May 5th, 2003

Cast Page (non-LJ friends/family)

I attempted to approve this suggestion and ran into a problem with moderation. However, I managed to save the text, and rather than force the suggestor to resubmit, I'm just posting it directly to the community.

This suggestion is from fosterbass.

Title

Cast Page (non-LJ friends/family)

Short, concise description of the idea

Create a page to list frequently mentioned people, with a description of who they are. Create a new tag (like <lj cast="name">) to use when the person is mentioned.

Full description of the idea

In every journal I read, people frequently mention friends and family who are not LJ users and cannot be linked to with an LJ tag. If you haven't been reading the journal for too long, you may not understand who the person is. Many users mitigate this by creating a 'cast list' in their userinfo page. I would like to see this implemented as a new feature allowing users to create a list of people they refer to regularly in their jounal. By using an LJ tag, a user could write something like: I got a call from <lj cast="my boss"> today... and that would take the reader to the cast page anchor for the 'my boss' entry.

An ordered list of benefits

  • Easy for users to maintain descriptions of people they discuss in their journals.
  • Provides a single format for cast lists (currently exists in useringo pages, pages on personal websites, links to old entries, etc...).
  • Allows a reader to easily 'catch up' on relevant details of a 'cast member'.

    • An ordered list of problems/issues involved

  • Increased database size.
  • Increased server load due to extra links being clicked.
  • Confusion due to 'my boss' linking to a different page, depending on who's journal it is mentioed in. (the database would have to associate the cast member name with the lj user's name to make them unique).

    • An organized list, or a few short paragraphs detailing suggestions for implementation

  • A table of cast members, keyed to lj username. It should include a text field to hold the description of the person.
  • A cast page listing all of the people that the user has described.
  • A new <lj cast="name"> type tag to reference the html anchor on the cast page.


    • Originally suggested in a prior entry, but this was approved as it seemed to be a fuller suggestion.