How about a "Best Threads" list instead?

This would deserve some discussion about the best way to rank entire threads for such a list. The mean reputation springs to mind, but there'd be some obvious problems with that like outliers and the tendency of longer threads to converge toward an average.

I've no idea how difficult the implementation would be but I can't imagine it would be all that hard.

Anyway, I'd rather see something like that than an arbitrary limit on the number of best nodes from a given thread.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

I was going to suggest an alternate format that involved collecting the best nodes for the day until 10 threads are represented and then displaying them clustered by thread (showing a max of, say, 5 per thread).

But, instead, I think a much better solution is to stop being so frightened of front-paging threads so that we can start usually getting more than one or two new front-page threads each day.

(If the long-suffering approval changes ever get applied, then I'll get back to making front-paging easier to monitor such that I'll probably personally front-page more nodes than the rest of the eligible monks combined -- unless, of course, others are also waiting for such improvement.) (:

- tye        

If the long-suffering approval changes ever get applied,

I keep hearing this comment, from you and from other pmdevils. But every time I've looked for approval stuff to apply I've come up empty handed or found the patches ive been pointed at already applied. So what are these changes?

---
$world=~s/war/peace/g

I'd say that's exactly what I'm trying to move away from. The "best threads" (by almost any measure) are the ones that dominate the Daily Best list. I'd just like to moderate their tendency to crowd out the good posts from less popular threads.

---

Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.

Ah. Well, I hate the idea of showcasing lower rep nodes on the Best Nodes list just because some of the best nodes are clustered together. Might as well call it the "Next Best Nodes" list. The ten best threads (so long as the meaning of "best" was satisfactory) would be far more interesting to me. It would probably be more interesting to me than Best Nodes if it were implemented well.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

So how about replacing sets of more than two "Best Nodes" from the same thread with single entry of "Node Title(thread)"? That way you'd immediately see which threads contain interesting discussion, as well as have more space for individual high-scoring nodes.

I like the best threads idea. I would suggest the following algorithm to build up the list (pseudocode).

my %threadhash;

sub build_best_nodes_list
  my @nodes = get_list of relevant nodes_sorted_by_xp_descending();
  my @found;
  foreach my $node ( @nodes )
  {
    last if @found > 10;

    unless ( defined $threadhash{$node->{op}->{title}} )
    {
      push @found, $node->{op};
      $threadhash{$node->{op}->{title}} = 0
    }

    $threadhash{$node->{op}->{title}}++;

    return @nodes;
}
[download]

That way you would get a list of first (here) 10 "best threads" that contain "best nodes". To weigh them you could sort the threads by the number of "best nodes" it contains or by the sum of rep for those nodes.


holli, /regexed monk/

I think that's a great idea .. but what I'm hearing from some of the senior monks is that too many statistics is a Bad Thing.

Setting XP aside, a visit to demerphq's Recently Active Threads page would show what threads have been busiest .. even though I shudder a little when I visit the page, thinking of all the cycles that are being burned to produce such a monster.

Somehow, I hope that page is created and/or updated every five or ten minutes rather than on demand.

Alex / talexb / Toronto

"Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds

I have a simple solution for this: I never look at the Best Nodes of the Day list. If I log in perl monks, I can see all nodes posted in a day (via Recently Active Threads), and I think it's better if I read those whose topics I like, than the "Best" ones even if they're about a topic I'm completely uninterested in.

I do sometimes read the Best Nodes of the Week, Month, or Year list, but nodes in these don't usually tend to be clustered in a thread, or if they are, there's a reason.

So, whether such a change is implemented or not to the Best Nodes of the Day is completely irrevelant. However, I suggest you don't do it for the Best Nodes of the Week as nodes from the same thread do give me extra information.

An idea--which is probably much too difficult to glue on the current system--would be to weigh uber saints' (10,000xp+) votes more strongly for the "best of." There are fewer of them, their browsing habbits are (probably) less random, and their ++/-- is going to be "right" in most all cases.

Sometimes, when attempting to be all things to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone.

I suppose my biggest concern with adding new statistics is simply in usability. How many options do users need to wade through to get what they want? I grant that as the primary subject of PM is perl and its TMTOWTDI attitude, often what people want is just one specific WTDI.

It does mean, however, that PM can't be all things to all people. But I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

Just for curiosity ... what would a user do to see this new list, where are the link(s), etc. - and do we have too many links already?

It wouldn't be a new list, it would simply be a new constraint on the current list. In my view, it's an improvement. I'm interested to know whether others who see some value in the use of the list agree.

I'm a little puzzled by those who have replied to say that they see no value in Best Nodes at all. Is that supposed to be useful input?

---

Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.

I never go to a post through the best list, and to me it means almost nothing, other than some fun statistics. I usually even don't care the gate. I always go through the newest node, picking things in which I am interested.

I judge each node myself based on its quality, not based on its popularity (XP).

I congratulate you and ambrus on being able to discern, merely from post titles, whether you're interested in something or not. Certainly I visit the threads whose titles interest me, but I also find that sometimes the threads with titles that don't interest me contain useful insights that I would never have noticed, and the posts' reputations have been a reasonably good indicator that such nuggets are there.

---

Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.