Sorting search results by number of favorites?

July 6, 2009 5:05 PM

Pony request: We can already sort the posts and comments in search results by date or by relevance. Would it be possible (or even desirable) to sort by the number of favorites each item has?

A lot of people bristle when favorites or best answers or user numbers are suggested as a way to judge the value of things on the site. Thinking in those terms makes it too easy to reduce healthy community interaction into a numbers game.

I generally agree with this. It would be a bad idea to filter or rank a comment thread by the number of favorites, for instance, because it would obstruct the flow of the conversation and encourage people to try to compete to make the top of the list. Likewise, showing how many best answers a user has is iffy because it might make the assignment of best answers more acrimonious.

But the effects that such number-crunching has on the community is less pronounced in search, because the thing being ranked is a unique collection of disparate, mostly archived content being viewed by one person looking for something specific -- not an ongoing discussion in one place viewable to everybody.

In fact, emphasizing favorites in search would be useful, since they often mark the content deemed by the community to be the most significant, insightful, clever, or helpful. They'd really help in searching AskMe, for example, by highlighting best answers as chosen by the community in cases where the asker didn't choose one. It would also return the questions that generated the best responses (like the super-helpful or Big Idea questions that typically make the podcast). And it would help in searching FPPs by identifying high-quality posts that impressed the most people.

As an example of this in action, consider someone interested in learning more about Abercrombie & Fitch. Sorting by date isn't very useful for this kind of browsing, as the results would constantly change over time. And sorting by "relevance" frankly doesn't give very relevant results.

But if there was an option to sort by favorites, the top result would likely be this stellar comment giving a revealing insider's look at the company. It was all about Abercrombie, received 150+ favorites, and made the sidebar, but when a search for "abercrombie" is sorted by relevance it is buried on page 17. Another example: Astro Zombie's amazing Pixar story. One of the most favorited comments ever, certainly one of the best Pixar-related ones, but it doesn't show up on the first few pages of a relevancy search for the company. I'm sure there are plenty of other cases where sorting by favorite count would pull up excellent content that a relevance search ignores. I, for one, would be fascinated in seeing the most popular comments on random topics (Red Sox, Apollo 11, Australia...)

So, thoughts? Would this work as a sorting option?

posted by Rhaomi to Feature Requests at 5:05 PM (32 comments total)

I can totally understand this never ever happening, but I would use it all the time.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 5:14 PM on July 6, 2009

(FYI, this request has been made in comments twice before, but both slipped under the radar and never saw any discussion.)
posted by Rhaomi at 5:38 PM on July 6, 2009

I like this pony. Sometimes I'm looking for a comment that I read a long time ago, that I know received a lot of favourites, and that I may or may not have favourited myself. But if I only remember a few keywords or if I misremember the phrasing of a particular sentence, it can be absolutely hell trying to hunt it down.
posted by Phire at 6:26 PM on July 6, 2009

Wow—that's a good argument for something that I (and I'm sure hundreds of other people) clicked in to argue against.

I think it's a great idea.
posted by koeselitz at 7:14 PM on July 6, 2009 [1 favorite]

nd it would help in searching FPPs by identifying high-quality posts that impressed the most people snarky jokes that enough people found momentarily hilarious.

Favorites are not a good indicator of quality.

There are rare outliers, in the 100+ favorite range, but they tend to make the sidebar (or in fact have that many favorites because they made the sidebar.)
posted by ook at 7:24 PM on July 6, 2009

I, like, koeseelitz, came in here to say "my god, no, that should never be, it is blasphemy unto the heavens!" but you know what? Searching for Pixar should get me Astro Zombie's story, dammit! Yeah! I find myself converted to this-pony-ism. We meet Thursday evenings in the First Unitarian Church on Chestnut Street, big thanks to them for letting us borrow their worship space, please throw out your cupcake wrappers before you leave.
posted by Tomorrowful at 7:27 PM on July 6, 2009

ook: There are rare outliers, in the 100+ favorite range, but they tend to make the sidebar (or in fact have that many favorites because they made the sidebar.)

So, maybe you have a search function I don't, but is it really possible to sort search results based on whether they appeared in the sidebar? Or any reason at all that you'd be likely to see something you're looking for in the sidebar? What about something that was posted five years ago?

I disagree. There's no bad effect I can think of in offering the option to sort results by favorites; it's not like we're letting people browse the entire site looking at nothing but favorites.
posted by koeselitz at 7:29 PM on July 6, 2009

I am in favor of this.
posted by dunkadunc at 8:35 PM on July 6, 2009

I too can totally understand this never ever happening, but I too would use it all the time.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:37 PM on July 6, 2009

I like this idea too.
posted by rtha at 8:55 PM on July 6, 2009

This would be really, really useful.

Also, it's obvious what it means, but does "pony" stand for something or what?
posted by Autarky at 9:12 PM on July 6, 2009

Nope.
posted by team lowkey at 9:18 PM on July 6, 2009

I suppose that just proved that searching by number of favorites may not get you the most valuable comment.
posted by Autarky at 9:25 PM on July 6, 2009

Ninthed!
posted by brain_drain at 9:30 PM on July 6, 2009

Autarky, it's true that older content hasn't been "tagged" with favorites as heavily as new stuff, and this would be a flaw in the concept. But the current search engine doesn't find the original "pony" comment either. And this blind spot doesn't take away from a favorites-sorting-engine's ability to evaluate new content. The perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good, right?

Besides, as time goes on the amount of new, favorited content will only grow, and older content will receive favorites from users in a slow but steady trickle. I know several cases where old comments have been dredged up in MeTa and have received the same number of favorites that they would have gotten if the [+] had been around then. And as this happens old, notable content will place more highly in a favorites-based search.

(The "pony" comment seems like an odd outlier, btw -- most of the time these "famous" or "canonical" comments get a ton of favorites-in-retrospect from people who cite them in the present.)

[Bonus bug report: I noticed on that search page I linked to, going to the second page displays the same set of results as the first, despite calling them "21 - 40 of 1657" and labeling it page 2. Can anybody else replicate? It did the same thing on the "pixar" search page (with the repetition starting on page 3, oddly enough) but not the "abercrombie" one. I think it's based on whether the search is restricted to a subsite -- subsite searches reload the same results page after page, while an "All Sites" search allows you to view all the pages.]
posted by Rhaomi at 9:47 PM on July 6, 2009

Bonus bug report

Yeah, looks like it's specifically failing to page the displayed result set when sorting by relevance and searching by subsite. I'll make sure pb sees it.

As for the general suggestion, I'm personally neither here nor there on it. I wouldn't mind seeing it as an additional search-sort function if it's not a pain in the ass to implement, but that's a question for the other guys to answer, and I don't know if Matt or Jessamyn feels particularly strongly about the feature request itself one way or the other.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:18 PM on July 6, 2009

Or any reason at all that you'd be likely to see something you're looking for in the sidebar?

My point was less about the sidebar and more about the "favorites not being an indicator of quality" thing. (The only reason I brought up the sidebar is because by contrast it is a good indicator; it has a browsable archive, and while it's true it doesn't cover the entire history of the site, neither do favorites.)

While searching by number of favorites would help you find those rare outliers, I suspect most of the remaining results would be not all that useful for anything other than "ooh, look at all the favorites!" ego boosts.

I haven't exactly run tests or anything, though, so I could be wrong. It's been known to happen.
posted by ook at 6:06 AM on July 7, 2009

Favorites are not a good indicator of quality.

I am so sick of this argument. It's laughably bad and right up there with "But MeFi isn't a popularity contest!"

You know what, it doesn't matter that it's not an indicator of quality. It has nothing to do with popularity. People like to see what other people like. That's it. That's why we have year-end lists, top 40 music charts, Rotten Tomatoes, MetaCritic, and countless other ways for people to see what's popular. MeFi adding such a pony does not imply endorsement of said favorites--it just provides a way to better access them.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 6:07 AM on July 7, 2009

Like koeseelitz and Tomorrowful, I came with scorn in my heart but saw the light. Matt, vouchsafe us this pony!
posted by languagehat at 6:14 AM on July 7, 2009

You know what, the other guy?

You're right.

(Assuming you meant "it has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with popularity" up there.) Which, you are correct, is a reasonable thing to search for.

The scorn in my heart has been lifted! It is now hovering somewhere in my trachea! I withdraw my objection!
posted by ook at 6:25 AM on July 7, 2009

but does "pony" stand for something or what?

Prostitutes Of New York.

We're a salacious bunch here, but we're also picky, and tend to request the services of only the very best.
posted by quin at 8:17 AM on July 7, 2009

Nthing support of this, and great job on the argument, Rhaomi, you completely won me over too!
posted by misha at 8:47 AM on July 7, 2009

I think it would possibly cause people to ignore those FPP's that may be excellent, but were posted before the favoriting system was put in place.

Then again, I don't have to ride your pony!
posted by not_on_display at 9:12 AM on July 7, 2009

Paging filtered subsite relevancy results should be working properly now, thanks for the bug report Rhaomi.

I don't have any strong objections to this idea, and it's something we can put together technically. On the interface side we'd have to squeeze in a sorting option link next to "Sort by relevance Sorted by date" and the space is a bit crowded. But a change to "Sort: relevance date favorites" could take care of that.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:28 AM on July 7, 2009

In fact, emphasizing favorites in search would be useful, since they often mark the content deemed by the community to be the most significant, insightful, clever, or helpful.

They also often mark comments that are extremely long, extremely short, unusually impassioned, or politically charged.
posted by Jaltcoh at 9:35 AM on July 7, 2009

That's true, not_on_display, but again, I don't see how the existing search options handle this any better. The date search by nature buries older posts, and the relevancy search more or less offers a random assortment of content that may or may not be of interest (at least when searching for broad topics). As long as favorites-sorting is kept merely an option and not the default, I can't see older material being overlooked much more than it already is.

On preview: Thanks for the quick fix, pb. And it's good to know that this idea is at least technically possible.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:36 AM on July 7, 2009

...the relevancy search more or less offers a random assortment of content...

Yeah, it often feels that way to me too. But the results are based on the SQL Server Full Text Search engine's best guess at matching the search terms. It uses frequency, length, and term proximity to determine what is relevant. So if you're looking for the term "baseball" and someone has the short comment: "baseball! baseball! baseball!" that's going to look extremely relevant to SQL Server, and it's going to put it at the top of the results. If you're after a treatise on the existential meaning of baseball that comment is going to look random.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:12 AM on July 7, 2009

I am also in favor of the favorites sorting pony. It will go well with the 76 My Little Ponies that my sister and I accumulated in the late 80s and early 90s.
posted by ocherdraco at 12:47 PM on July 7, 2009

I think it would possibly cause people to ignore those FPP's that may be excellent, but were posted before the favoriting system was put in place.

I think the fact that team lowkey's link now has favorites, kind of renders that point moot. Favorites are ongoing and living, they will adapt as needed.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 1:29 PM on July 7, 2009

Baseball baseball baseball! Ack!
posted by SpiffyRob at 1:42 PM on July 7, 2009

Late to the party, but I likes.
posted by furious at 6:18 AM on July 8, 2009

I too support this. The issue just came up, just now and this sort feature would've been great for a car buying question!
posted by Science! at 5:04 PM on July 19, 2009