Forum Issue: Only default sort order functions until logged in
evanh
Posts: 15,188
Example: Without logging in, I go to first page of topic and select “Date Added” so as to read the thread in chronological order. I then go to the most recent page but it's reverted to "Votes" already.
Once I login my preference settings take over and I have no need to select the sort order any longer.
Once I login my preference settings take over and I have no need to select the sort order any longer.
Comments
Tom
Remember the web works over HTTP requests and responses. It is stateless. Every request is as if it came out of the blue. Fresh and new and unrelated to any other. How can the server know what sort order you checked?
Only when you are logged in do you get cookies in the request/response and then the server can know that a request is from you and you have selected a certain post ordering or whatever option.
Having said that, I agree, sorting posts by vote is just madness and should be disabled by default. It would be interesting to see if any one ever would check the box to turn it on.
I think I've voted a few just to tinker with the voting thing.
Best post may or may not be atomic too. Sometimes it is. One post contains an inclusive answer. Often, it's not that way. The answer is an exchange of some kind, and the voting system won't really deal with that very well.
Other places have resolved this with features like an answer summary people can edit, but that only works when people do the edits. Typically, people get what they need and move on. Meta features get ignored more than used.
The tag cloud will suffer from this over time too. Same reasons. But that thing is not a worry. If it somehow gets used, great, but no loss if it doesn't.
Like stackoverflow or stackexchange or what ever stack it is.
I have often seen highly voted up answers to questions that were down right wrong or out of date or not optimal. Meanwhile better, more robust and general, answers languished with less votes.
Who could possibly imagine that randomizing thread post ordering with votes would be a good idea?
Voting works out kind of well for some kinds of discussion. Entertainment type things, or responding to long form works. You can see this at Ars Technica, where they pull a few good comments out and highlight them. That works, because it's an editorial task.
And on that note, editorial tasks do require the time and attention of editors. In modern lingo, the buzzword is curators. Whatever.
Where that time and attention is invested, the results are generally good. But that costs money, so there you have the economic incentive to somehow figure out how to get people to curate or edit and contribute at the same time.
BTW: Random thought. Curate this site, package it up on http:///gitbook.com and maybe fund the effort from sales or donations. No joke. GitBook has some limits. I've been writing on it some trying to figure out the optimal way to use a tool like that. But the idea is solid. Worth some thought, if you ask me. Some of my P2 related work will end up there for sure.
To me, sans some dollars and structure being applied, resolving this looks like one of those "wants to have cake and eat it too" type unicorns.
Every single venue of note I have ever participated in has gone through this exercise. In the end, cultivating a place where people are engaged and active pays the best. Never fails, can't miss.
I submit, good as it gets, unless there are dollars involved.
Then the game changes. If something is a subscription service then the curators and editors are funded and the product as a reference tool can end up quite good. Problem there is people rarely want to invest time for others to make a profit off what they know can be done with simple dialog and basic means and methods.
It's kind of an ugly problem. No easy solutions.
This means that some features will not be available to a user until they are logged in, such as saving the preference of view sorting. This is working as it should, and thus this issue will not be added to the list.
Sinking this thread.
Well. that and the whole voting thing should be abandoned as it's pointless anyway.
Help, I'm drowning again!
I'm not sure yet when that change will roll out.
To my mind "best-answer + chronological combo" sounds like "random number + known/fixed number". The result will still be gibberish.
Or am I missing a point here?
Slashdot deals with voting in a totally different fashion to this. There is no linear thread but a tree of replies with high voted posts unfolded for quick reading and neutral/low voted posts folded to a single line each or not listed at all without digging further.
A news post goes up. People throw comments at it. For a few hours or a day. New stories go up. That old "thread" moves down and eventually falls off the page never to return. Posting to an old story does not pull it back to the front page. Rarely are any of the comments useful things that are answers to questions you may have had. Nothing memorable. Nobody goes back. There is no concept of an ongoing discussion.
Crucially, threads are not initiated by the members of slash but rather by the slash "editors". It is not a discussion forum in that way.
Slash has a voting system that, as far as I can tell is supposed to let people vote down insulting, obscene or comments they other wise find objectionable or off topic. Then visitors can filter out such comments to a level of their choosing.
The voting seems to work for slash. Mind you I always read it with the least amount of filtering to get all the posts in as flat an order as I can. Often some of the best jokes have been voted down a lot
slash was kind of OK last millenium when it lived up to it's catch phrase "News for nerds, stuff that matters." and geeks used to hang out there. It has descended into a stream of random noise now as far as I can tell.
Voting on discussion forum like this is just brain damaged and at least should default to a flat time ordered view of threads.