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Recommended reader posts going stale
All the bugs aside, I think that the new site is a huge improvement. I particularly appreciate the reader blogs and “recommended reader posts” section. It’s definitely caused me to spend more time contributing, to the detriment of my productivity at work. The quality of user posts seems to have improved as well, perhaps because of the required registration.
I do, however, see some flaws in the reader recommendation system. Initially, it worked very well, but the recommended reader posts section is starting to go stale. For instance, flyonthewall's super tuesday analysis is stellar, but super tuesday is over, and the post is still 4th on the recommended list. I'm sure that he/she has new posts that should replace it.
The staleness seems to have happened for two reasons:
1) The recommended reader posts get a lot more visits than the recent reader posts, so they get still more recommendations, which pushes them even higher in the ranking.
2) The number of reader posts has increased so that new posts now move quickly through the recent posts lists before anyone has a chance to read and recommend them. I've commented on posts, and then a few hours later, I can't find the post anymore.
I'd like to start a list of ideas for improving the functionality. If anyone has suggestions, please add them to the comments (and recommend this post, so we can keep the thread live for a little while).
Suggestions:
1) Time out user recommendations. Recommendations more than a few days old should be discounted. That way, recommended posts will fall off the list when they go stale, but posts that continue to receive recommendations will stay up.
2) Increase the length of the recommended list. That will make the threshold for stickiness lower. Recommendations by a few users will get the post into the list where more users can see it and recommend it.
3) Increase the length of the recent posts list. That will give recent posts a little more time to be read before they fall off.
4) The "all reader posts" section should have a headline index. Currently, you can only seem them in long view, which makes it hard to find a thread that you were following but has fallen of the lists.
Comments (12)
Are authors of recommended posts allowed to "de-recommend" their own posts? The odd ego-tripper aside, I suspect that most authors would be pretty good about timely removal of their own stale posts if they were so enabled.
While I'm dispensing my amateur advice, please consider a 3rd category for a frontpage listing of reader posts ... a place to list spectacular failures, personal introductions, etc. under a comical category header (e.g., Rank and File).
February 9, 2008 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re 1) Timing out user recommendations.
Understood that posts that continue to receive recommendations should stay up, but after a certain amount of time couldn't the rec function be disabled? Otherwise, clueless schmoes like me are gonna keep dropping by and rec'ing ancient history. Again, something that an author might be allowed to control.
February 9, 2008 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
We'll see how it works once the 24-hour expiration is in, but I don't think that this is necessary. As long as new readers keep enjoying and recommending an article, I see no reason to take it off. It's only when an article becomes outdated or no longer attracts new readers that I think it should be removed, and the expiration should take care of that because such articles will stop being recommended even by "clueless schmoes".
February 9, 2008 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
According to Andrew Golis, the plan is to have most-recommended in the last 24 hrs., so it will evolve over time.
I wish we had downrating to ditch the junk.
February 9, 2008 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't like the downrating. I do remember that from the cafe. There were always witless assholes giving 1s to any post they didn't agree with and then other people who took it personally and got mad at the witless assholes for throwing 1s around. It just seems like BS that we don't need.
February 9, 2008 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can I ask Genghis if he was in the Cafe before? I don't remember.
I ask because my experience is the opposite. I hate the new system, so far.
February 9, 2008 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was hung out at the cafe occasionally, but I didn't do much besides comment on other people's posts, so maybe I didn't experience the full functionality. The new platform certainly beats the old pseudo-anonymous posting on TPM Muckraker & Election.
February 9, 2008 4:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks Genghis. I addressed this over here too:
February 9, 2008 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the update, Andrew. Sorry that I missed the other post.
February 9, 2008 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is it me, or are Genghis and Andrew brothers?
:-)
February 9, 2008 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another thing that I wasn't going to mention for fear of giving people ideas, but it seems that people have already figured it out on their own. It's quite easy to game the system by recommending your own post multiple times. There are two suspiciously popular posts on the recommended list. Julie Sobel's piece on McCain has rocketed to third place in 24 hours with 48 recommendations, yet there are only 2 comments. Califone's post, which is just a link to a New Republic article, has 28 recommendations and 0 comments. Most of the other recommended posts have at least 50% as many comments as they have recommendations, and a few have more comments than recommendations.
(Full disclosure: I recommended one of my posts a few times to get it on the board. I haven't done it since.)
In any case, this loophole should probably be fixed.
PS cscs, ha
February 10, 2008 12:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
I definitely like the idea of the timed-out recommendations.
February 12, 2008 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
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