Highlight comments from answer author, in addition to question author

Question

In addition to the highlighting comments made by the question owner (as described in a recent blog post), I think it would be a good idea to highlight comments left by the author of the answer being commented on.

This way, the conversation between asker and answerer is more defined/obvious.

Edit: This is an edit to bring this to the site owners attention again - It would help people like me with bad eyesight to track down their comments. I originally opposed the questioner highlighting, but experience has shown me that I was wrong, and I think that answerer highlighting of comments would be very useful.

Answer 1

This really should be reconsidered, there are (alt least) 2 dupes of this, all with a positive score - it's obvious a lot of people would like this feature!

Till then though, here's a userscript to highlight answerer comments:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Highlight answerer's comments
// @namespace    http://stackexchange.com/users/4337810/%E1%B9%A7%D0%BD%CA%8A%C3%9F
// @version      0.2
// @description  Highlight's the names of answerer's on SE websites
// @author       ṧнʊß (http://stackexchange.com/users/4337810/%E1%B9%A7%D0%BD%CA%8A%C3%9F)
// @match        *://*.stackexchange.com/*
// @match        *://*.stackoverflow.com/*
// @match        *://*.superuser.com/*
// @match        *://*.serverfault.com/*
// @match        *://*.askubuntu.com/*
// @match        *://*.stackapps.com/*
// @match        *://*.mathoverflow.net/*
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

function colorAnswerer() {
    $('.answercell').each(function(x, obj) {
        var x = $(this).find('.user-details a').text();
        $('.answer .comment-user').each(function(i) {
            if ($(this).text() == x) { 
                $(this).css('background-color', 'orange');
            }
        });        
    });
}

$(document).ready(function() {
    $('.comments').bind('DOMNodeInserted DOMNodeRemoved', function(event) {
        if (event.type == 'DOMNodeInserted' || event.type == 'DOMNodeInserted') {
            colorAnswerer();
        }
    });
});

Note: This may not the most up-to-date version - please install my SE Optional Features userscript for the latest version.

Answer 2

I'll post here an answer to the same question I made on Stack Overflow Meta.
It's the same userscript posted here, but I fixed and changed some things:

• It also works when the answer is edited by someone else.
• It highlights the comments from the author of the answer only on that answer, not on other answers.
• It uses the same color as the questioner highlighting, to match the theme of the site.
• It uses an outline, instead of coloring the whole background, so you can differentiate this highlight from the one for author of the question.
• The outline around the user is drawn in the answer too, to visually make it clear that the outline in the comments means that it is the same user who gave the answer.

Here's how it looks on Stack Overflow (you can also try dashed and dotted styles for the outline, if you want).

Note how you can easily distinguish between the questioner (filled), the answerer (outline) and other users (no highlight) in the comments.

Userscript code from the linked answer:

// Using jQuery

function colorAnswerer() {
  let co = $('.post-signature.owner').css('background-color');
  let aa = $('.answercell');
  aa.each(function() {
    var as = $(this).find('.user-details a')
    var a = as.last();
    var b = as.filter(i => i < as.length - 1);
    var l = '2px solid'; // can also try dashed and dotted
    a.parents('.post-signature').css('border', l + ' ' + co);
    b.parents('.post-signature').css('border', '2px solid transparent');
    var x = a.text();
    var cm = $('.comment-user', this.parentNode)
    cm.each(function(i) {
      if ($(this).text() == x) {
        $(this).css('border', l + ' ' + co);
      }
    });
  });
}

$(document).ready(function() {
  $('.comments').bind('DOMNodeInserted DOMNodeRemoved', function(event) {
    if (event.type == 'DOMNodeInserted' || event.type == 'DOMNodeInserted') {
      colorAnswerer();
    }
  });
});

colorAnswerer();

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

Answer 3

This way, the conversation between asker and answerer is more defined/obvious.

If you used the same colour (currently blue) then both answer author and question author's usernames in comments would be blue, how would this help differentiate between the two?
It would differentiate Q author and A author from all other users, but I don't see any real advantage here.

So this would only work if we used two different colours, one for question author and one for answer author (when commenting on their answer).
And then it would be too colourful imo. Having too much "highlighted" stops the highlighted bits from actually being highlighted, as it all just blends in with all the other highlighted things.

---

Comments are not really for extended discussions, and while they do happen it's mostly comments under the question, where this proposal wouldn't make a difference.

If you are reading comments it's not hard to follow the conversation between one user and another. Especially as "generally" there are only a few comments to read under answers.