Alert if a user is currently replying to a thread that you are replying to

[#1]

I find that my superusers are tripping over one-another to answer a question on the boards. Within minutes of an initial post, there are 3-4 replies from superusers and others. I've often heard that if there were a way for them to see if anyone else was replied to the post, they would wait until the first user has replied.

IDEA: User A and User B are superusers. User A sees a thread and begins replying to it. User B sees the same thread moments later, and clicks Reply. At the bottom of the Editor for User B, it shows "users replying to same post: User A, LiquidSasquatch" and this list is dynamically updated as users reply to a thread.

[#2]

Yeah, I've had this happen to me too. Nice idea!

I think I would want to limit that notification to certain folks (superusers) rather than everyone, tho. I know the superusers will respond, but I don't want the other folks to use that as an excuse not to post now (a la the bystander effect).

[#3]

I'm thinking more along the lines of just Who's viewing thread sort of thing that will show if replying or not something simple like that would be highly useful but not obnoxious like an alert message or something! However I find the message view feature very useful too!

PS. users are super too

[#4]

If you're posting to a thread that's been updated, phpBB v3 will display a message offering to let you view the new message(s) before posting yours.  I'd have to go rummage through the admin panel to see if it's configurable for different users (I don't think it is), but it seems to work fairly well as is.  Is that the kind of thing you're looking for, LiquidSasquatch?

[#5]

We have an interesting problem to tackle here. How to notify a user that another user is in the process of replying to that thread or that there is a new post that was just made without discouraging other users to contribute. I certainly see value in alerting a user who is in the process of posting, that there has been an update to the post...similar to updates that you receive while replying in a gmail conversation. Thanks for the idea!

[#6]

Great suggestion.

What I see happening often is that context of a conversation gets changed while one is typing a response.  I may start replying to a post and as I'm prone to be verbose and think about what I'm planning to say, others may pop in and interject a post or two before I finish and submit mine.  As a result, sometimes what I've said becomes less relevant and I wind up having to immediately edit the post to address the cross posts.

Seeing some flag appear in the editor to indicate that another post to the thread occured while I was creating a post would be helpful.  It would prompt me to click the view the discussion in a popup link before I posted.

Mark

[#7]

I agree with Greed, the users online page could be utilized show not only who's online or their last request, but whether they are searching the forums, replying to a specific thread or just sitting idle.  Super uses could use this and refresh the page for status updates of what's going on the community in real time yeah?

Or I guess we could use ajax and mimic what facebook does, where we add a "show #new posts" link on a reply page.

[#8]

to the COMMENTS REQUESTED request - "...without discouraging other users from contributing" Please let me know if your forums are different, but if a "newbie" is posting a "me too!" to an issue, he doesn't care is someone else is posting to the thread. In fact, most newbies don't care if they post something completely unrelated to the thread. I kid, newbies, I kid.

This feature would facilitate the communication between Superusers, so no one is stepping on each other's toes. Perhaps this would start a "chat" or "PM" between the Superusers about the issue. They could exchange their ideas on the subject before they both post contradictory solutions. It may even spark other threads about how best to troubleshoot the issue.

It seems that the only folks who would be discouraged from contributing would be the people giving the most critical information, and to set the direction of the thread. It might not be bad to discourage other Superusers from the thread, since it would turn the thread into some Hydra.

[#9]

I've seen other forum software list the users that are currently viewing a thread. This may help to tackle such a thing since people will recognise other super-users within that thread.