Most visitors to PerlMonks arrive via the front page (The Monastery Gates), so it is important for the front page to contain posts that are current or we risk giving the impression that not much changes from day to day.

Yet we only show something like 2% of our posts on the front page. To improve this situation I'd like to request all those who approve nodes to make greater use of Front Paging. One way to look at this is as tye puts it "leaving something off the front page means that you want to hide it from most of our members" (see Re^2: Considering Front Paging a Node? (what not)). So if the node you're about to approve doesn't merit being hidden then please front page it (see also the site guidelines).

Thanks and a happy new year to everyone!
  • Comment on A new year's request: let's keep the Front Page more current

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Re: A new year's request: let's keep the Front Page more current
by McDarren (Abbot) on Jan 02, 2010 at 02:46 UTC
    On the subject of the front page.... it's been several months now, do we still need such a prominent link to this on the front page?
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      My question would be, "Is it fixed yet?"
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      Good observation, that link has now been removed.
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        I ask this in all seriousness, because I haven't seen anything more regarding it -- was the bug fixed?
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Re: A new year's request: let's keep the Front Page more current
by Anonymous Monk on Jan 01, 2010 at 21:31 UTC
    Maybe we can change algorithm for frontpage? If post has non-negative rep, is approved, is not considered, it automatically gets frontpaged. Or for every post from last hour that meets above conditions, one (or three) get frontpaged randomly.
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Re: A new year's request: let's keep the Front Page more current
by mpeg4codec (Pilgrim) on Jan 05, 2010 at 21:39 UTC
    This is an excellent suggestion, and I can already tell that it's been effective. I regularly check the front page, and the content has been fresher and more interesting in the last few days than any time I can remember in the past several years. ++ all around!
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Re: A new year's request: let's keep the Front Page more current
by tweetiepooh (Hermit) on Jan 04, 2010 at 12:01 UTC
    I prefer to see as uncluttered front page as possible.

    I like to see things that are of general interest that I wouldn't look for. New discoveries, methods etc. Things that would be of interest outside the specifics. Maybe where the discussion makes more general reading.

    Take a newpaper, the front page has the attention grabbing stuff and pointers to other articles that don't fit. Regular features, contributors and so forth are usually in know places so can be found quickly. You may need to know where to look but there are often guides to help new comers.

    Papers and their ilk have fixed sizes for a page that is absent in web pages but if the front page gets too much on it then it becomes less usable.

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      If PerlMonks were a newspaper, then each day most of the items on the front page would be the same as yesterday and turning to page two would just get you the things from the front page of a week or more ago. That makes a lousy newspaper (and makes a lousy web site, which is the point of fighting this meme of fear of putting merely ordinary questions, the lion's share of the point of this site, on the front page).

      Your analogy is horribly broken and doesn't come close to matching how the front page is actually used here.

      - tye        

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        It's true newspapers do need new content for the front pages but sometimes they will cover old news that is now more relevant (or perceived to be so) because of a later event or new information to a wider readership.

        This site doesn't have a page 2 in the same sense since each section is date ordered by first node/article so is dynamic anyway.

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Re: A new year's request: let's keep the Front Page more current
by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jan 12, 2010 at 08:36 UTC

    leaving something off the front page means that you want to hide it from most of our members

    Then we need a page that lists the nodes that didn't make it to the front page like how SoPW lists the unapproved nodes.

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