Better Living Through Technology

One last post about the blog, rather than what the blog is about. I’ve decided to create a WordPress plugin for this blog to enable individual readers to filter out comments they don’t wish to read a second time. I plan on it working as follows:

• The average reader would see the site totally unfiltered, all comments visible
• A reader could choose to click a “Filter Comments” link over in the sidebar
• If they have used the Filter Comments capability before, if would use their most recently used settings
• If not, the reader would create / have created for them (not sure yet) a unique ID that could be preserved as a cookie, so their filter choices could be preserved
• With an ID, a reader could toggle on/off the visibility of any comment on the site, and have that visibility choice retained for subsequent visits to the site.
• If comment filtering is enabled, the reader can pick a “Show All” link where they can unset their previous filtering choices.

Pretty simple, eh? My comment policy remains the same, but this little bit of functionality puts more control in the individual reader’s hands. And while I think the idea behind it is philosophically consistent with the ideas motivating this site, it has a much broader applicability. Imagine the benefit to, say, the proprietor of a feminist site who gets periodically hit with ugly misogynistic comments, but who has an objection to deleting them outright. This plugin would empower their readers to customize their reading experience for the site.

Now I have no experience with creating WordPress plugins, and I’m curious to see what the API is like. But it’ll be worth the effort to make something reusable that I can donate to the WordPress community. WordPress is a fantastic technology that I have enjoyed immensely, and it’s good and proper to finally make a contribution of my own.

I’ve got a lot on my plate (hello, iPhone 3.0 SDK beta!), including a promised post on a wonky job action idea of mine, but I’m looking forward to getting cracking on it this weekend. What do you folks think, good idea? bad? lacking key features?