New Addon: Necropost Highlighter

[RT-Borg]

trafficstars

Is your request related to a problem? Please describe.

- pull request en route

I'm always frustrated when... I waste time on an old forum topic that has been brought back to life by some evil necromancer (or possibly just some new scratcher who found it in a google search.)

Necroposts are especially evil because you can't tell they're old in the topic list (and they're just infrequent enough that you may not check the first post date until you've spent time trying to figure out how you can help someone.)

Describe the solution you'd like

I'm submitting a pull request for an addon that adds a highlight color to the topic cell when it is substantially older than the other topics listed on the same forum page.

So that I don't have to load linked pages to inspect actual date stamps, I use the topic ID as a proxy for age. I've inspected old posts and the rate at which the topic ID grows on Scratch over time is pretty stable (definitely enough for the low precision this needs).

I've identified the forums this makes sense for and have defaults (and custom forum selection) in settings.

Tested on Chrome with all forum addons enabled. Works with Standard and Mobile. Plays nicely with "Website dark mode and customizable colors" and "Infinite Scrolling" addons.

Describe alternatives you've considered

I considered chasing links to determine actual dates posts were made. That extra precision doesn't seem like it will be a significant improvement. I've used the Necropost Highlighter locally for a week or so and also scanned many cases. There are occasional false positives, but typically these are also cases that would be difficult to weed out with precise dates of the full message log.

I considered an icon or a thick border instead of a highlighted cell. I have thoughts about other addons that might be more appropriate for that screen real estate.

I considered highlighting the entire row instead of the topic cell. I think the single cell is less obtrusive, but still entirely noticeable, to prevent going to an old topic without being forewarned.

Additional context

This is what it looks like with the default color choice. (You will not get the cool gigantic red arrow in your topic list. That's just to point out the cell being highlighted by this addon.)

-- RT_Borg

[WorldLanguages]

So that I don't have to load linked pages to inspect actual date stamps, I use the topic ID as a proxy for age. I've inspected old posts and the rate at which the topic ID grows on Scratch over time is pretty stable (definitely enough for the low precision this needs).

This is very clever.

[cobaltt7]

Hmmm, what about old topics that are still active?

[RT-Borg]

This is very clever.

:) Thank you, @WorldLanguages

Hmmm, what about old topics that are still active?

Thanks for the question @RedGuy12, I should have elaborated more.

1. Sticky posts are never highlighted, in any forum.

2. On many forums, any attempt to highlight necroposts would be swamped with false positives. I've intentionally left those forums out of the configurable options. (I also excluded non-english language forums, because several I skimmed over had frequent posts that would trigger unwanted highlighting, and I assume there are many posts that are active for a long time or are revived for good reasons.)

3. I've split the forums Necropost Highlighting may be appropriate for into a few conceptual groups.

• Advised: "New Scratchers", "Help with Scripts", "Questions about Scratch" and "Bugs and Glitches" have high topic turnover, and it's generally unappreciated when old topics are brought back after a long period.
• Marginal: "Project Ideas" is the only one I called marginal. It gets a few more false positives on long running topics, but is still useful for calling out the true necroposts.
• Suspect: "Requests", "Suggestions", and "Open Source Projects" have higher rates of false positives, but may still be useful to some users.

The default, if a user does not choose to customize their forum selection, is to highlight in the Advised and Marginal forums, but not the Suspect forums. (The user can turn individual forums on and off to their preference. These categories are just suggestions.)

In the Advised forums, there are occasional cases when a topic is revived months later (e.g., by an original poster who comes back to share a success). These are rare, and generally the topics are only of interest to people already following a thread.

If reviewers have a preference to exclude Marginal ("Project Ideas") from the default, I wouldn't oppose that change. It felt like a close judgement call to me (hence the term "marginal", which I use in the settings as a hint to users who may customize their forums).