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.) (:

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

pmdev wiki, castaway's entry on 2005-04-27 outlines the whole thing. Only the uninteresting parts have been applied (new bits being added that can't even be tested here yet much less change any behavior).

She links to the nodes not to the patches. But the patches in question say 'approval code updates' and have not (besides the first 'uninteresting' ones) been applied.

- tye        

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.