newsbusters thread follower

This appears cumbersome at first, but after you do it a couple of times, it's really easy. It beats hunting down the article you need, then wading through all the comments, trying to find your spot. This will take you right to the comment you made, as well as any followups from other readers. Mine works over a month back, so far. There is one caveat : if the node(article) has more than one page, usually due to being taken over by trolls, this system breaks down as far as the comment is concerned and only takes you to the node. In that case, after it takes you to the article(node) your comment is in, you will have to go over to the blank space below the up/down slider bar and click for page down, or if you want, keep pressing page down, until you see what you want. If it is a thread you want to keep following, just keep track of approximately how many times you had to hit page down, and make a note in your notepad record for that thread.Note: Veteran and professional computer users ignore this : If you are really green on computers like I was not long ago, this involves basic cut and paste operations, as well as use of the right mouse button and the bar at the bottom of the page that shows what programs you have open that I can't think of the name for at the moment. If you need clarification or help on any of this, drop me a comment, and I'll try to help you out if I can. Hope this helps.1. Make a notepad file. I just called it "Busters link finder".2. At the very top of the page, you will need a template to use for changing "reply" button formats to a format that can be used to find your previous links. Type a line, at the very top, that says: FORMATTING TEMPLATE Then drop down a line and type this: http://newsbuters.org/node/#comment- . That's five spaces after the dash following "comment". Do not include the period. You are in "Notepad" at this point, so the "link" format will not show. I keep this template at the top of the page.3. After making a comment in Newsbusters, right click the "Reply" button, click "copy link", then open your notepad.
4. Leave a space after the last entry, then click edit, then time/date or F5 to make a time/date stamp. Hit space a couple of times, then make a short comment about the post, for example: "reply to troll re: his changing subject from Laura Ingaham calling the media to task on Iraq reporting"

5. Go to the next line and paste the link you copied from the "reply" button on the newsbusters page.

6. Scroll to the top of the page and copy the formatting template(after you get a bunch of entries, you will have to scroll a long way up). Scroll back down to underneath the "reply" link that you just pasted in. Paste the formatted link template under the "reply" link and set your flashing cursor in between the slash after the word "node", and the "#" symbol that follows the slash and type in the node # that appears in the previous line. Then type in the comment # after the dash following the word "comment".

7. Go up one line and delete the "reply" link, then hit delete again to move the completed link up under the time/date/short note line.


Here is what the Notepad page looks like:
Busters post links.txt - NotepadFile Edit Search HelpFORMATTING TEMPLATEhttp://newsbusters.org/node/#comment-
1:28 PM 2/27/2006 Reply to MassLiberal
http://newsbusters.org/node/4186#comment-6626612:56 PM 2/27/2006 Reply to Realamericansvc
http://newsbusters.org/node/4186#comment-66505
Note : the underlined, "link" style format will NOT appear in Notepad, but in other programs it gets picked up that way automatically, as you see above. What you see above is what is left after entering the numbers into the formatting template, using the information in the "reply" button links. The "reply" button links have then been deleted, and when you hit delete again, the line you want to keep moves up under the time/date/comment line.
8. Shut down, go away, come back the next day and sign in. Open the Notepad link follower, copy, for instance, http://newsbusters.org/node/4186#comment-66505 , paste it into your address bar, and hit go. When the page comes up, you will probably have to scroll up a little to find the post you have navigated to. For some reason, this drops you into the thread below your actual comment. Also, keep in mind the caveat discussed above.That's the completed form. It looks worse than it is. After you have done it a couple of times, it is really easy, and has become routine for me. The biggest problem I have with it is keeping straight when to copy and when to paste. If I catch a goof in time, the undo button is a help.If, like me, you only get to check articles irregularly, this is a real help to find articles and comments that are more than a few days old. This is a fast moving news discussion site and until I figured out how to do this, it was overwhelming to try to remember where I had been more than a few minutes, much less days, previous.