This plugin provides the `last_comment` [[ikiwiki/pagespec/sorting]] order which uses the modification time of their last comment to sort pages. It also updates the mtime of the page to this value.

For example, it could be useful to make active threads of discussion appear on top of the list of threads in a forum.

You'll find it in this repository, in the 'sortbylastcomment' branch:

<https://un.poivron.org/~sajolida/ikiwiki.git/>

[[!tag wishlist patch]]

> Reviewed, tested: looks good to me. We need it for the [Tails forum](https://tails.boum.org/forum/). --[[intrigeri]]

>> Hi, is there a chance of seeing this plugin getting included in a release at any point soon? --sajolida

>>> (Reviewing, better late than never...)
>>>
>>> It seems really non-obvious to me that the mtime of a page is
>>> updated as a side-effect of sorting. I think it might also happen too
>>> late for it to have the desired effect: mtimes should be updated before
>>> the build phase starts, but sorting happens during the build phase.
>>>
>>> If we had a solution for [[!debbug 479371]] - copying
>>> the mtime from child pages to a parent page - then it would
>>> be enough to configure the forum threads to inherit the mtime
>>> of their comments, and then sorting by mtime would do what
>>> you wanted. The remaining problem would be to have a page pick up the
>>> most recent mtime from a somewhat configurable set of pages. If the page
>>> selection is done by pagespec, then by the time those can be matched
>>> deterministically, it's also too late to be getting the desired
>>> effect from changing mtimes... so perhaps this is a non-starter.
>>>
>>> Alternatively, perhaps just doing the sorting, and updating some
>>> displayable last-update counter that is not the mtime, would be OK?
>>> --[[smcv]]