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Halfbakery Anno Place Marker

Read the post you want to comment on, click your place marker, type your response.
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The way we address particular posts now is to address the poster's name and do that weird double slash thing on either side to show what you're talking about. However this is time consuming and confusing as you still often have to refer back the the original post to get context.

This idea is to have a place marker that would hold your place after a particular post that you wanted to address and give you time to write it keeping some kind of chronological order in the annotation list.

This way, if somebody wrote about a hedgehog calling it an ouchmouse and then there's five posts about orbital mechanics, your post doesn't respond to:

"As seen in the equation v = SQRT(G * Mcentral / R), the mass of the central body (earth) and the radius of the orbit affect orbital speed...etc"

with:

"What's an ouchmouse?"

Causing confusion and consternation.

doctorremulac3, Jan 24 2019

Ouchmouse https://goo.gl/images/NQ6jX2
[doctorremulac3, Jan 28 2019]

OK, this is the idea. Post_20Three_20Dots...ace_20In_20A_20Post
Notexactlyl's with my dot addition. [doctorremulac3, Jan 28 2019]

[link]






       It might be better just to have annotations automatically numbered, consecutively, at the time of annotating. The numbering would need to be static, so that if someone deletes an anno, the other numbering doesn't shift up immediately.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 24 2019
  

       Well, this was specifically inspired by my asking a question that you had already answered. Would that work? You'd still have to go back and say "OK, this number is before that number..." and do math which causes head ouches.   

       Might even throw in that little flashy dots thing telling everybody: "Back off everybody! Megatron9000 (or whoever) is typing another awesome anno!"
doctorremulac3, Jan 24 2019
  

       IMHO, the "tree" style prevalent at other commentable sites is cumbersome. The "straight chronological" style we have here is generally easy to use and follow; and if we have to do a little extra to refer to each other, so be it.
Although [MaxwellBuchanan]s numbering idea would help, as you could simply refer to the number of an anno instead, especially if you wish to refer to more than one anno at once.
neutrinos_shadow, Jan 24 2019
  

       No, I hate that tree style as well. This would just be a placeholder so your anno would appear right after the anno you were responding to even if several other annos were entered before you hit [OK] on yours.
doctorremulac3, Jan 24 2019
  

       Ah, I get it. [+]
neutrinos_shadow, Jan 24 2019
  

       //your anno would appear right after the anno you were responding to even if several other annos were entered before you hit [OK] on yours.// But, in general, most annotations are responding to earlier annotations. So your annotation would displace (to further down the page) other annotations responding to the same one. And then if someone _else_ wanted to respond, it would mess things up again. It's a queueing problem. We're good at this.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 24 2019
  

       Others would tag their place in the queue as well but they'd all be below the one they're responding to, first come first serve. This is just to keep all the little sub conversations that happen here together so they can all be read at once.   

       Of course if you're just making a general comment or starting a new point, you'd just annotate as you usually do. This [CLICK TO REPLY TO THIS ANNOTATION] button would only hold your place if you wanted it at a specific position, namely right after a particular post.   

       This would work if you came along late in the conversation as well and found a post you wanted to respond to.   

       So a particular comment might trigger most of the additional comments in a post, as the conversation sort of does now, but if you weren't interested in that little sub conversation, you could just move on.   

       There would be a little place marker too. Just a line denoting the starting comment and the last comment on the list so you could see where the sub conversation starts and stops.
doctorremulac3, Jan 25 2019
  

       Ah, OK.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 25 2019
  

       No, no, now you've changed your tune again. If you come along late, too bad. I see this as ONLY to hold you as "Next" while you are typing, NOT to "insert" a new comment further up the comment-stream. It's a "take a number" like at a clinic. You can only ever add a comment at the bottom of the stream, ordered as from when you START (click "annotate") instead of when you finish typing and click "OK". "Click to reply to this annotation" will make a mess (eg. pretty much any other commentable site...).
neutrinos_shadow, Jan 25 2019
  

       Well, it could be either I suppose.   

       I like the idea of being able to read one conversation all together though. Add on to it etc.   

       The only disadvantage of being able to add to earlier conversations is nobody would see it unless they were looking for it since the way we do it now is to just look at the last comments.   

       But just the placeholder would be better than nothing I suppose.
doctorremulac3, Jan 25 2019
  

       [Inserts one <Halfbakery Anno Place Marker>]   

       And, while I'm here how come the <Pedant Alert> tag still does not work?
not_morrison_rm, Jan 25 2019
  

       I was sure I said something here yesterday. Did it get deleted, or did my computer fail to send it properly? Anyway, it's probably irrelevant with the further discussion that's happened in the meantime, most likely answering my questions without even knowing I had them…
notexactly, Jan 26 2019
  

       I didn't delete anything.   

       Can you put it up again?
doctorremulac3, Jan 26 2019
  

       I can't remember exactly what I said, but:   

       The first paragraph was about not being able to tell whether this idea was about a) a new threaded way of displaying annotations or b) a tool to keep track of which annotations you wanted to respond to while you kept reading, but expecting to find it useful either way.   

       The second paragraph was in reply to the numbering suggestion, about how the site seems to have a global annotation ID number system in some way already (as shown by the anchors on the links to ideas), though not an exposed or very useful-to-end-users way. I suggested that this could be made use of in a couple of ways, but it still wouldn't be as good a system as just manually numbering each annotation.
notexactly, Jan 27 2019
  

       What an annotator writes usually indicates where that string of the conversation is coming from unless it's way out of left field and needs explanation anyway.   

       All I would want is a Anno Place Marker for deleted stuff so I can guess at the deleted stuff from where the marker is. Just a [AccountHandle] would be good. It would also mark that something has been deleted.
wjt, Jan 27 2019
  

       It's a hedgehog.
pertinax, Jan 27 2019
  

       What’s an ‘ouchmouse’?
AusCan531, Jan 27 2019
  

       [wjt]
wjt, Jan 27 2019
  

       //What’s an ‘ouchmouse’?//   

       (link)
doctorremulac3, Jan 28 2019
  

       I think I made this more confusing than it should be.   

       To summarize: It simply holds your place in the timeline while you type your annotation so it's placed where you started to write rather than what position is available by the time you've finished writing.   

       So if the timeline is 1, 2, 3, 4, and you start typing after 4, your post will be placed in position 5 when you're finished rather than the bottom of the queue. This way if you're typing a five thousand word screed you won't have multiple two or three word posts at positions 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. You're position is held at 5 if you were the 5th person to click on the response button.   

       The response button might pop up a number if somebody hit it before you but that's probably not necessary.   

       OK, over complicated it again. Ignore that last line.
doctorremulac3, Jan 28 2019
  

       Some forums give a warning if someone posts in-between you hitting reply and hitting send, but honestly, if your reply has taken that long to write it's not much effort to just reload the page to see if the narrative still makes sense.   

       I completely agree about the marker for deleted posts, even a simple indication of (deleted annotation) would help in parsing the comments on older ideas.
mitxela, Jan 28 2019
  

       // All I would want is a Anno Place Marker for deleted stuff so I can guess at the deleted stuff from where the marker is. Just a [AccountHandle] would be good. It would also mark that something has been deleted. //   

       Yeah, that would be nice, especially on the really old ideas. It's confusing to see somebody reply by name to somebody else whose name I didn't already see. I imagine that data is no longer in the database, though, at least because the site's database size was once a concern (!), so it wouldn't be implementable for the ideas that would benefit the most from it.   

       // To summarize: It simply holds your place in the timeline while you type your annotation so it's placed where you started to write rather than what position is available by the time you've finished writing.   

       So if the timeline is 1, 2, 3, 4, and you start typing after 4, your post will be placed in position 5 when you're finished rather than the bottom of the queue. This way if you're typing a five thousand word screed you won't have multiple two or three word posts at positions 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. You're position is held at 5 if you were the 5th person to click on the response button. //   

       I didn't get that at all! I think you can easily do this yourself, though. Just post a "[placeholder - editing]" anno as soon as you want to reply to something, and then immediately click [edit] and type your reply. Then, if somebody else says something, it will come after your placeholder.
notexactly, Jan 28 2019
  

       Simpler still, post three dots, the same as that symbol for typing.   

       ...   

       People already know what that means eh?   

       Think I'll start doing that.   

       Good idea NE.
doctorremulac3, Jan 28 2019
  

       Yeah, that's better. I've gone and bunned it.
notexactly, Jan 28 2019
  
      
[annotate]
  


 

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