Sticky thoughts may be a better way.
I am not happy with the way group headers work and look. The different formatting and text weights are just kind of funky. A group header represents the most important aspects of me and my presentation. It is the first thing people see and focus on when they come to view me. I would like to have more control over it.
Wordpress uses the idea of “stickey posts”. Here it would be sticky thoughts, but I think it would work great. Same basic checkbox in the editor, but instead of filling in something in the group table, a sticky thought always sorts to the head of the list, effectively making it the header. This way you can style your header any way you please with all the styling available to full thoughts without re-construction by the group header styling … and with or without title, about’s, etc.
Another advantage is that you could have as many sticky thoughts as you like so that your initial presentation could be multiple thoughts. Granted a lot of them would not be very practical for a large blog, but could be very practical for a targeted use group, like administrators for instance. You could even organize your sticky thoughts simply by reposting them to the top into the order you desired. No extra functionality needed.
If you wanted your group header to look the same as it does now, that would be possible, just style it so. If you wanted it to be different, as you are different, that would become possible too. It’s a very easy thing to work with, probably easier to understand than the current “make group header” is … and familiar to most bloggers already.
I don’t see a down side, no loss of ability, and I see lots of great advantages and ability to have more individualistic control over your blog/group/thoughts presentation without a major change to the system or how it works in general … virtually all the same controls will be used, just a slight change to the query to sort sticky thoughts to the top.
It will also have the advantage of not leaving some obscure thought floating around, often in the back room, that you have to find (if you forgot to tag it), edit, and remember to check that “make group header box” again, every time you want to tweak your header. With sticky thoughts, you directly edit the thought just like any other thought and there would not be a duplicate … it is the one and only (or many) as you choose.
Wordpress uses the idea of “stickey posts”. Here it would be sticky thoughts, but I think it would work great. Same basic checkbox in the editor, but instead of filling in something in the group table, a sticky thought always sorts to the head of the list, effectively making it the header. This way you can style your header any way you please with all the styling available to full thoughts without re-construction by the group header styling … and with or without title, about’s, etc.
Another advantage is that you could have as many sticky thoughts as you like so that your initial presentation could be multiple thoughts. Granted a lot of them would not be very practical for a large blog, but could be very practical for a targeted use group, like administrators for instance. You could even organize your sticky thoughts simply by reposting them to the top into the order you desired. No extra functionality needed.
If you wanted your group header to look the same as it does now, that would be possible, just style it so. If you wanted it to be different, as you are different, that would become possible too. It’s a very easy thing to work with, probably easier to understand than the current “make group header” is … and familiar to most bloggers already.
I don’t see a down side, no loss of ability, and I see lots of great advantages and ability to have more individualistic control over your blog/group/thoughts presentation without a major change to the system or how it works in general … virtually all the same controls will be used, just a slight change to the query to sort sticky thoughts to the top.
It will also have the advantage of not leaving some obscure thought floating around, often in the back room, that you have to find (if you forgot to tag it), edit, and remember to check that “make group header box” again, every time you want to tweak your header. With sticky thoughts, you directly edit the thought just like any other thought and there would not be a duplicate … it is the one and only (or many) as you choose.
Tags
- sticky thoughts
- headers
- documentation
Comments
Seth says
sounds good to me
… like you say … hard to find a down side.
sounds good to me
… like you say … hard to find a down side.
Seth says
2016-01-13 19:52:11 [item 19629#41979]
note we also want some capability to put a thought that sticks on the top of a tag room. might be tricky to reconcile who has the right to top the river tag rooms … thing is twitter does it too.
2016-01-13 19:58:10 [item 19629#41982]
Yep. That a much bigger change than sticky thoughts as group headers. It will require additional checkboxes somewhere and a place to store their values and changes to the room display logic, styling, etc. Not that it is a bigger job than anything else I have done, but it is a full feature change. Sticky thoughts for groups is more just a tweak.
Holmes says
also lost most of my groups
Okay … but to me this is a nice little tap on the should from your higher self. It is probably time to nix that malware, before it bites harder someday soon. Every seeming disturbance is there to help you. Your verse is on your side, always trying to guide you in the direction of your greatest joy … one only needs to listen. 
2016-01-13 19:52:11 [item 19629#41979]
note we also want some capability to put a thought that sticks on the top of a tag room. might be tricky to reconcile who has the right to top the river tag rooms … thing is twitter does it too.
2016-01-13 19:54:34 [item 19629#41980]
hmmm … i switched from FF to chrome and suddenly lost my edit pen on this train
2016-01-13 19:56:46 [item 19629#41981]
also lost most of my groups
2016-01-13 20:00:16 [item 19629#41984]
You and chrome just have a thing going on … and quite frankly, I am not convinced your chrome doesn’t have a virus that mangles cookies in some way. The fix we did only circumvented things. The malware is still there and may be hacking at your cookies.
2016-01-13 20:03:41 [item 19629#41985]
well, stupid me, i was already logged in … so i just logged out … and logged back in and now got all my groups and even my edit pen
Si says
Implemented
Seth says
i wonder who has that touch more … me or you … 
2016-01-14 08:58:23 [item 19629#42007]
basically it’s working … with notable exception …
… with notable exception … 2016-01-14 09:04:22 [item 19629#42008]
none of the editing of old thoughts seem to take place when i’m signed on as “seth”.
2016-01-14 09:24:03 [item 19629#42012]
when i was doing QA professionally they said I had a reverse midas touch. 
Si says
also lost most of my groups
Okay.
2016-01-13 19:52:11 [item 19629#41979]
note we also want some capability to put a thought that sticks on the top of a tag room. might be tricky to reconcile who has the right to top the river tag rooms … thing is twitter does it too.
2016-01-13 19:54:34 [item 19629#41980]
hmmm … i switched from FF to chrome and suddenly lost my edit pen on this train
2016-01-13 19:56:46 [item 19629#41981]
also lost most of my groups
2016-01-13 20:00:16 [item 19629#41984]
You and chrome just have a thing going on … and quite frankly, I am not convinced your chrome doesn’t have a virus that mangles cookies in some way. The fix we did only circumvented things. The malware is still there and may be hacking at your cookies.
2016-01-13 20:03:41 [item 19629#41985]
well, stupid me, i was already logged in … so i just logged out … and logged back in and now got all my groups and even my edit pen
2016-01-13 20:09:34 [item 19629#41987]
incidentally i did that because i think there is still a prob with FF and editing … frequently when i click to edit something the screen never completes … just like the loading forever on groups management. this happens so frequently that i thought everyone was aware of it … but maybe other people are not complaing because they don’t always use FF. so i’ll run in Chrome for a while and see if it happens here. if so, i’ll take a picture.
2016-01-13 20:13:10 [item 19629#41988]
Okay. I actually have been using FF this afternoon. Anything posted by dA instead of nathan was from FF. And I have noticed that it takes several times longer than chrome to make a post, but it has always gone though in less than 5 seconds.
2016-01-14 10:23:26 [item 19629#42024]
well on my other computer this morning in FF it lasted so long that i had a chance to take a picture of the header … finally after i took the picture the rest of the page loaded. so i think we do have a prob there … i thought it was something to do with your changes in rte … but it keeps happening
2016-01-14 10:26:40 [item 19629#42029]
Okay. That’s way longer than I have seen using Firefox. I am wondering if the malware is still mucking with the packages even though we have rerouted the dns server so it can put the ads in. That would cause delays.
2016-01-14 10:28:24 [item 19629#42031]
well i saw the same behavior in the Apple store on a clean Mac … i do not expect malware in this regard.
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