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The comments plugin

The comments plugin adds functionality for letting site users discuss by writing comments.

Overview

The detail window of a commentable database row usually has two widgets for commenting:

  • A Comments panel, which shows all comments. You can click on the insert button in order to add your comment.

  • A My comment field. You type your comment here and hit Ctrl+S or click the save button button to submit it. This is just a shortcut for the insert button of the Comments panel.

In the Comments panel you can click on the time indication of a comment in order to open the detail view of that particular comment. In this view you can

  • Edit the comment (if you have permission to do so, which is application-specific).

  • reply to that comment to start a discussion thread (which is more precise that just commenting on the discussion topic.

  • Pick an emotion. Emotions are a kind of minimlistic voting system about a comment. Picking an emotion expresses your opinion about that comment. You can change your opinion any time, but you can have only one opinion per comment.

    The server administrator can edit the list of available emotion icons.

Visibility of comments

Lino leaves it up to the application to define rules for regulating who can see a comment.

  • The author of a comment can mark it as confidential.

  • Lino asks the commentable who is part of the discussion group

  • The comments plugin provides different user roles for managing permissions about comments.

Glossary

comment

A written text that one user wants to share with others.

A comment is always about a given discussion topic. All comments about a given topic are called a discussion.

A comment has no “recipient”. When you submit a comment, Lino notifies the other members of the discussion group

A comment can be a reply to another comment. All comments replying directly or indirectly to a given comment are called a thread.

Comments are stored in the Comment database model.

discussion

All comments about a given topic

discussion topic

A database row that serves as the topic of a series of comments.

The discussion topic is stored in the owner field of the comment (which is defined by the Controllable mixin).

discussion thread

The comments that reply directly or indirectly to a given comment.

discussion group

The group of site users who participate in a discussion.

Lino leaves it up to the application to define rules for this. For example in Lino Noi the team of a ticket defines the discussion group, in Lino Welfare all coaches of a client, in chatter the members of the user group, in Lino Avanti nobody gets notified.

commentable

A database row that can potentially become discussion topic.

Lino leaves it up to the application to define which database models are commentable. For example in Lino Noi users can discuss about tickets, in Lino Avanti about clients, in Lino Amici about persons and organizations.

See also