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Jeff Chandler

Plugin Review – Simple Comment Editing

Long time readers of this website will know that I love everything about the Ajax Edit Comments plugin by Ronald Huereca. In a nutshell, Ajax Edit Comments gave registered and anonymous users the opportunity to edit their own comments within a specific amount of time. The idea was inspired by Digg. Despite the vast array of configuration options AEC provided, Ronald has released a new, simplified version of the same plugin called Simple Comment Editing.

Simple Comment Editing 1
Timer Showing Time Left To Edit Comment
Simple Comment Editing 2
The Comment Editing Interface

With Simple Comment Editing, Ronald has taken a new approach with the WordPress mantra of “Decisions, not options“. That’s why if you look around the back-end of WordPress for a link to configure the plugin, you won’t find it. This plugin contains no styles, performs comment editing inline, and defaults to a time limit of 5 minutes. However, for those that want to override some of the defaults, there are filters for that.

In my initial testing, the plugin performed flawlessly. It’s much quicker to edit comments inline versus the thickbox popup, it’s also easier on the eyes. I’m now torn between using this plugin or the full featured AEC which has some nice features such as Request Comment Deletion and a built-in spell checker via After The Deadline. While I sometimes hate the decisions, not options line of thinking, it works well in this instance.

So I renew my plea to all WordPress sites that enable commenting to please enable comment editing for anonymous users via the Simple Comment Editing plugin or by some other means. I know comments should be proof-read before hitting the publish button but that happens less than it should. It’s incredibly annoying to hit the publish button, find one typo and have no recourse. If you’d like to contribute to this plugin whether it be patches, bug reports, or translations, you can view the plugin source on GitHub.

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19 responses to “Plugin Review – Simple Comment Editing”

  1. Awesome. I’m a big fan of no-settings plugins because of the “it just works” aspect of it. And I have to say that I’ve always liked how you can edit comments here on WPTavern. I typo comments all the time, other times I like to improve my tone and being able to edit your own comments is great.

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  3. I’ve been pestering Ronald to make this for the past year. It’s nice to see it built and running live :)

    I always loved the concept of AJAX Edit Comments, but wanted something simpler and leaner without all the cruft. This seems to be it.

    EDIT: It seems to work ;)

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  6. Admittedly, I’m not on the ‘Options are Regressive’ bandwagon.

    Choice, like Freedom, is not free. We’ve known that all along. Options do require study, decisions, and often, ongoing maintenance.

    We can simplify software (and more to the real point, we can reduce the work-load of developers & support facilities), by pruning out the user-flexibility.

    We can also simply Life, by making ourselves an Island. Or just crawling under a rock.

    But besides the massive configuration & functions-options of the original Ajax Edit Comments – and a bigger concern to myself – there is the possibly-related sheer bodacious size of this plugin.

    Ajax Edit Comments consists of 159 files in 28 folders, totaling 2.5 megabytes. Say what?! Is this a plugin, or the latest Global Climate Simulator?

    It’s important to me, that code in general and plugins in particular, not be ‘overly’ large & complex … relative to the goals & application.

    I’ve stroked my chin for some time at AEC: ‘Is this thing as ‘overly’ as it looks … or did it tackle a helluva job, and what we see is what it’s gonna take’?

    I’m encouraged by the discussion here, suggesting that the size of AEC may not be just the usual runaway bloat, but a reflection of a high degree of flexibility and configurability, built into the tool.

    Until proven otherwise, that’s a bold check-mark, for “Keep It”.

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  7. @Ted Clayton – Personally I don’t think the extra features were a good thing. I only need the single feature in the new plugin.

    I actually wrote a blog post about the bloat in AJAX Edit Comments last night, including analysis of the download size in comparison to the new plugin. It should be published some time in the next week over at WP Realm.

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  8. The major problem with SCE: Its entire functionality is based on a custom implementation of the comment form. It does not reuse the standard comment form of WP core.

    This means that any potential additions to the regular comment form are inherently lost, and data as well as interactions of other plugins is not accounted for. The Simple Comment Editing plugin forcefully bypasses all of that by introducing custom data structures, custom logic, custom hooks, and a custom presentation.

    The consequence is that other plugins, like the recently covered Mollom plugin, are not able to operate as intended, since the underlying operation on the comment entity is hidden away from all other plugins.

    That is, of course, unless you expect that thousands of plugins in the same space would magically contain integration code for all other plugins… which is utopian.

    The general idea of making plugins reuse and leverage “core” functionality (as in WP core) does not seem to be widely accepted and adopted among WordPress plugin developers yet — 999 of 1,000 plugins are scratching their own itch; dismissing the fact that 999 other plugins won’t be able to integrate with your plugin.

    That said, the APIs provided by WP core, as well as their technical maturity, certainly take a good amount of blame for that. For other applications (e.g., Drupal), the aspect of API maturity and re-usability plays a key role; in particular for their ecosystem of extensions — the API design allows all extensions to seamlessly integrate with each other; there’s no need to scratch your own itch, unless you’re waiting for a new API feature that will be included in the next major version only. I’m personally surprised that WP reached this level of adoption and popularity, given the APIs that it provides.

    But anyway, aside from that shortcoming and architectural problem, the plugin’s code actually looks relatively good (especially when comparing it to many other plugins).

    As one of the co-maintainers of the Mollom plugin, I’d love to support this feature, but I hope you can understand that it is not within the realm of possibilities to add custom support/integration code for each of the gazillion plugins that are operating in the comment form context. Instead, I’d like to gently ask the developer of SCE to change the plugin code to reuse the standard comment form functions of WP core — in fact, you might be able to find some nice inspirations in the code of the Mollom plugin :)

    Speaking of, which plugin provides the “Preview” button here on WPTavern? Yet another plugin I’d love to support, but alas, only possible if it doesn’t scratch its own itch (again).

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  9. @Ryan Hellyer – I & others will be looking forward to the publication of your analysis of the AJAX Edit Comments’ size & structure.

    It’s fair to wonder – and I do! – how the seemingly simple aim to ‘edit comment’ leads to such massive feature-creep. If that is the explanation.

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  10. I’m sure @Ryan will cover more, but the insanity of Ajax Edit Comments (AEC) shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone — simply check the feature list:

    – Anonymous comment editing (as if that wasn’t hard enough…)
    – Spell-checking (WTF?)
    – Deleting comments (by both admins as well as original poster)
    – Request deletion of a comment (→ queues and operations to manage that)
    – Send e-mail to everyone who commented on a post or page
    – Move comments between posts
    – Remove all links from a comment
    – Moderate comments from the frontend
    – Custom access permission system
    – Undo all operations you do
    – 12 different icon sets (certainly contributing to the megabytes)
    – 4 different action/icon presets + styling built-in
    – Administrative interface for re-arranging elements in the UI
    – …

    You wanted anonymous users to be able to edit their comments? That’s ~1% of the provided functionality. The other 99% you get for free, whether you like it or not. (Given how many different aspects are touched, you’ll dislike it.)

    Most likely, it would be most appropriate to start a debate on whether the current WP.org community and infrastructure disallowed this inspired developer to get his hands dirty in WP core, instead of trying to introduce all of this functionality in a single plugin (which is the only choice you see and have when doors are not wide open) — but I’m not in a position to ask such a question. In any case, that is the actual question you need to ask. ;)

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  11. @sun

    The major problem with SCE: Its entire functionality is based on a custom implementation of the comment form. It does not reuse the standard comment form of WP core.

    This means that any potential additions to the regular comment form are inherently lost, and data as well as interactions of other plugins is not accounted for. The Simple Comment Editing plugin forcefully bypasses all of that by introducing custom data structures, custom logic, custom hooks, and a custom presentation.

    The consequence is that other plugins, like the recently covered Mollom plugin, are not able to operate as intended, since the underlying operation on the comment entity is hidden away from all other plugins.

    I ran a crude test, installing & activating Simple Comment Editing on top of the following collection of previously active comment-ware:

    AJAX Edit Comments
    Comment Form Message
    Comment Hierarchy Adjust
    Comments Not Replied To
    Comment Notifier
    Comment Rating Widget
    Comment Rating Field Plugin
    Live Comments Preview
    MCEComments
    Report Comments

    After activating SCE, I brought up a Post with hierarchical comments and multiple optional plugin enhancements still displaying, made a new test-comment into the pre-existing hierarchy … and then edited the new comment using the now-showing Simple Comment Editing icon.

    In this admittedly crude test, the other comment-ware continued to look & work as it had, before SCE, and SCE is working alongside them.

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  12. @Ted Clayton – Correction. The edit-icon is for the Ajax Edit Comments plugin. The Simple Comment Editing plugin uses a text-link: “(Edit)”, and places it after my chrono-meta (above my comment-body), while AEC includes its icon below the comment with its Options and my other plugin enhancements.

    I edited the same new hierarchy test-comment, using both editors. Everything looks normal.

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  13. @Ted Clayton: I’m surprised your tests worked; SCE clearly builds a custom comment form and does not invoke any of the regular comment form hooks.

    (Those hooks would fail to operate, as SCE’s comment data structure is vastly different to WP core’s comment data structure [during comment form processing].)

    Off-hand, I’d guess that the plugins you tested are all related to listing/viewing comments, but do not enhance or customize the comment form. :)

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  14. @sun

    Off-hand, I’d guess that the plugins you tested are all related to listing/viewing comments, but do not enhance or customize the comment form. :)

    That sounds like a good explanatory guess … and it is correct! :)

    At least, afaik. MCEComments adds a bar of editing-icons to the top of the form-container, but I could see it doing that, with touching the form.

    Indeed, I have not addressed customizing the form-code, or intentionally/knowingly sicced any plugins on it … but there are changes I’d like to play with, for my theme.

    I will have another chance to explore this tomorrow, or maybe there’s another experimenter out there…?

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  15. @sun – You may have a legitimate concern here as when you edit a comment via the Simple Comment Editing plugin, I don’t see any of the quicktags I see on my actual comment form. I wonder if that is why Mollom was not working correctly. However, Akismet works just fine whether I am using this comment editing plugin or the larger, more complex Ajax Edit Comments.

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  16. Game Theory gets turgid & esoteric, fast. It’s an abstraction, like Relation Algebra, and Boolean Logic. It tends to become an orgy of exotic conceptualize & nomenclature.

    The ‘valuation’ of Boolean Logic, culturally, is seen in the character of Mr. Spock. We encounter the visceral reaction of someone we are ‘discussing’ or arguing with, when they protest; “Oh, now, don’t go getting all logical on me”!

    Relational Algebra replaced hierarchical organization schemes, in ‘modern’ computer databases …. but it failed to articulate itself in a comprehensible fashion to the general populace … thus, once one gets on top of the algebra and the de facto SQL standarized implementation, you have yourself a bread & butter occupation for life.

    Fortunately, there are some good collections of Game-examples. Many specific Game-referencing institutions ‘deliberately’ obfuscate the ‘practical’ nature of what they are talking about … but once one sees some ‘popularized’ examples, it’s not tough at all. Intuitive, actually.

    Wikipedia has a good List of games in game theory, a few dozen catchy names with separate articles for each.

    You can’t ace the ‘real’ Game Theory quiz, without knowing about psychiatrist Eric Berne and his popular 1964 self-help classic, Games People Play.

    The Eric Berne website offers nice cheat-sheets on each of the games in the book. Although Berne was addressing himself to the living-situations of average people in their private relationships … all of this stuff applies [cough] in organizational, institutional and governmental contexts.

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  18. @Jeffro -Molom should have worked for new comments, but it may not have been doing the spam check on edited comments. I know for certain that my own plugin does not work with it for example. That is unlikely to make any difference whatsoever though as it’s unlikely the spam bot will be smart enough to edit it’s own comment. Perhaps if the plugin becomes crazy popular it could become an issue, since bots might be developed to work around it, but at this stage we should be safe. And if worse comes to worse, we can just hook in some spam protection directly to the simple comment editing plugin.

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