Most/Least Active Tab?

September 23, 2015 8:23 AM

We have a tab to sort Popular Posts, based on favorites. I would find use in a Most & Least Active tab (each side of that for different reasons), based on number of comments.
posted by zyxwvut to Feature Requests at 8:23 AM (12 comments total)

You mean add a new tab or two to the header of the site, "Least/Most Active" up there alongside "Popular Posts"? My gut reaction is I don't see that happening unless there's some really clear broad utility here.

That aside, can you explain a little more the specific functionality you have in mind? A "most active" metric makes a basic kind of sense to me—more comments per unit time = more active,—though what that unit of time is (last hour? last day?), or whether it's weighted over a single interval or multiple are important questions to figure out what you want to look at. (And just in terms of rough utility, the Recent Comments link in the same area as Popular Posts is a good tool for seeing what discussions have been active in terms of most recent commenting activity.)

The Least Active bit doesn't make sense to me though: that's going to be a rough tie for a whole bunch of threads at any given time, since distribution of activity is always likely to be uneven with a few threads fairly busy and the rest less so. The least busy threads will be...threads where nothing is happening, which is all the threads where there isn't stuff happening. Was there some more specific idea you had that you can talk about?
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:31 AM on September 23, 2015

Is your goal to find 'hot' threads (ones with a lot of activity at any given time, implying that there is a lot of active conversation)?
posted by softlord at 9:40 AM on September 23, 2015

"Least Active", for example, would help you to find the post I made on Monday.
posted by Wolfdog at 10:02 AM on September 23, 2015 [9 favorites]

I was thinking of such a tab, cortex. I would picture it sortable-ish by the same day/week/etc convention.

If sorted by Least Active I might find an interesting, obscure hobby, or small news story, or Ask question that doesn't have any answers which I could contribute to, etc. which I might otherwise not see.

If sorted by Most Active I could see what MeFites find really worth talking about, even if its tags didn't catch my attention.
posted by zyxwvut at 10:11 AM on September 23, 2015

Ask has the Unanswered tab which might be what you're looking for there at least.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:20 AM on September 23, 2015

Recent Comments sorta functions that way, in that it brings active threads to the fore.
posted by Kattullus at 10:55 AM on September 23, 2015

The least active post is post 1,678.

Nobody knows why.
posted by gauche at 11:26 AM on September 23, 2015

I thought this was the least active post.
posted by Melismata at 12:03 PM on September 23, 2015 [8 favorites]

The least active post is post 1,678.

Nobody knows why.

Linkrot?
posted by nubs at 7:40 PM on September 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

I find the way people use Metafilter to be fascinating. I've never once looked at a tag or an activity tab or the sidebar (at least, on purpose). I just click open and read every single post, from the top until I hit where I left off the day before, unless it's about animals, Android phones, computer languages I've never heard of or claims to include links to photos of insects. But now I'm thinking that if my time were short, I might like such a tab, if only to read the poor, unloved posts getting the least attention from everyone else.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 8:13 PM on September 23, 2015

I find the way people use Metafilter to be fascinating.

So do I. I have a linear mind, and hearing tell of other folks jumping around the site helter-skelter seems to me like missing out on the majesty of the posts rolling down the blue until they fall off the bottom. If I were the only one reading, they'd never be seen again.

What I do enjoy is jumping out of a thread to click on a poster's name, to see what I can learn about them, or at least what they've chosen to share, because they've managed to write something that piqued my interest or curiosity.

To my great woe, I often find a naked profile page.

I will occasionally glance through the sidebar, to see what my Internet Acquaintances^[TM] are up to.

Sometimes I'll even look through the 1,2,3,4,5 years ago pages, and be shocked at how long ago that post was. I swear that was just last week, really!

I can honestly say I've never used the Popular Posts thingie. On the other hand, a Flagged counter....
posted by pjern at 9:56 PM on September 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

I find the way people use Metafilter to be frequently incorrect.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:31 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]