be fostered, we should only have one focused stream for blog comments and forum posts, rather than the original stream (blog comment, forum replies) and a multiple activity comment stream.

To Bowe, Mike and whoever else is reading, I put up a ticket with this issue awhile ago – https://trac.buddypress.org/ticket/1419

Feel free to chime in.

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The other issue raised by Mike of auto-joining a group on a forum reply is interesting. On testbp.org, I made a reply to a group forum post and thus, joined the group.

Then I visited my group activity stream and noticed these new group activity posts in my stream and said to myself “I don’t really want these items in my group stream!”.

So the issue is if you make a ton of group forum replies to groups that you’re not a member of, your personal group stream will become littered!

Mike, how do you plan on handling this on your BP site?

@Mike,

I think you’re misunderstanding what I want.

I actually do want forum and blog replies, but only on the original source and not in the AJAX activity comment stream (unless there’s a way we could sync them, like you mentioned above).

As far as the “group auto join” feature, that only happens when you go to the original group forum post to comment, not in the AJAX activity comment stream. You can’t join a group by commenting on a group item in the SWA stream.

With regards to blog or forum posts – I may not/do not want to autojoin the group.

Another thought: Maybe an admin option to turn off excerpts in activity would

prevent forking. When I post a new blog or forum post, an update might appear

on the activity feed that says "Boone posted a new blog entry: Boone's

Blog Post", but without an excerpt. People could still comment in ways that

make sense ("Boy Boone, you blog a lot") but they wouldn't really be able to

leave substantive comments on the content of the blog entry/forum post, since

it wouldn't appear on the activity stream.

(Boone Gorges)

+1

Also with regards to removing excerpts – that seems as though it would remove a lot of the usefulness of the activity stream. I want to be able to scan the feed and get a taste for the content so I can click and read more of what grabs my interest. You really remove the ability to do that when it’s mostly posting one liners.

I’m not convinced that comments should be fed back to blog posts, as per Andy’s first post on the thread.

Originally posted by D Cartwright:

I do think we need to have something to feed back comments to the original posting…

I suggested something similar to trackbacks, but for activity comments only. I’d call this “Community reactions” or something similar in that manner.

I guess it could technically be a trackback though…

How about we put all of the components that allow activity to hit the stream(s) into an array. Say…

$bp->activity->actions

Then, that array (which already exists) can be altered by a potential administration panel (or future permissions later.) BuddyPress plugins can register themselves as having activity with bp_activity_set_action( ) to which there should be a bp_activity_remove_action() that would add or remove activity abilities to the array such as $bp->activity->actions->comments_enabled

The array will have everything set to true by default. Constants in bp-custom.php or a plugin that makes an admin panel can then set those values to true or false…

bp_activity_get_action()

As long as there’s proper actions in place, plugin authors can sneak in there and append data to comments/forums/posts, whatever, provided everything is available at run time, which it usually is.

Long story short, add another $arg to set if commenting is allowed or not.

Even better…

This would also be a great reason/time to implement an activitymeta table, as it would allow this type of thing to not be core, but plugin territory if someone needs it. Or, that kind of on/off switch could just be in sitemeta and a plugin could block comments on specific activity actions from within the action.bp_blogs_activity_commenting = false

There’s actually a ton of ways this could be done pretty easily.

I think a great way to solve this problem would be to have a way for the activity stream item itself to know which post it is pertaining to, and pull that stream and display it on the post either in lieu or or addition to comments. Then people could comment on the activity stream from within the blog post too. Imagine a blog post that said “Comment on this blog post, and see what people are saying about it.” They’re the same but different, and if templated correctly now you have comments about the text of my blog post, and comments about the fact that I posted it.

Same for forum topics and posts. Maybe you use topic/post activity as a way to say “This post is dumb and I think you’re stupid” without ever mucking up the actual forum topic of discussion itself. So you branch out new activity not just with new branches, but whole new ways to discuss that specific activity without interrupting that activity.

Take this forum post. If it had a link to say “Comment on this forum post” and it slid open a post box from within the forum for someone to give me feedback and say “This post is really too long and boring” then from within the forum view you can see each forum post has 3, 4, 20 activity comments on them.

That, is the future of how to integrate the activity stream fully into a website.

…in my opinion(s).

A great way to finish this off would be with an activity stream widget that was self aware of what content is being loaded on the page. If you’re looking at a blog post, show the activity about that blog post; looking at a forum topic, show the activity about that topic being created; etc…

It will be the Skynet of activity widgets. Self aware… Or maybe just the Terminator widget, always looking for John Connor.

I'll be back, and when I am, I'll be active.

I may have actually lost my mind. haha