4 votes

Promoted or featured links above regular link list (with a different sort/filter)

Posted by SourceContribute
Tags: promoted, sorting, surfacing content

Posted about this earlier (I think in the thread about default sort order) and it came up in the ~science thread on what killed Reddit AMAs: https://tildes.net/~science/py/how_reddit_killed_science_amas#comment-3e1

Basically having a "featured" or "promoted" set of links above the usual links that are:

  1. limited to a small number of posts
  2. use a different sort order than whatever the user has selected
  3. filtered by tag

This would make it possible for ~science (as an example) to always have the latest 3 AMAs (posts tagged with AMA) show up above the other set of links and would solve the problem that r/science AMAs had on reddit where they had to compete in the regular list of links.

1 comment

  1. cfabbro
    (edited )
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    We have considered a great deal of things to assist and facilitate high-quality, limited time-frame, community efforts like AMAs here but are definitely open to more suggestions. From my own...

    We have considered a great deal of things to assist and facilitate high-quality, limited time-frame, community efforts like AMAs here but are definitely open to more suggestions.

    From my own comment in that very thread (which also goes into more detail about /r/science's predicament):

    So why don't they simply create the post a few hours before the AMA starts and then let it climb naturally that way? Because once again the hotness algorithm makes that unviable and people are unlikely to upvote an AMA only filled with question but no answers. That and a post that takes hours before it starts picking up steam is never going to get very high on the hotness list. The /r/science mods suggested perhaps allowing them to post an AMA, not allow it go get voted on, so they have time to get it prepped with questions from the community and only activate the voting (and ranking in hotness) once the AMA participant arrives but the admins ignored them.

    Sidenote: We have talked to @nate and are most likely going to take that suggestion and implement a similar "reserved space" submission type here.

    Some other options we have considered:

    • allowing/encouraging admin and trusted user curation though stickies and only punishing actual particular abusers, not everyone who relies on the system
    • supervote: a limited # of votes, 1 per day maybe, that users can use in communities where they have high trust that adds significantly more weight to their votes or even applies a multiplier
    • special trusted user only topic tags that, in themselves, add extra weight to the post in terms of visibility

    But as I said, we're certainly open to more suggestions. And because the default state of ~ is to trust its users (and only punish actual abusers not everyone) we can experiment with all sorts of unique and interesting mechanics that reddit cannot because their default state is to distrust their users and level the playing field at all costs regardless of qualitative value.

    4 votes