List of other products with similar/interesting/related features.
Here I would like to see some "editorial" content. How do our features compare to others?
(see ))WordPress,MoveableType(( and other products for good (high volume) comments handling and anti-spam capabilities)
This is where new features being developed and only in CVS are documented. When the CVS becomes RC/official release, the info in the CVS docs is transferred to update the official docs (FeatureXDoc).
There are several places where comments go:
When a comment is added to an article, wiki page, blog, or forum (in 1.9, Wiki comments can optionally trigger emails, but only for those who are subscribed to the Wiki page), Tiki Wiki currently doesn't consider that "event" to be substantial enough to notify others about it via email. Slashdot, on the other hand, does a very good job of notifying users, via email, about comments: when someone replies to a comment, the author of the original comment is notified. This is extremely convenient.
Similarly, the RSS notification system ignores comments. The act of entering or modifying a comment should appear in the RSS feeds. When a comment is added to a Wiki page, the RSS feed should have an entry stating this fact.
Thirdly, when a comment is added to a Wiki page (or modified), the Wiki page should appear in the "last updated Wiki pages" module.
Finally, comments don't appear on the calendar.
Comments are just as important as changes made to, say, a Wiki page, and users need to know about them. Otherwise, the comments won't ever be seen and users will stop adding comments.
Please note that there is a module called "wiki_last_comments" which is very helpful for tracking comments for Wiki pages.
In the forums, there is no "reply" link for topics that don't yet have any comments. See this track item. This is just plain wrong. It doesn't follow the more popular open source bulletin board projects such as phpBB. The usability of existing forum softare should be copied unless somebody can come up with a good reason not to.
Secondly, when you reply to a comment, all other comments disappear. Even after you submit your reply, the other comments are still missing. It is unclear how to make them appear.
This can be an option (which I think should be on by default). When I click on an article, I should see the comments without having to click on anything. This is the way Slashdot behaves and it's just natural. Perhaps it blurs the lines between an article and a forum topic, but I believe that users want to see the comments; otherwise, they wouldn't have clicked on "read more...".
Wiki pages don't display replies to comments automatically. Instead, you have to click on a link to read the reply, and this creates a round trip. Either comments should always be visible (given some threshold) or the page should be rewritten to use Javascript to display replies instead of using a server round trip.
This is a problem because comments are dispersed around the application. However, all comments received can/should pass through a library that performs sanity checks. Ideally, this library should have plugins that perform specific checks (eg. IP checks, profanity checks, spam checks etc). Any comments that fail the check should be discarded or put into a holding pattern awaiting a suitably privileged user to authorise them.
Smilarly, all comments received should be viewable in one place. Suitably privileged users can then moderate comments (by editing them) or simply delete them (if undesirable or spam). Also, this could lead to a module that provides a list of recent comments (which may lead people to pages people are talking about, much like a "last 20 changes" module does).
Presently, if the user clicks on a "view comments" link for blog entries, the user goes to a page containing only that article or blog item, but the comments aren't displayed. Instead, the user must click on "comments" at the botttom of the page to view the comments.
This has been fixed satisfactorily in TW 1.9.