5
votes
Suggestion: The older the topic is, the less it gets bumped in the global view
If someone posts on a one month old thread, it shouldn't make it to front page.
If someone post on a new 1 day old thread, if should, but not at top, but... somewhere else. A method of weighting oldness vs liveness should play there.
The entire point is that things come back to the top no matter how old they are. That's how pretty much every forum works.
If you don't want to see all topics bumping to the top on new comments, you can use a different sort method or set a time period restriction other than "all time". If you're only interested in topics from the last day, set it to "last 24 hours".
The "Votes" or "New" methods are probably the best option if you don't want things bumping based on activity. If you haven't already, you should also enable marking new comments in your settings so you can easily see when threads have new comments even without the bumping.
Having something bump to the #10 position in the list would just mean that nobody even notices anything happened with it.
I think it's just a matter of declining power, really. Bumping a 5 year old thread? Should it really be front page? Obvs, a 2 day old thread should probably.
Really, though, just a suggestion. Maybe it's just jarring to me, since even vbulletin has this implemented.
Sorry, I edited in a bit more info/suggestions about sorting and settings while you were replying, so you might have missed that.
It can be weird in some ways, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong about old topics coming back up. It sucks on reddit a lot of the time knowing that if you get to a thread more than a day after it was posted, you might as well not even comment any more because almost nobody will ever see it. It's good for giving people the FOMO ("fear of missing out") feeling that makes them compelled to check the site constantly, but not great for quality conversations, especially in smaller communities.
Personally, I like knowing that I don't have to reply to everything immediately. Someone can make a detailed suggestion or give some feedback, and it's fine if I don't reply to it until the next day, because I know it'll bump back up when I do, and the conversation can happen at that point. On reddit it always feels rushed, you have to get to everything in the first few hours or they'll effectively disappear.
Same! I actually bookmark some posts so I can come back to them later when I have more time (which might be tomorrow or even the day after). I like that I can do that on Tildes, and people will still see my comment even on a days-old post.
Having migrated from reddit about a week ago, I still have this urge that tries to prevent me from commenting on older than 1 day threads. I hadn't realized that it affected me that much internally.
Another thing I personally like about having old topics come back up based on comment activity is "repost prevention." I doubt it will eliminate it completely, but I can see it help cut down on the reposts and the comment noise that typically follows.
That's fine too. Really.
Your "bar" your intention for the community. If it's not in line with what you want, I totally see why that isn't something you want :). It's part of designing the community you're trying to foster :D
Do threads ever close without moderation?
I know necrobumping can be a big problem in many forums.
At this point, they don't. That could change, in fact it might even have to change if Tildes becomes truly massive somehow, but I wouldn't bother changing it until there's a technical need to do so. Threads being old and active is only an issue if they are competing with new active threads and drowning them out. That exact problem is why there is now an 'activity' vs 'all activity' sort option.
The all version includes the old threads when anything new happens. The regular activity version only includes old threads that meet certain thresholds, which Deimos laid out in the feature announcement. Those thresholds will change and evolve with the site as needed, heck they might even behave differently in large groups than in small ones if there's a case for doing it that way in the future.
So, rather than having some crazy non-obvious sort, we can just use two views, and people can browse the site how they like. I think that's a better mindset to have tackling this problem.
Not currently, no. If someone bumps a very old topic for no good reason, people can label that comment as Noise or Offtopic and that will cause it to "un-bump" in the default sorting method. In a few cases, if I think the person really didn't realize they were posting in an extremely old thread, I've removed their comment and sent them a message to tell them about it (and it was almost always an accident).
One thing I do want to do is add a warning when people start to post in old threads or reply to old comments, something like "the comment you're about to reply to is 3 months old, do you want to proceed?" I don't necessarily want to prevent people from doing it, but I think it would be good to make sure they're doing it deliberately.
It shouldn't happen in that case since they'd be replying back and forth to each other's new comments, not the old ones (it would be based on the comment's age, not the overall topic's).
i guess i would ask: why not? tildes doesn't have an issue with necrobumps provided they add to the conversation, although people don't advertise that detail, because one aspect of prioritizing quality content and discussion is that discussions can be longer lived than on reddit.
If anything I wish we would do it more often. I'd love to see long conversations or to normalize threads that are currently recurring staying around forever. I'm hoping over time we can cultivate a site culture which allows for that a bit more. Might be part of the reddit "un-learning" that we have to go through for a bunch of things.
That's very true, looking at it from that perspective....
You've made a suggestion, but you haven't explained why Tildes needs this feature. What problem are you trying to solve? How does this improve Tildes?
One side-effect of this change would be to de-value latecomers' contributions. If someone finds an interesting article a few weeks after it was posted, and comments on it, noone will see it. Why is their input less worthy of being seen than someone who commented earlier?
Well, I guess the obvious answer is it makes everybody see old content again. Even if you just browse to the one new comment, you still need to catch yourself back up on context of the thread, or of the discussed article. That takes time.
You don't have to read the old thread if you're not interested in it when it pops up again on your front page.
I don't, but if I get my news from Tildes and I'm only seeing old news...
It might not even be news. I might browse for music recommendations, recipes, or book discussions. If over time more and more content in the feed becomes stale, I think I'd be less likely to return.
I'm definitely not suggesting we push for hyper-addicted 24/7 content feed ala reddit. But I do recognize that stale content is less interesting.
If something is a late-comer, shouldn't it just get a new thread? Especially like, a year later? 5 years later?
The more far removed from the initial post, the more the landscape of discussion has changed.
So, if I see a month-old post about a scientific discovery, I should not comment on that post - I should create a new post to make my comment?
Yeah, I think I agree. I've stuck with "All time" sorting as it was the default (as of recently), but I'm not a fan of seeing month-old posts. Especially when they're news posts and I think they're new.
It also makes me worry about commenting in older threads. I replied earlier to one of your comments ubergeek, about 24 hours since the last comment. But I wasn't sure if it was right to do so or if it'd be considered a nuisance.
I don't think a hard cutoff point is the right approach (eg. reddit uses 24 hours for its frontpage). But an algorithmic decline in bumping power seems right to me.
Honest question: why does there need to be an algorithmic approach here for
all timewhen if someone doesn't want to see topics older than # days popping back up in their feed, they can just set their default sort to Activity -#dusing the custom "other period" option, instead of leaving it onall time? E.g. your personal preference seems to be 30 days, so you can simply set your default sort to Activity -30dusing the "other period" option.I'm not trying to impinge on anyone else's preferences. I'm just suggesting the behaviour that I think makes the most sense.
The reason I tried the All Time sort was to see if it really worked well as a default option, and now I'm giving my feedback on the topic.
I'm not trying to disparage your idea, so sorry if it came off that way. I'm just trying to understand what you're hoping limiting "all time" like that would accomplish that simply setting your default time span to something more restrictive wouldn't.
I'm actually not suggesting that All Time should be affected by OP's proposal. For those that want to browse everything, that should definitely remain unfiltered.
I just think a fresher view makes more sense as a default. Basically as it was before the recent change, but perhaps a bit smarter by using a weighted bump system rather than simply sending the thread to #1 every time.
It doesn't even have to be algorithm magic. Just something like making every bump less effective than the last, or factoring in the distance from original submission (or edit) time.
Up above @Deimos compared the system to forums, but I'd actually argue forums don't handle this particularly well. Often times the threads at the top will be there not because they're high quality, but because they are accessible to a large number of people. eg. post your favorite X, what is your opinion on Y, or an old favorite: last person to post wins.
While I understand that Tildes doesn't support that type of fluffy content, it's still worth pointing out that accessible topics will generate more comments, and as a result will be more visible. But that's not the same as good content.
I don't think reddit's approach of dropping posts off the front page after one day is a great approach either. I do think the best answer lies somewhere in the middle though.
e: Grammar
Ah, gotcha. Thanks for clarifying for me. And those are definitely all valid complaints/concerns.