A variety of online services provide read later functionality. I use Diigo, https://www.diigo.com for example – a list of unread bookmarks that are public (without disclosing those that are private) – YMMV, folks.
Is there any reason to avoid all such services?
If so: is that reason contributory to the wish for the functionality to be offered by Discourse?
That’s most interesting.
Browser bookmarks will mean I will have to use a specific browser at all times. Like always use Chrome that you have signed in on. These browser bookmarks will also mean they can’t be easily search with in:bookmarks. I have recently started using these search tags and I find them super useful.
Using external service will mean you lose the benefit of search and shortcuts. Also discourse no longer a power tool without 3rd party services.
What if it was a plugin that enabled user-specific tags that were private? They only apply to the user and no one else sees them. I’m not sure I would use it but could see some value in it for others.
Yep, that is basically the idea. After clicking bookmark on a post, you’d get a timed modal that lets you optionally choose between additional labels (so if you don’t care, it’ll disappear on its own). Let’s say you have 3 labels to choose from:
Basic spec:
I for instance would love to make my own bookmarks tag called “testimonials”, because I sometimes bookmark good “sound bytes” for potential use on our website.
Back to Diigo for a moment. It works with multiple browsers (I’m most familiar with the bookmarklet, the add-on for Firefox, the app for Android which integrates with Firefox etc., and the extension for Chrome). The web interface allows you to search based on various criteria, including texts that you have highlighted in pages that you have bookmarked. Super useful.
That seems reasonable.
Attention to wording: tags or labels?
So a post may be truly unread, or (maybe a future feature) read then marked as unread, and/or tagged/labelled as unread within the context of a post-specific user-specific bookmark.
Folks, consider changes that will be required to mobile interfaces.
Here, for example, the binary [ ] I've read –
– which appears to be a heading or sub-heading to the obscurely-titled any menu.
While I have nothing against the bookmark labels option - indeed, it may be the best solution in the end - but it is a big solution for multiple problems/needs that may take long to implement. So I would like to follow up on two other options that came up but not really discussed:
(a) Oh, I have a new notification!
(b) Oh, but I already read the email notification, so I will mark it as read by clicking here:
© result:
(d) Likewise, if I want to mark Falco’s reply as unread, I click here
(e) result:
I don’t quite get it. Mockup please?
I’ve been wanting this for quite some time, but it’s not a trivial amount of work. If you could update that topic with some UX mockups that’d be a good way to get the discussion going again.
Added some to the post above.
I see. I guess it makes sense to discuss it as a feature in it’s own right, then I mean, one that mainly solves a different issue rather than the wish to “mark as read later”. Which leaves use with quick-fix option 1 here… (But maybe I’m underestimating the amount of code for that one too?)
I think you mean a timed non-modal.
I inspector-hacked the share dialog into this, is this at least similar to what you haad in mind?
Yep, that’s pretty much it, except I wouldn’t even allow “+ New tag” because:
I’d swap out that button for “Edit labels” which I guess would take you to your /preferences#bookmarks where you could rename your 3 labels.
@tophee thanks for the mockups. That would be an immensely obscure UX feature though, and I don’t see an easy way to educate users about it either. And it would indeed require a non-trivial amount of work to make this happen.
Would the three tags in the mock-up be taken from the broader set of tags, where a site has tags enabled?
Or would ‘Read later’, ‘Reference’ and ‘To-do’ be a separate three-tag-only set of tags for bookmarks only? If so – and if a site has tags enabled at a different level – and if that different level includes (for example) ‘To-do’ then I guess that application of To-do at the bookmark level should not cause application of the same tag at the other level, and vice versa.
This taxonomy would be specific to bookmarks, which is why I’ve been referring to them as “labels”.
Looks like a “personal topic lists” feature request.
I would use such a feature as well.
Bookmarks are cool, but when you have many of them, it becomes complicated to handle them.
Being on blenderartists.org (which will soon migrate to Discourse), I have many subscription folders and make extensive use of them. But they will all be lost as soon as the website has migrated.
I would love to be able to create them back some day.
Hi. Welcome to Discourse.
Tell me honestly, do you use all the favorites that you have in your web browser organized by folders?
The favorites that we currently have in Discourse basically serve to remind you of something with your user, but they are far from having a repository of bookmarks organized by folders.
There are already many online methods where you can manage bookmarks; for example you have https://www.google.com/bookmarks or if you use Chrome, and you synchronize chrome with your Google user, you will have a super powerful tool, and you can take your chrome favorites to all your sessions in chrome, something spectacular that I recommend you to use if you have not done it yet.
I honestly wish that the Discourse team did not occupy their time, and effort in populating the database with folders and occupying more data that will not be useful in the future. 
I hope you do not get angry with my opinion.
Yes, I do use all my web browser bookmarks and I have a synced account on Firefox. Those bookmarks are already quite populated but I can and will backup all my blenderartists.org subscription folders in my firefox bookmarks because I cannot lose them. Having the ability to manage them from the website would make things easier but we have to see if I’m the only person to want that.
I could definitely see something like this being useful a forum moderator too. Right now I bookmark things for a mix of reasons, no real order to it, but I might use it more productively if I could bookmark some things as “follow up later”, some things as “useful resources I personally want to remember”, other things as “great topic to link to in future newsletter” etc.
Another potential solution here could be bookmarks + tags perhaps? Haven’t used tags yet on our forum so not sure current limitations but perhaps a plugin…could allow users to mark posts with their own private tags, visible to no one else, maybe namespaced to username to avoid conflict w/ more global/public tags. Just an idea, not sure if it’d be easier or harder to implement that way vs. actual folders.
