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You can now set different default topic sorting order/period for individual groups as well
As promised yesterday, it's now possible to set different default "views" (order of topics, and time period) for each individual group. Similar to how setting it for the home page works, just go into the group, change the view order/period to the ones you want, and then click the "Set as default" button next to the time period dropdown.
So now when you go into a group, it will choose your default sort by the first one of these that exists:
- Your default for that group
- Your default for the home page
- The site's overall default (currently "activity, last 24 hours")
On that note, any opinions yet about the default switch yesterday to "activity, last 24 hours" instead of "activity, all time"? Or does this question not even matter much since people are setting their own preferred sorts now anyway?
As I've said before, having the default be 24 hours may stifle discussion in threads that are just starting to pick up. All time was obviously too much, letting weeks-old threads reach the front page out of nowhere, but having a day old thread suddenly stop getting new ideas in isn't ideal to me. I have my default at 3 days, and I think this is a fair default for the site, bringing the best of both worlds.
I like it. Even though I only joined two days ago, I was getting pretty tired of seeing the same 4 or 5 threads always popping up on the front page (Favorite game, favorite book, etc). I feel like those threads will get necro'd forever with the old default, so this at least keeps it feeling somewhat fresh.
True. But are we going to get a new favorite game/book thread every day instead?
How about calling it "Set as site-wide default" and "Set as group default"? Right now the only difference between setting those two is which page you're on.
Also, I don't think there's a way to "delete" a default once it's set, only setting it to the same as a higher level - I assume this won't update automatically with the higher level then, though.
Good points, thanks. I'm not sure how being able to delete a default would work well, maybe a page where it lists all your group settings and you can delete them individually? That feels like it might be a bit excessive, but having it as a button on the page all the time is probably unnecessary too. Maybe just a "clear all"? I'm not sure.
Yeah, "hidden" inheritance like this is a bit of a UI problem. A central "clear all" would probably be a good idea anyway.
Thinking about it, there only ever needs to be one level of inheritance - groups always look at user-global default when unset, which itself simply returns setup-global when unset.
So how about adding an extra "site-wide default (last 12 hours)" (or whatever your user-global default is) to the time period dropdown and a "site-wide default (Most comments)" tab to the sorting selector IF you have a custom setting enabled for that group? When these are selected it's like any other sorting change and they can be "set as group default" - in this case it just nulls the respective field in the background so it always refers to the parent's settings.
Hope that was kinda comprehensible.
I found myself forgetting about it and wondering why certain groups seemed so sparse last night, but that has more to do with me forgetting the switch had happened and not even thinking about it in that moment. Overall I'm happy with the change though because it gives younger posts a chance to shine.
I personally found the switch to 24 hours a lot fresher. I understand the comments here about enjoying seeing old threads still chugging along. But honestly as I hop on to browser I'm looking for new and fresh discussions, not old ones. And if I don't see anything I am more likely to leave the site and not contribute. Keeping it fresh with the 24 hours has really helped shake things up.
I think activity, all time was getting quite annoying since a single 'spammy' comment thread could make a topic sit on the front page for ages. However, activity, 24 hours is a bit of a strange tradeoff that I'm not really satisfied with.
I like switching to most votes sorting from a certain time period sometimes, and I think a 'reddit hot' esque sort which takes into account topic age, votes, and activity would be better than the current or previous defaults.