Maybe it would be easier to make contributions that rely on the code as little as possible—scripts running on separate pages, that woud (1) verify that the person running them is a moderator, and (2) connect to the LW database (these two parts would be common for all such scripts, so have them as two functions in a shared library) -- and then have a separate simple user interface for doing whatever needs to be done.
For example, make a script called “expose_downvotes” that displays a text field where the moderator can copy the comment permalink, and after clicking “OK” a list of usernames who downvoted the specific comment is displayed (preferably with hyperlinks to their user profiles). For the user’s convenience, the comment id is automatically extracted from the permalink.
Then the moderator would simply open this script in a second browser tab, copy link location from the “Permalink” icon at the bottom of a comment, click “OK”, done.
Compared with the solutions integrated into LW web page, this solutions is only slightly more complicated for the moderator, but probably much more simple for the developer to write. Most likely, the moderator will have the page bookmarked, so it’s just “open bookmark in a new tab, switch to old tab, right-click on the comment icon, copy URL, switch to new tab, click on the text field, Ctrl+V, click OK”. Still hundred times more simple (and thousand times faster!) than calling tech support, even assuming their full cooperation.
Each such script could be on a separate page. And they could all be linked together by having another function in the shared library which adds a header containing hyperlinks to all such scripts.
Maybe it would be easier to make contributions that rely on the code as little as possible—scripts running on separate pages, that woud (1) verify that the person running them is a moderator, and (2) connect to the LW database (these two parts would be common for all such scripts, so have them as two functions in a shared library) -- and then have a separate simple user interface for doing whatever needs to be done.
For example, make a script called “expose_downvotes” that displays a text field where the moderator can copy the comment permalink, and after clicking “OK” a list of usernames who downvoted the specific comment is displayed (preferably with hyperlinks to their user profiles). For the user’s convenience, the comment id is automatically extracted from the permalink.
Then the moderator would simply open this script in a second browser tab, copy link location from the “Permalink” icon at the bottom of a comment, click “OK”, done.
Compared with the solutions integrated into LW web page, this solutions is only slightly more complicated for the moderator, but probably much more simple for the developer to write. Most likely, the moderator will have the page bookmarked, so it’s just “open bookmark in a new tab, switch to old tab, right-click on the comment icon, copy URL, switch to new tab, click on the text field, Ctrl+V, click OK”. Still hundred times more simple (and thousand times faster!) than calling tech support, even assuming their full cooperation.
Each such script could be on a separate page. And they could all be linked together by having another function in the shared library which adds a header containing hyperlinks to all such scripts.