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The Joel on Software Discussion Group (CLOSED)

Since I have a great non-web20 idea that I will pursue, here a problem I have that someone might solve creativly and then sell it to yahoo:

I comment frequently in a number of blogs. I need a service which lets me easily see all the responses to my drivel. Format could be rss or a webpage. Show me my comment + new answers plus an option to see the whole thread.

Problem is to get the comments in some form. One would probably have to build custom html parsers for the major blog products.

so, lads and gents: start your compilers! good luck!

Most of the blog systems out there allow you to track comments via RSS or email...

Kind of like a reverse trackback.  I like it.

"... start your compilers!"

Compilers? Tsk tsk tsk. How very un-Web-2.0.

How would you differentiate between responses to your comment, and responses to the original post, in a single-threaded discussion?

A huge number of blogs and the like (JoS, MT, Wordpress, Blogger) don't have the comment threading that Slashdot and LiveJournal do.

If you're simply interested in seeing if there are any changes to the page, there are services that do that ... but they're unable to distinguish between an updated post, an added comment, or a redesign.

It seems prohibitively hard to tackle from our end, until there is a near-standardization of comments like with trackback or RSS.

Joe
http://www.joegrossberg.com