We've just implemented a new web service, which delivers recent highly rated comments for each forum. It's still in testing, but we wanted to know what you thought of this. We anticipate that 2 or 3 comments can be added to the bottom of the main forum page, as well as each specific top level forum page (not the threads view). We also have people that want to add it to their blogs and webpages. Right now, you can view the data but you'll have to imagine how it would look after it's been integrated into the forums. We're delivering it in XML (docs here) and also in the basic form in HTML. We hope to add a new feature to this soon that will link the comment to the particular post.

This is live data, from comments on the Linux Questions forums:
bsd
software
general
newbie
distribution
hardware
lfs
networking
programming
security
slackware
solaris
suggestions
conectiva

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FROM OUR DOCS:

recentComments ===> recent comments. Display a table of recent
rating comments (possibly associated with an
affero member)

valid arguments: "v=", "p=", "la=", "from=", "to=", "lim=", "type="

v= a volunteer member affero user id
p= a patrom member user id

either of p= or v= may be set to a existing, active affero
member name. in this case the table will contain recent
commentns made by that user or on that user, respectively.
if the member name is not valid then the table returned will be
the same as if no argument had been passed. if both of p= and
v= are set then p= is dropped.

if neither of p= or v= is specified then a table of comments
made on all users will be returned.

URL args not described above:
=============================


from ==> starting date for the request

to ==> ending date for the request

la ==> list arguments. the request will only be filled for the
given collection of mailing lists. this argument is ignored
for the topBeneficiaries request. wildcard globbing '*' can
be used (see examples).

lim ==> limit the number of entries returned

type ==> "html" or "xml" either the results will be returned as an
HTML table which is suitable for use as, for instance, a php
include or as an apache XSSI, or the results will be returned
as well-formed XML.

It looks good, and sounds like a good idea, I'd really like to see what it looks like once integrated though. I think it would enhance knowledge and awareness of affero, at the very least.

Cool

It is our hope that these recent positive comments will provide new users to the forum with the feeling that people are being helpful, and that their problems will be dealt with in a similar fashion.

Once we integrate the [view post] option for each of these comments, it should even be more interesting. That way, people who read this positive feedback can click to see the thread and complete history of interactions that inspired the rating.

-poole

that's a really neat feature, and would probably incouarge more people to rate so it's all good... not sure how it might be integrated into each page though... where there's a will...