We use Discourse at work. I spend a couple of hours a day on it replying and reading all the posts.
When I read something but I don’t have time to reply I would like a way to save the post. There is Bookmarking feature available but I use it to save important posts that I refer from time to time.
This would also be great if I want to read posts on mobile, save them, and then reply when I have access to laptop.
It would be really helpful if there was a feature that would allow me to save posts for later reply that would be great. If this means mark as unread which adds them back to unread or new category or if there is a dedicated read/save for later like Bookmarks that would be awesome.
There is a workaround for this. Compose your drafts as a PM to yourself. You can retrieve them from your “Sent” and finish them off, then copy/paste into a public post.
EDIT: for the list of posts you intend to reply to:
I have a PM titled “Stuff to reply to”, I just paste the URLs of the posts I want to reply to, but haven’t currently got time for. When I get to it I open that PM, open a new tab to reply to the post in question, then delete the URL from the PM.
+1 to @sam’s idea. I usually bookmark a topic and then run through my bookmarks later. I’ll clear bookmarks when I’m finished with them. It’s the same concept as archiving to me.
A good topic/post that would be referred on a regular basis.
Topics/posts that I would like to read or contribute in future.
It is important that bookmarks are kept clean so that I can easily access them. If I keep adding 2nd or read-it-later type of topics/posts then the bookmarks will become hard to maintain and search. There will be a lot of irrelevant data that would show up in search.
If I add a couple of topics to the bookmarks everyday then that will explode it’s count very quickly.
Think in terms of browser bookmarks and read-it-later services. Browser bookmarks are obviously enough but after a certain point the number of browser bookmarks will go out of hand. Whereas if you save articles in read-it-later services then you have got the noise out of the way. You could have a 1000 articles in read-it-later service and they won’t hinder your handful of browser bookmarks.
That would work but then you will also be coming across posts that are saved for later reference. Doesn’t it happen to you that this post is for reference and I don’t need to read it on regular basis unless by now you remember those posts having looked at them for numerous times.
So another way round it could be expanding on the bookmarks function slightly in be able to have categories or types of bookmarks - like you can within your browser. However this would require either a plugin or a PR into core if the team would allow it.
“read it later” still requires you perform some action to clear it.
Essentially what you are saying here is that you need 2 buckets of bookmarks. This is not something we plan to add, people struggle enough with bookmarks as is, adding yet another “bookmark type 2” button would be super confusing.
Instead I can thing of 2 alternatives
Use browser bookmarks as bucket number 1 and Discourse bookmarks as bucket number 2
Keep the 1 big bucket of bookmarks under control, the gb keyboard shortcut is your friend, use it, then use jk to move through list and b to toggle bookmarks. Its a very very efficient workflow.
Another solution would be to make it easier to find posts started, but not completed. I think that to find a post that’s not yet sent, you have to return to the page where you started it? Maybe if there were a drafts folder, one could start a reply to a post and find it later in drafts.
I only have about two or three topics marked for reference for later. But to be honest, I should probably un-bookmark those. I typically do searches to find reference material anyway.
The purpose Is only to read-later. If the assign plugin can help maintain a personal and private list then that would be awesome.
I can suggest the plugin to my manager if it has been released for production.
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.
Or something like Staff notes, where you could make private notes on posts/topics/categories/users (just a one liner), and either search the text, or display it in the “My Notes” section your profile.
This can be useful in several ways. There can be label/tags for example Draft for unfinished posts, read-it-later for obvious purposes, etc.
My bookmark list is growing rapidly as I spend a lot of time with it. If there were tags that would clearly tell me what the bookmark is about that can be helpful. For example, a bookmarks’ tags may be Style, Inheritance, etc. so I would know what it is about.
stars are not coming back and this is at the post level anyway, not at the topic level.