Make comment appear only the under image thumbnail in the stream and not as a separate activity item

[rhisss]

[sbrajesh]

Hi, This is doable but there are issues. In your case you are uploading single media. What happens when there are multiple media uploaded?

Each media needs to have an individual activity to let the comments come below it. At the moment, we do not check for it. Instead we add top level comment as an activity. There is an scope for improvement here but I am not sure how it should look. What happens when someone comments on a media after 2 years of upload? Can you please provide some suggestions here?

[rhisss]

The rule is universal. You can check other social scripts like Elgg or actual social nets like G+, FB etc Except in Buddypress only it is hell of confusing. No fresh user or user from any other social site can understand what is happening in Buddypress (Media) - I have tested this with at least more than 50 users.

The universal rule is: When a single photo is uploaded at one time, it shows as a single thumbnail in the stream. You can comment to it either in the stream or in the actual photo page. Wherever you comment it shows up simultaneously in both places and increments the comment counter in both places (if available).

When multiple photos are uploaded they are shown as a "Grid" of photos of pre-determined numbers with a "more" link (if needed). In this case the comment is either automatically disabled or the comment goes to the gallery or album containing those multiple photos. Thus you can comment to a Gallery or Album in that Gallery or Album page or you can comment to the "Grid" shown in the activity stream. If you click on a selected thumbnail in the "Grid" you comment to that specific photo either in the lightbox or in the specific photo page (if lightbox is disabled)

Its simple! This issue has been repeatedly brought in the BP forums for years but probably no one solved it. You can install Elgg (which is also free, opensource php social net script and its media script by iionly) and see that Elgg follows this simple, easy-to-understand rule.

What happens when someone comments on a media after 2 years of upload? The rule here is simple too. The comment will get deposited in the stream as an upper/top comment under the thumbnail in the stream, and simultaneously the comment will show as a lower/bottom-most comment in the actual media / photo / image page. Whether this thumbnail and comments in the stream will float up (as a comment has been done) to a top position depends on the admin settings of a script or site.

Importantly, a comment made in the photo page shows up as comment activity item or notification in the activity stream BUT a comment made under the same photo (thumbnail in the activity stream) in activity do NOT show up comment activity item or notification in the activity stream. This is utterly confusing and one of the reasons mass people have shifted / are shifting to Elgg or EasySocial (Joomla) because this is one age (2016 already) when photos and photo tagging are so universal and so popularly and socially used. I suggest to "kill" the comment activity notification if a comment is made on photo or at least have an admin (or hacky) option to disable it if one wants so.

To most users this issue is buggy rather than a need for enhancement. Why buggy ? Simply for the reason when they make a comment under the thumbnail in the stream, they do not find that in the actual photo page (say, they have bookmarked the photo page, but they do not see the comment when they come back to that bookmarked page)

[sbrajesh]

Thank you for the details. I had plans to release an update today. Now, will wait for a day or two to include this before the release.

I have almost same thoughts and feelings about media comments, but while implementing, I did face some issues related to how BP handles activity stream. I am going to look at some options to overcome this.

[sbrajesh]

Hi, Well, I tried working on it again. The problem I see is if we do not allow top level comments, the actual activity is not bumped. In other words, If you comment on an older activity and we just use comments, they won't be visible as new in the stream. That makes it useless in case of BuddyPress activity.

[rhisss]

Not exactly useless. As Buddypress now has Activity stream filters by default and Post Type Comments Tracking - so members wanting to see latest comments can get some help from that. If the actual activity is not bumped its rather a blessing in disguise. As stray comments will unnecesarily bump an old photo repeatedly. A new photo posted just now will get to the top anyway.

More important than this is having some sanity and logic in comment behavior itself, as outlined above. Short of this, it will be pretty useless to actually a huge number of users.

Thanks a lot for your input.

PS Short of this, I will suggest to kindly provide 2 "hacks" optionally

• disable posting of comments to a photo in the stream itself, disable comment counter for photo in the stream
• disable posting of comment activity notification. This will make things look bland but will return some logic that we can explain to site members.

[rhisss]

Any work going on this ? I studied how a typical "blog post' is behaving.

• You post a new blog post
• You can comment to it in that post page itself or in the stream
• Wherever you comment, the comment appears in both places simultaneously
• Thus, it behaves in the expected way
• Suppose, after you have posted the above blog post, there have been many status updates, other blog posts etc. Now there is again a comment after "n" days to that typical 'blog post' of yours which is now 'old'
• This comment will not be showed as a separate comment activity, this comment will also NOT bump up the activity item that notified about the blog post.
• Thus behavior is expected, in fact very intuitive and runs similar to other normal social nets.

Sadly this does not happen for "Favoriting" an item. And over many many years this has not been addressed in BP, nor there is any plugin that can do this. I have seen all, all are either broken or do not work 2-way like comments.

More sadly, for photo / media ..... Suppose you are restricted to one photo at a time just like blog post - one blog post at a time. Now what happens to commenting? Its a mess as already detailed above. One way can be disabling comments for media totally but that would be so "unsocial" and unwanted.

[manuhook]

Hi, I'm joining @rhisss on this. @sbrajesh i think the easiest way to do that will be to :

• disable completly the function Enable Commenting on single media
• use comments actually left on what is actually "Gallery Comments " to let them appear only on the feed (like today) and also on each single media entry.

In case of comments on an entry with multiple medias, just display the comments on the media (popup and hiw own page) according to his _mpp_attached_media_id stored in wp_bp_activity_meta.

I'm agree that if you comment on an older activity, people have to use the Buddypress Activity stream filters to see it.

What do you think of it ?

[rhisss]

Thanks @manuhook . Thanks for your feedback and looking into this matter. I am not sure I have fully understood what you say but I will read again. In the meanwhile, a point to note is that there cannot or should not be two different ways on how people comment to a blog post or a single media. (For the ease of discussion and logic I assume for the time being that when people post media they post only one media at a time.) Once the logic and commenting behavior is same for a single blog post and a single photo post, we can think over multiple medias posted at an instantaneous time.

[rhisss]

I tested Rtmedia. It allows 2 way commenting. There it happens like this: You create an album - you cannot comment on an album anywhere, either in the stream or in the album page itself You post a single media at a time You can comment on it in the stream itself. This comment will appear under the individual photo in that individual page. You can comment to the photo in the individual photo page or inside the lightbox. The same comment will appear in the stream simultaneously. You post multiple medias at the same instant You can comment to these multiple photos in the single comment box in the stream appearing under the rows of photos. This comment will remain as a combined comment (to these multiple photos) in the stream itself. And will not show up under any individual photo. However, if you choose a single photo form this multiple photos and comment to that, the comment will be added under the comments in the stream. This is not what usually happens elsewhere but still it follows some logic and offers some sanity.

The favorit or Liking a photo is messed up in rtmedia also. And apparently you cannot create a grid or masonry of thumbnails in the stream. Thus if someone uploads 20 photos it will show up as a very ugly row of photos. I may be wrong but this is what appeared at the first glance. Feedback of everyone will be welcome.

PS - showing up of Comment activity in the profile activity page continues to be a messy affair in both and "Reply" to Comment creates confusion, making users do unwanted threaded reply as no comment box is shown by default.

[sbrajesh]

Hi Agin, Thank you for the details.

1. We do have an option to set limit for maximum number of media visible in activity stream. It is currently available in the development repo.
2. I enabled lightbox for commented media. If you click on the photos in comment activity, It will open in lightbox in future(if lightbox is enabled). That is a small enhancement for now
3. I am working on the other part, proper synchronization of comments. My initial goal was to open lightbox when someone click on the "comment" link in activity comment or any media activity. That will make it more inline. It is still a work in progress as we need to deal with the event handling properly.

@rhisss I appreciate all your feedback and exploration of the options. They are very helpful. Please give me a few days and we will have more sanity too :)

@manuhook Thank you for adding to the discussion. I still believe commenting on older activity should push it to the top. That's what happens on facebook(xyz commented on abc's photo)

I will go with whatever is more suitable for siteadmins( and not my preference since you all are using it). I will be adding appropriate options as suggested by @rhisss in next couple of days.

Will get back to you both then as we will need to test it out before releasing on wp.org.

Thank you Brajesh

[rhisss]

Hi @sbrajesh , thanks a lot.

I still believe commenting on older activity should push it to the top. That's what happens on facebook(xyz commented on abc's photo)

This does not happen in Facebook. Or in G+ or scripts like Elgg, Easysocial (Joomla) etc. In facebook you can comment in an old photo, it will stay there and not bump up anything. I have tested very thoroughly.

Please note that the equivalent of Activity stream (for example, personal Activity stream of Buddypress) in Facebook is Timeline. Here, in Timeline, users can comment on photos, status, notes (facebook's somewhat equivalent of blog). Timeline is not the same as facebook's Activity log which you can view only yours and you cannot comment from Activity log. (In Activity log a photo may float up if commented, for your own convenience - the rest of the world does not see it). There is no such Activity log in Buddypress. And there is nothing as Sitewide Activity in facebook for obvious reasons.

Facebook Timeline = Buddypress Personal Activity stream Buddypress Sitewide Activity = No such thing in Facebook Activity Log in Facebook = No such thing in Buddypress

Buddypress	Facebook
Personal Activity stream	Timeline
Sitewide Activity	No such thing
No such	Activity Log

Please also note that even in Buddypress Sitewide Activity a photo or blog post does not float up to the top if commented. Thus to maintain consistency between Sitewide and Personal Activity both should behave in the same way as these are what others are seeing. If a photo or post or anything needs to float to top at a later date it should happen in Personal Log (for personal view only) and there is no such system or plugin in Buddypress 2.5+ so far. To help in such scenario BP activity filters comes handy in BP 2.5+

The other area of confusion is when Comment activity of Photo is shown in the stream, people tend to hit "reply" there thinking it as Reply to the photo but in actuality it becomes comment to the comment or a confusing threaded reply. In BOTH Rtmedia (buddypress-media.3.10.4) and BuddyMedia (modemlooper, webdevstudios) there is no separate Comment Activity of the photo to maintain cleaner look and function of the Activity stream and sanity of comments, and avoid unnecessary threaded replies.

Mediapress	Rtmedia	BuddyMedia
No such	2 way comments like blog posts	No such
separate Comment Activity	Clean stream, NO such	Clean stream, NO such
Tagging Absent	Tagging CAN be done	Tagging Absent
No Favoriting	Liking/Favoriting	No Favoriting
Activity Filter - No	Activity Filter - No	Activity Filter - Yes

[manuhook]

Thank you @rhisss for the comparaison

@sbrajesh if you really want to keep pushing to the top a new comment, the best is to leave it as an option on the mediapress settings. Like that people have the choice to display it or not.

An idea to do that easly : Take advantage of custom post type comment introduced on Buddypress 2.5. Following the idea explained before :

• disable completly the function Enable Commenting on single media
• register mpp_media_upload with bp_activity_set_post_type_tracking_args instead bp_activity_set_action in order to have a custom comments activity type linked to your component.
• Add or Remove the mpp_media_upload comments activity type from the activity default filter following the users settings in the back office.
• display also the comments on a single media (by filtering the gallery comments list with _mpp_attached_media_id).

[rhisss]

Addendum : The two-way commenting is very nicely done in Peepso Photo/Media - pl. have a look at http://demo.peepso.com/ I tested with single photo and comments to a single photo BOTH from activity stream and the photo page [ inside lightbox] When you comment in lightbox it INSTANTLY appears in the activity stream too without the need to refresh. The look and feel, as well as the functioning is very update and modern and super fast. I will request others here who have some idea with code to see if this is possible with Mediapress too. They have also an excellent grid in activity stream when multiple photos are simultaneously uploaded and a nice more link [ see +4 in the attached photo] Its eye-candy as well very useful and functional.

Additionally, I think it will be great if Mediapress works with https://wordpress.org/plugins/peepso-core/

[manuhook]

Hello @sbrajesh do you have a planned roadmap on this ? Thank you :)