[wp-hackers] Keeping track of comment responses

[ravi]

Hello all,

I need your advice before I run off trying to implement something.

My problem: how do I keep track of which comments I have responded to  
and which ones are awaiting a response?

I can think of a few ways (and perhaps I am missing some simpler,  
obvious ones?):

Just view the comments, threaded, in the relevant post page, and if  
any thread doesn't have a comment from me (easily ascertained by  
looking for my Gravatar), then I know a response is pending. Next  
step: add a response. The problem: once I post my response, the page  
reloads, I lose my position in the comment stream, and have to scroll  
down again to find it. I had a hope that one of the AJAX comment  
posting plugins might help me, but unfortunately none did.

Another option is to use the Dashboard comment interface to add my  
replies. This is AJAXified already in WP, so the operation is quick  
and I don't lose my position. But the Dashboard comment interface is  
not threaded (or sortable in some way that might be equivalent) and a  
return to it on a later date leaves me as puzzled as before on whether  
a comment has been responded to.

Assuming that I am not missing an obvious solution, or that one isn't  
available elsewhere, what I would like to do is:

Hack the Dashboard comments interface to add a small indicator next to  
each comment to denote whether it has a response from me or not. There  
are many considerations that I will ignore in my first cut (e.g: who  
is "me"? the author of the post? and what about comments that do not  
need a response?) just to get me to a point where I can improve my day  
to day usage. But I would like to do it the right way, nonetheless, so  
any pointers to hooks or other mechanisms would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

	--ravi