openSNP
Unify comments
Currently there are three models for commenting different other models. In order to decrease complexity and duplication, let's unify these to one Comment model with a polymorphic association to commentable. Let's also clean up the views.
Write tests!
I started working on this: https://github.com/tsujigiri/snpr/tree/one_model_to_comment_them_all
Just stumbled over this nice blog-entry: http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/2015-using-hypothesis-on-workshop-sites.html
tl;dr: bind in a piece of javascript from hypothes.is, you get a new menu on the side, users can highlight sections and comment on them specifically, comments are stored in a central location
Upsides:
a) unified comments (comment all the things) b) comments on very specific parts of the site - for example, a user found out that the genotypes listed for rs1234 are flipped and should actually be A/T, or a position is wrong, or my avatar looks stupid, or the privacy declaration is dumb, or ... c) we get some kind of comment ranking system d) non-profit org e) nicer reply-system compared to the kind we have now
Also, annotations common to pieces of text are shown wherever the piece of text is shown (not sure whether we have this case)
The downsides:
a) users need to make account with hypothes.is, apparently no way to link our account. No oauth etc. (this is on the roadmap: https://hypothes.is/roadmap/ ) b) probably hard to transfer our existing comments (use one "old_comments" account?) c) less control over comments d) I'd be extremely surprised if this works with older versions of internet explorer e) Funding, long-term survival of hypothes.is unclear, started 2011
You can try it out here: https://via.hypothes.is/opensnp.org (fairly slow)
While this is a nice and generic thing, I'm not sure about the not being in control of the comments as well as having the users have to register another account in order to be able to comment. It's a pretty big step in terms of usability.
I agree with @tsujigiri on this one. Having to register for another account in order to be able to write comments seems too much effort for most people I'd argue. Especially as the comments are already not used too much.
Maybe we could tackle this problem soonish. It seems the comments are broken right now. I tried writing a SNP comment and it crashed with a 500 error in production :wink: