A Final Solution to the Wiki Question

[wtfNeedSignUp]

It might be thread dependent, but wouldn't a better choice of highlighted text be the one that is ranked by multiple people as informative? Another good filter is not considering posts without any attachments or links.

 

[Overly Serious]

I'm doing this now so people can give feedback on how my idea works before I begin figuring out how I want to use this data useful. I am debating between adding a totally new threaded view of just the best posts, or adding a button that says "jump to next highlight" while keeping you in the real view of the thread. I am leaning towards the latter.

I prefer the idea of a Jump to Highlight because a filtered thread is a less interesting one to me. I'm not skimming through threads looking for the most uprated funny ones. I want the actual thread. But the something that marks good starting points or dipping-into points IS useful to me. Would be great on monster threads like the Joker or Star Wars one to be able to click the most recent "significant" post and find myself at a good starting place.

 

[The Fool]

I don't entirely understand using the existing ratings to highlight posts. I see more unrelated shitposts get highlighted than actual informative ones. This is why I suggested a separate system to highlight posts, even if it's just a new rating.

 

[Null]

I don't entirely understand using the existing ratings to highlight posts. I see more unrelated shitposts get highlighted than actual informative ones. This is why I suggested a separate system to highlight posts, even if it's just a new rating.

Because it's the closest thing we have to historical data on what are good posts

 

[Overly Serious]

I should have added to my post above that I mainly hang-out in Off-topic. A Highlights view would make a lot more sense in the Lolcow threads.

 

[King of Not Playing Games]

As a relative lurker I’d like add my two cents. I really liked the gold border, because it made it very easy to scroll through threads and catch the most important and funniest posts. Even if the border were a bit thicker or a slightly offset color that would be cool. I still want to see the posts in context in case I need to refer around the page.

And while I get custom CSS is a thing, KF already has a theme function. Maybe a separate theme with more prominent highlighted posts?

Thanks for all your hard work!

 

[Looney Troons]

I've made some changes to the system as a bit of a stopgap as people were complaining very loudly about the gold. It's a bit more subtle. I am probably going to remove the green top border once the ability to jump to the next highlight is added. The border is just there now so people can see what the system likes as it is now.

Some things left on my to-do list before moving to cap it off with the feature to jump to next highlight:
- Determine if I can easily add a "reaction count" column so I can evaluate posts on absolute value instead of aggregated.
- Rebuild every post's reaction score because just changing the value of a rating does not do that retroactively on posts, just the user's total reaction score.
- Make it so that moderator events (merging, splitting, deletions) may flag a thread for a full highlight rescan instead of just picking off where it left off.

I’m primarily a mobile user. The horizontal thin, green bar rests just atop the “highlighted” post. I like it, but it’s easy to miss if you’re quickly skimming through a thread. The “highlight” text within the post is a very good touch.

 

[Strange Looking Dog]

Personally I would give informative and associated ratings more weight, and things like winner less weight. Winner is handed out like candy, and frequently doesn't relate to post quality.

I see more unrelated shitposts get highlighted than actual informative ones.

This is what I've been seeing too.

 

[Oaat]

Joke posts being highlighted instead of informative ones seems to be mitigated somewhat when you can see what they're quoting - this make the idea of a skip button better than a curated thread imo.

 

[Chamulum]

The gold was fine. The people who complained were faggots.

 

[Disc]

I'm gonna throw another idea out there. This one's definitely iffier.

In addition to Informative, maybe Horrifying should get some degree of extra weight? the other common negative reactions tend to be about the poster making a fool of themself. Horrifying tends to be either someone making a parody of an art piece, or some disturbing new information. Adding it (at a lesser weighting?) might help mitigate the 'rate the topic/user' issue.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

It might be nice to document which reactions affect the “selection” - and perhaps have a few positives and negatives that don’t affect it - so you can laugh at a good joke without polluting the system.

 

[💗Freddie Freaker💗]

If nobody has mentioned it yet....

The deviant, horrifying and islamic content ratings should probably count as positives. The most fucked up content is often the juiciest.

 

[Rōjin]

I was mostly looking for information on how people would like to wiki-tize the OPs but it was made pretty clear from the posts that the idea of highlighting the best posts in large threads for expedient reading was much more desired so I've started working on that.

As a stage one for this extension, I'm running an automated process every hour to look through active threads and start paginating it into best ofs.

To make this more fair and to adjust for new site activity over time, each thread is broken up into n pages (currently 3) and the most positively reacted n posts from those pages are identified. Those posts are the ones with gold borders in recently active threads. Expect some wonkiness in the newest pages of a thread, as I've not done anything to (for instance) stop the first post on the 4th page of a thread from getting highlighted if it has no subsequent posts.

I'm doing this now so people can give feedback on how my idea works before I begin figuring out how I want to use this data useful. I am debating between adding a totally new threaded view of just the best posts, or adding a button that says "jump to next highlight" while keeping you in the real view of the thread. I am leaning towards the latter.

So those this mean we are finally getting our reddit gold!?

 

[Twinkie]

I like the subtlety of the current implementation but ig people are having a hard time distinguishing the line, maybe experiment with a perforated border or a dotted one.

 

[AlexJonesGotMePregnant]

I'd like to say that it is nice that @Null is experimenting with new features and actively working to solicit the feedback of his autistic userbase. it's a good place to be.

 

[Null]

Weird head's up: The little icons indicating users are online which normally appears in the author area of posts is being disabled.

function()
                {
                    if (\XF::options()->showMessageOnlineStatus)
                    {
                        return 'User.Activity';
                    }

                    return null;
                },

The `xf_session_activity` table is one of the few MyISAM tables that XenForo has. MyISAM tables are locked every time they are read. InnoDB tables can be read by multiple queries at once. There is an issue where so many posts are being selected (because of general site activity and this new extension) that it can basically lock up the entire site. Turning off the online status fixes this.

 

[BasedRetard]

This is a great idea. This is one of the few sites I've been on that's consistently getting better and not worse.

My only comment would be the visibility of the highlight isn't enough to stand out. I personally liked the gold, but something in between that and what's there now would be great IMO.

 

[The Fool]

I've never even understood the concept of an "online now" feature on a forum, I don't think you'll get any complaints by disabling it.

 

[James Smith]

maybe just making sorting through the threads easier would rid us of the need for a wiki

It might for some stuff, but not subforums. The smallest one, other than international which is single subjects, still has 115 threads to sift through.