Re^2: Too much Front Paging

Questions typically go unanswered because they have a poor title or an incomprehensible or overly long description. With 50% of SOPW on the front page it is no longer useful to highlight a worthy node. It did used to be useful for this. Now it is not.

What would be useful would be a variation on dermephqs threaded newest nodes. Personally I don't like this in the form it is in beacuse you have pages and pages of data but it illustrates the fact that gathering replies, and therefore having in SOPW a format like this is quite possible:

Some good title ( 3/7 replies )
Some bad title ( 1/1 replies )
HELP, URGENT!!!! ( -1/0 replies ;-)
....
Some missed worthy node ( 0/0 replies )
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where you perhaps count primary replies / and all replies. Another interesting and possibly useful option would be the ability to sort by replies ASC or DESC as well as select a recency timeframe to display.

cheers

tachyon

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Re^3: Too much Front Paging by jacques (Priest) on Sep 24, 2004 at 14:55 UTC
Questions typically go unanswered because they have a poor title or an incomprehensible or overly long description. Or the question was posted over the weekend, when fewer people visit the site. Or the question is difficult and no one has a good answer. There are many reasons. Frontpaging helps keep the nodes alive, but I agree with you that the system needs to be fixed. There should be some way of viewing nodes with fewer replies or identifying nodes you would like to see other people answer. I think threading NN helps, but will that feature remain in the sandpit forever?	[reply]
Re^4: Too much Front Paging by tilly (Archbishop) on Sep 24, 2004 at 15:54 UTC
There is a way of finding which nodes have been answered less. Go to Seekers of Perl Wisdom and look where it says the number of replies. Sure, it could be more convenient. But we also get few enough questions that it isn't hard to do this manually. If you do not know the answer to a problem that you want answered, you can sometimes get an answer by just posting about it in chatter. If a few knowledgeable monks do that regularly then virtually everyone will get a reply. (Not that that seems to be a problem. In the last 100 approved questions, all have answers.)	[reply]
Re^5: Too much Front Paging by tachyon (Chancellor) on Sep 24, 2004 at 16:07 UTC
Yeah, I appreciate the primary reply count on SOPW. It is on the FP too. As you may have gathered I like short and punchy, just the facts, exec summary, yada yade. I just don't agree with all the front paging. I make the following assertions: With a normal distribution of quality the greater the number of FP nodes the lower the average quality. Less is more. If a large number of nodes hit the FP then it is just another site index. Less is more. For infrequent visitors FP node quality will be inversly proportional to FP node turnover. Less is more. For infrequent visitors the FP will not appear static if turnover > visit_freq. Less is more. Less is more cheers tachyon	[reply]
Re^5: Too much Front Paging by demerphq (Chancellor) on Sep 24, 2004 at 17:24 UTC
There is a way of finding which nodes have been answered less. Go to Seekers of Perl Wisdom and look where it says the number of replies. Its probably easier to do this via demerphq's sandpit or whatever it will be called once its taken out of test. At least for newer nodes anyway. --- demerphq _{First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi Flux8}	[reply]
Re^4: Too much Front Paging by tachyon (Chancellor) on Sep 24, 2004 at 15:07 UTC
Of course there are many reasons why nodes go unanswered. I actually thing Sunday night is optimal for really hard questions as there will be very few questions in SOPW on Monday am when people get to work (not). I would at least like to see X/Y replies where X is replies in the Front Page sense (ie direct) and Y is total replies to the node. I find the threaded NN just too long. Ideally you want to do threading with Javascript so you can collapse and expand the branches without a round trip. I don't expect that idea to float any time soon though. cheers tachyon	[reply]
Re^3: Too much Front Paging by demerphq (Chancellor) on Sep 24, 2004 at 15:34 UTC
What would be useful would be a variation on dermephqs threaded newest nodes. Personally I don't like this in the form it is in beacuse you have pages and pages of data but it illustrates the fact that gathering replies, The sandpit has been changing quite steadily recently. Did you write this before I rolled out the "root-and-node" mode and added the child/descendent counts? If yes then are things better now, and if not then what would have to change? --- demerphq _{First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi Flux8}	[reply]
Re^4: Too much Front Paging by tachyon (Chancellor) on Sep 24, 2004 at 15:55 UTC
As you surmise I based my comments on what I looked at a few days ago. I thing the "root and node" mode with child/descendent counts is ..... exactly what I had in mind. It would be a worthy replacement to "N replies" on the Front Page. The threading is good and bad. Sure it shows you the activity at a glance but....it takes up so much screen real estate. There is also a data transfer increase of course. Ideally the tree would be best implemented with DHTML. An all or nothing server refresh toggle would be a practical compromise. cheers tachyon	[reply]