I have made more than a few proposals for the general future of DaniWeb over the time but here is a really small and easy to implement suggestion.

Today I replied to a question from a person that I have the opinion that doesn't really need to get answers but ready made code , and is rude if you don't do it. I didn't understood that this was that person when I replied but afterwards because I had few spare minutes I clicked in that profile and I felt tricked for wasting my time to reply to that.

Wouldn't be great to have a memo btn next to each user name that each one of us could write comments for that person , so if we have comments for that person we can see them. There could be distinctive comments e.g. memo 0 could mean that you don't have any comments for that person that you want to see before reply , memo 4 could mean that you have four comments that you want to see before replying. Of course pressing this “memo” button you would see the comments in a modal window and add or edit them.

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Member Avatar for diafol

I asked for the ignore list to be re-instated. I was told that it would be counter-productive at the time. I was a moderator on here, and I see the point of that. Now I'm no longer a moderator, I would really like that feature :) However, if there were such a facility, I reckon I'd see no new posts at all from the lack of activity on DW these days.

from the lack of activity on DW these days

On the plus side, I can be offline for several days (got to camp on Thrsday but had to wait until today to go to town and activate my internet & phone for the summer) and still get caught up with the backlog in 5-10 minutes max.

That's the plus side, Jim? :(

jkon, essentially what you're asking for seems to me like a combination of reputation and post comments. For example, https://www.daniweb.com/members/479282/jkon/comments

We used to have a comments feature in member profiles and literally NO ONE used it, so we got rid of it.

Wouldn't be great to have a memo btn next to each user name that each one of us could write comments for that person , so if we have comments for that person we can see them.

How is that different than what we have via our existing member comments page, which has the added bonus of tying into reputation and being able to gauge individual member posts.

That's the plus side, Jim?

Well, it's a plus when I get to camp and have a thousand and one things to take care of that piled up over the winter. It's not a plus when things settle down and I am looking for things to do. All in all, I'd much rather see a lot more posts with interesting question.

Hello Dani , I believe that you genuinely didn't understood what I was writing . I am not an English native speaker and although I have a Cambridge proficiency my writings in English are not great (people understand me when I talk so my writing is just a reflection of how I am speaking) , I will try to improve to that as well.
Back to the proposal. I can't see anywhere in DaniWeb an option to have comments for a person that is private and only for me as a user to read. More over I can't see those comments to be near a person profile as a reminder.

Are there such feature or the reply:

“How is that different than what we have via our existing member comments page, which has the added bonus of tying into reputation and being able to gauge individual member posts.”

came out due to my insufficiency to express my proposal in English or maybe you lack of understanding / interest of what I am proposing ?

There is no need to be defensive , it is just a minor proposal

As long as the comments are for you only then you could always create a folder on your computer called Daniweb Comments and create a file for each user you want to comment on. Or even a Daniweb Comment app (on your computer) that would maintain a simple text DB of comments. That should be something you could throw together in a couple of hours.

Yes Reverend Jim .. I could also create a folder in my PC with threads that are the answer to what I am asking and saving them there , in a proper folder name to find it next time . But I believe we are in a web invarioment and there is no need to save those data in my pc .....

If it is unlikely that Dani will implement the memo feature then I don't see an alternative. From my point of view, the memo data would be of interest to, and accessible only by you. When I have data that is of interest only to me I store it on my computer. Even if it is Daniweb related.

One example, I find that I have a small set of canned responses to certain types of posts. I could have asked Dani to implement a feature to allow me to store/edit those responses on the Daniweb servers. Instead I used AutoHotKey to create auto-expanding macros so that I could just type dwr@ (for Daniweb rules) instead of

Judging by your post it is possible that you have not read the Daniweb Posting Rules and Terms of Service. Please give these a read. You might also want to Read This Before Posting a Question to increase your chances of getting a timely (and more useful) response.

Also, as a moderator, I get to see the IP addresses of all posts. I asked for a feature that would get the IP info as a tooltip but it was not deemed to be generally useful so I wrote my own app. I copy the IP address to my clipboard and press a hotkey and 176.58.135.165 gets displayed as

clip-0004.jpg

jkon, essentially what you're asking for seems to me like a combination of reputation and post comments. For example, https://www.daniweb.com/members/479282/jkon/comments

...

How is that different than what we have via our existing member comments page, which has the added bonus of tying into reputation and being able to gauge individual member posts.

It's the same except that there is a lack of ownership/permissions. I imagine it would be easy to implement on your end, largely because it already IS implemented, or at least the vast majority of it is. At least I think so, not knowing how you implement this. But from the behavior, I imagine something it works like this.. I just did a little experiment...

I am logged in as AssertNull. I up-voted some posts in this thread without comment in aseparate Chrome tab than the one I am using now. Those posts are now purple. If I click the posts again, the up-votes go away. Thus I cannot upvote a post twice, which is good. I just logged into Microsoft Edge. I see the same thing there. I've been going back and forth between browers. When I upvote or take away the upvote in either browser, it shows up as purple or not purple in the other browser. I just deleted cookies in Microsoft Edge, then re-logged in. Purple is still there. Microsoft Edge knows what I upvoted.

Therefore, my upvotes must not be stored in a cookie, but instead on the server-side in a database (presumably) or using some other method, which makes it impossible to upvote twice. So it's getting stored on Daniweb. My upvote is visible to everyone, but the only one who can see it was from me (ie in purple) is me (and perhaps the mods/admins too? I don't know). When I give rep, the fact that it is from me is visible to everyone. Seems to me that all you have to do to implement jkon's idea is sort of transfer some of the public/private visibility that occurs with the up/down-votes to the rep and some other features only visible to mods. You add rep and choose whether to make it public or private (just like with up/down-votes). Make it public and it is as it is now. Make it private and it gets stored in the database, but does not affect their overall public rep, but YOU can see it.

You already have this. For the mods. If I give a spammer negative rep or downvotes and you delete the post, I can't see it anymore, but the mods can. Ditto when I flag a post. That's ending up somewhere in the database, right, just not visible to me. A slight tweak and voila'. AND think of the whole "matching" algorithm aspect and "recommended topics" aspect of the site. I assume that quite a lot of stuff is kept track of in order to figure out what to "suggest" to AssertNull (is every page that I view on Daniweb logged?). Certain folks and topics seem to pop up on my page as "suggested" whenever they post, even folks and topics where I think I've never posted, only viewed.

I like the idea. For myself, I do what RJ suggestedand keep notes, so that's an easy solution, though it would be nice to be able to pull up a page that kept track of all my votes and rep-giving. I have that regarding people doing that TO me, but not BY me. Related, why is an "Ignore" option bad?

commented: Seems a good task for the API. +0

There are some members who I would classify as problem users and it would be nice to have a flag or something associated with the name. For example, threads that I have posted in have a little yellow cartouche overlay on the thread summary page. Perhaps users who have active infractions (the problem users would generally have at least one active) could have another type of overlay like a red exclamation mark. This wouldn't even require a memo feature as it would be based on the current infraction system. I find that if there is a problem with a particular user there is usually a thread in the moderators' forum for that user. Instead of comments we have extended discussions. Not only is this more comprehensive, it is also searchable.

This functionality already exists with Dazah.

Every DaniWeb member has a Dazah account. Dazah allows its users to attach metadata to other users. Metadata are essentially key/value pairs attached to a privacy setting (The privacy setting can be set to only you can see it, everyone using DaniWeb can see it, or everyone in the Dazah ecosystem can see it).

You can attach a note to User A that has a privacy setting set only to you and says something like "This guy is annoying." You can attach a note to User B that has a privacy setting set to all of DaniWeb and says something like "Don't waste your time with this guy. He never follows up after asking a question."

I think it would be a realistic feature request for me to integrate a front-end for this into the DaniWeb UI.

In the meantime, you can implement it yourself with a fancy Greasemonkey script or a simple Chrome plugin. Essentially you would need to use an AJAX call to the API to set/get the metadata, and display it prettily wherever you want it along with a little textbox form to add new.

Can the privacy setting be set to "moderators only"?

Member Avatar for diafol

You can attach a note to User A that has a privacy setting set only to you and says something like "This guy is annoying." You can ..."

You can, but delving into Dazah API for this is not much fun. I tried it. So although you can, nobody (!) will. I hope you get the time to build the front end.

You can, but delving into Dazah API for this is not much fun. I tried it.

What was the barrier to its use? What makes it not fun? :(

Learning about OAuth for one. In order to learn Dazah and the API, I have to learn OAuth and web security and JSON, etc. At least I THINK I do. Important topics to be sure, but not my specialty.

I gave the API the old college try, say a 1/2 hour. I want a quick mindless Plug and Play Dazah Fiddle for lack of better phrasing. I don't want to have to go to the API for Hello Dazah. Deeper than that? Sure.

I also want to be able to do Hello Dazah without understanding Dazah. The Greasemonkey thing seems more promising. I know zilch about Greasemonkey but can use it for simple stuff guy.

A nice Excel spreadsheet with a post link, username, vote, and comment like "Smart-aleck Welshman. Thinks rugby is a better sport than football. Invite him to shoot guns if he visits US. Seems to know PHP." works fine too.

Learning about OAuth for one. In order to learn Dazah and the API, I have to learn OAuth and web security and JSON, etc. At least I THINK I do. Important topics to be sure, but not my specialty.

Yes, although these things are all pretty much standard for web APIs, so they aren't things that make Dazah's API unique or confusing, per se. It's the same stack you would need to play with Facebook's API or LinkedIn's API, etc.

I want a quick mindless Plug and Play Dazah Fiddle for lack of better phrasing.

Have you tried executing the endpoints on our reference page? You can try out every feature by plugging in your own data ... pretty mindless point and click along with the code you would need to execute the same API calls from within your own app.

I also want to be able to do Hello Dazah without understanding Dazah.

Like this?

We're getting somewhere now...

But...

Where can I paste that code? My own website page? My Netbeans or Dreamweaver setup at home? A php fiddle? I'm not going to be able to experiment on Dazah.com, am I? And would I even want to (ie debuggers).

Equivalent question to a C++ newbie not knowing what to do with some C++ source code except there is no fiddle to post your code in?

That looks like a code snippet rather than fully functioning code. How do I, for instance, experiment and display something in the $output object other than first name by changing first_name to something else?

Where can I paste that code? My own website page?

The demo was written in PHP, so it can be plopped Into a PHP script to be executed by a PHP-capable web server.

I'm not going to be able to experiment on Dazah.com, am I?

Well you can play with passing different parameters into any of the endpoints and seeing what JSON would be returned, and that's all live data. It's with the Try It Now buttons on the reference page.

How do I, for instance, experiment and display something in the $output object other than first name by changing first_name to something else?

You want to read our documentation or play around with the reference page, and that should answer the question.

What may seem easy to you is not necessarily easy to others.

To wit

OK, I see what happened. I copied and pasted what looked like the code that was on the webpage link screen into a new PHP page in my website. Didn't work. Surrounded it with PHP tags. Didn't work. Fixed the "unescaped" single-quotes in the strings. Didn't work. Etcetera. Looking at the code it was pretty obvious why.

Then I copied and pasted the PAGE SOURCE of your link into my PHP webpage, including scripts, HTML, CSS and a bunch of "include" lines, and it worked.

In hindsight, obvious. Before I thought to do that, not so obvious. At least not to me. I'll take the hit if I was the only one that wasn't obvious to.

I'll play around a little enough. Last time I tried it in Java. Ugh. Not saying "ugh" to Java, saying "ugh" that it was not obvious to me what non-Dazah Java libraries I had to download and use. Will stick with scripting languages for now.

Non-Dazah java libraries? Do you mean JavaScript?

Non-Dazah java libraries? Do you mean JavaScript?

No. I mean Java. I was copying/modelling off of someone else doing it in Java, or tying to. He was using a non-Oracle library that was publicly downloadable. Had the wrong version or something. Didn't work for me. It was for the JSON or the OAuth part or something. It was a while ago and it was not something that you, the creator of Dazah, would need or want to write. Someone else wrote it. Definitely Java.

Oh, I see. Well I don't know Java and third party libraries shouldn't be needed to use the API. Unless you mean a third-party OAuth library.

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