Re^2: Never! Too much Front Paging

I personally disagree. IMO, the Monastery Gates shouldn't be just another SoPW page, we have the original SoPW page for that. IMO, the front page should only contain nodes that are worthwile reading for a sufficiently large portion of the audience: a selected digest, for those people who don't want to read it all. That probably means almost everybody, these days.

So not front-paging a node means that the majority of visitors will never see it. Do you really think that more than half of the threads on this site should be ignored by the lion's share of our readers??

Please don't try to force people to read stuff they likely won't even want to read. You'll just end up making people feel like they've been wasting their time coming here. I think that when people visit not more than the front page, it is mostly because it already holds far more than they can handle in one visit. I don't think most of these people even read most of what's been added to the front page, since their last visit. Adding even more to it, won't do any good, as people will just read a relatively smaller portion.

Comment on Re^2: Never! Too much Front Paging

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Re^3: Never! Too much Front Paging by tye (Sage) on Sep 25, 2004 at 01:54 UTC
Where did I say that the front page should be "another SoPW"? I said that I think that most of our threads are worth reading. So even with your view of what the front page is for, I would still put most of the SoPW nodes on it. Please don't try to force people to read stuff they likely won't even want to read. How can I force anyone to read anything? Putting it on the front page doesn't force anyone to do anything. Leaving it off of the front page forces people go looking for it or else they'll never find it (see how "force" can be turned around however you like?). Leaving it off of the front page means that most of our readers will never see it. And that is fine for most of the yucky threads. You'll just end up making people feel like they've been wasting their time coming here. All I advocated was making some of the less wonderful threads visible so that people have an awareness that such is here. You see a really dumb question on the front page and you can skip right over it. Or you can look at if you are curious. After you've looked at a few, you may decide to skip right over the next one. Or you may come up with an improvement. But let's not pretend that we don't have lousy threads. Let's not hide all of them. Filter some of them out and show some of them. Balance. I think that when people visit not more than the front page, it is mostly because it already holds far more than they can handle in one visit. My main statistic is the voting on threads that make it to the front page. So people aren't just visiting the front page, they are visiting threads that appear on the front page. I don't think most of these people even read most of what's been added to the front page, since their last visit. Scanning the front page for interesting threads doesn't take long at all. If they are only visiting for 2 minutes, then it is because they didn't find anything interesting. I certainly don't expect the typical visitor to read every thread that gets front-paged. I want to offer them a large selection so they can read quite a bit if they want to, starting with the items that look the most interesting. Adding even more to it, won't do any good You can't "add more to" the front page. It is mostly of fixed size. We are just rotating the content faster so that every day there are more than just a couple of new threads to see. - tye	[reply]

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Re^3: Never! Too much Front Paging
by tye (Sage) on Sep 25, 2004 at 01:54 UTC

Where did I say that the front page should be "another SoPW"? I said that I think that most of our threads are worth reading. So even with your view of what the front page is for, I would still put most of the SoPW nodes on it.

Please don't try to force people to read stuff they likely won't even want to read.

How can I force anyone to read anything? Putting it on the front page doesn't force anyone to do anything. Leaving it off of the front page forces people go looking for it or else they'll never find it (see how "force" can be turned around however you like?).

Leaving it off of the front page means that most of our readers will never see it. And that is fine for most of the yucky threads.

You'll just end up making people feel like they've been wasting their time coming here.

All I advocated was making some of the less wonderful threads visible so that people have an awareness that such is here. You see a really dumb question on the front page and you can skip right over it. Or you can look at if you are curious. After you've looked at a few, you may decide to skip right over the next one. Or you may come up with an improvement. But let's not pretend that we don't have lousy threads. Let's not hide all of them. Filter some of them out and show some of them. Balance.

I think that when people visit not more than the front page, it is mostly because it already holds far more than they can handle in one visit.

My main statistic is the voting on threads that make it to the front page. So people aren't just visiting the front page, they are visiting threads that appear on the front page.

I don't think most of these people even read most of what's been added to the front page, since their last visit.

Scanning the front page for interesting threads doesn't take long at all. If they are only visiting for 2 minutes, then it is because they didn't find anything interesting. I certainly don't expect the typical visitor to read every thread that gets front-paged. I want to offer them a large selection so they can read quite a bit if they want to, starting with the items that look the most interesting.

Adding even more to it, won't do any good

You can't "add more to" the front page. It is mostly of fixed size. We are just rotating the content faster so that every day there are more than just a couple of new threads to see.

- tye

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