[Zope-PTK] Refactoring Discussable

Dan L. Pierson dan@sol.control.com
Wed, 26 Jul 2000 17:14:30 -0400 (EDT)


I think the proposal is reasonable in general, but do have some concerns:

Tres Seaver writes:
 >  * There is a non-trivial cost with building the toolbar for
 >    Discussable content objects -- the current implementation
 >    has to do a catalog search for replies to the current
 >    content object in order to generate correct toolbar items.
 
This bothers me, I'll discuss it more below.

 >  * While many content types *are* naturally "discussable",
 >    forcing every content type to be discussable is unhelpful.

Quite correct.

 > A separate proposal would address some of the above-labored
 > issues by storing all DiscussionItems within their "host"
 > Discussable object, removing the need for the catalog query.

Since one of the design goals for our site is for everything to be
discussable, I'd really like to see some relief from the "non-trivial
cost" mentioned above even if your first proposal is implemented.
Storing discussion replies with the host object sounds OK to me.  I
agree that the replies aren't owned in the same way as a top level
document is.  On the other hand:

1. Steve's security questions are quite relevant for many possible uses
(though not our main site).

2. It would be kind of nice for reply authors to be able to edit their
replies, but this brings up the same issues that make my replies not
be "mine".  Namely, if I change or delete one of my replies it may
well disturb the entire thread that follows.  This problem may well
override the desire to the the author edit replies, IHMO.  

It sounds to me like some combination of keeping DiscussionItems
within their host Discussable but retaining separate permissions for
them is a good way to go.

Dan Pierson