more flexible commenting engine for a given assessment

[mvillis]

Problem

At present a comment is tied to a given measurement. A measurement is typically tied to a given rating (this is not enforced in the model but when displaying a comment we have to know which tab (attribute) to display it against. This is inferred by the rating that was stored in the assessment).

In general being able to talk about a given attribute and have that conversation persisted independently of a rating being selected is reasonable. Being able to make overall comments on the assessment also seems quite reasonable. As does being able to have a more natural conversation which could include more than one piece of text.

....so too is being able to reply, like etc but this is getting a bit too crazy for the moment :-)

Proposal

• Create a comment model
• Link it to an assessment (mandatory)
• have an optional link to an attribute
• add a timestamp

Once we have a concept of a user in the system you could also add them.

This would support all three situations:

• Comments can be made on overall assessment
• Comments can be made for a given attribute
• more than one comment can be made.

UX

With this proposal I think the UI of the app would also evolve. This is an opportunity to asynchronously load comments as they are visible to the user.

You would need to consider whether you want to have a separate view for overall assessment comments versus those that relate to just the given attribute. I feel that if you're not careful in this space you make cause additional confusion to the user.

You would also need to be mindful that comments can often be quite messy and you often want to create an official looking conclusion for a given assessment / attribute. Maybe an additional capability is still needed

Thoughts?