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Simon

Post relevance sorting: Should it be enabled?

Well, now that the initial upgrade to Community Server 2.1 beta 1 has been mostly completed, I'm turning my attention to a few outstanding issues and bugs. And I'm also considering turning on a powerful new feature called "Post relevance sorting." But before I do, I'd like some community feedback.

Post relevance sorting would sort news and member blog posts on the home page by relevance rather than just date. While it would put emphasis on newness, it would also account for popularity through such measurements as ratings, comments and views. All in all, it would arrange posts somewhat as they are on Digg, albeit, obviously, without the direct rating. (Learn more here.) 

I think that this could be very interesting, as hot posts could stay on the home page longer. But I'm a bit concerned about whether this will mean that new posts won't get enough attention, and whether it will confuse people when they first visit the site. So, feedback? Should we give it a shot?

Published Tuesday, July 18, 2006 3:52 PM by Simon

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EmbraceUnity wrote on July 18, 2006 11:49 PM

I think you should just limit the amount of news that makes it to the homepage in general, and leave the rest to the news section.

Any news that gets highly rated (4 or 5 stars) should automatically make it to the homepage.

Same with Blogs
 

Simon wrote on July 19, 2006 9:38 AM

I've enabled relevance sorting. The home page news and blogs are sorted by relevance. The News and Blogs index pages are sorted by date.

 

Mr. Farlops wrote on July 21, 2006 1:04 AM

If relevance sorting is now in place I have a few suggestions:

1) It is *critical* for visitors to easily find and open pages where the blogs and news are sorted chronologically.

If visitors can't find the new content, how can they rank the new content for relevence? If we can find the new content. The root page will become stale as old (but relevent) news and blog postings stay there for weeks on end.

2) The current ranking gadget is still slightly faulty and hard to use. I think this makes people less willing to rank things.

I find that if I click a ranking star, in Firefox in Linux, the mouse stubbornly still seems linked to it. As I move the mouse around to hit the submit button, the ranking star flips around to something I didn't intend.

The ranking star is also at the top of page, and thus easy to forget. The ranking star should be down at the bottom, after the form, near the submit button. That way people will remember to use it.

If people can't easily and accurately use the ranking star, they'll just ignore it and this destroys the point of relevence sorting.

Is there some easy way in CS to convert the ranking star back into radio buttons and to put it at the bottom of the comment form?

3) Relevancy sorting might confuse different subjects.

For example this post asking for comments on the relevancy ranking feature. Is it relevent? I'd argue it's very important in the subjects of maintaining and improving this site but is it relevent to transhumanism directly? No.

If people really like this feature, they might vote for it by ranking this post highly with the ranking star but, this then mixes this post in with other posts that are more directly revelent to transhumanism. I don't think this is what you intend, right?

4) Is it really relevancy sorting?

I mean, in truth, it's not really relevancy sorting. It's more like a kind of ranking of things that people favor for mysterious reasons. People casting votes for a post or comment could mean a lot of things, not merely relevency. I think Simon should keep this in mind.

Digg and Kuro5hin have ranking features, and these are useful, but as we've seen, they are not always accurate. I see a lot of inaccurate news and comments on digg and slash get promoted because popularity or favoritism.

I'm not dismissing the feature. I think it can be very useful to filter things. I'm just saying it's not perfect and big numbers don't always mean what you think they mean.

Aside from that, I say go ahead. Let's use this feature. I'll try to remind myself to use the ranking star from now on.
 

Simon wrote on July 21, 2006 12:49 PM

Mr. F,

Thanks for the detailed response. My response to you:

1) It is *critical* for visitors to easily find and open pages where the blogs and news are sorted chronologically.

They can, on the News index page and the Blog index page. (I think we may want to add some copy about this on the home page; in consideration.) Also note that nothing will stay there for weeks because of the way in which relevance is decided (see below).

2) The current ranking gadget is still slightly faulty and hard to use. I think this makes people less willing to rank things.

I use Firefox and haven't had any issues, although it's on Windows. As for moving the ranking utility, we can possibly add a second one after the main content body; in consideration. As for turning to radio buttons, I don't think it's easily doable (and possibly not desirable).

3) Relevancy sorting might confuse different subjects.

True, relevancy really means popularity, to a certain extent. Or, perhaps more accurately, relevance to a community. This post, for example, is probably relevant for regular users of BH.

4) Is it really relevancy sorting?

It's not direct relevancy ranking like Digg or Kuro5hin, but I think it does a pretty good job of raising the most interesting stuff to the home page. Here's the algorithm: (DateRank * DateScoreFactor) + (RatingsRank * RatingScoreFactor) + (ViewsRank * ViewScoreFactor) + (CommentsRank * CommentScoreFactor).

The XScoreFactor stuff can be altered in order to raise or lower the relative contribution of any one variable.

So, to sum up: Yes, there are some issues, but overall I think relevancy sorting is good. Let's keep an eye on things and constantly consider improvements.

 

Mr. Farlops wrote on July 21, 2006 5:05 PM

Simon,

Excellent! This might be a very useful feature. I like slash's and digg's way of filtering things, I think it might be very helpful here too. I just wanted to bring those matters to your attention.

I'll try to remind myself to use the ranking stars. And, if I'm careful, I can keep them from flipping round before I hit the submit button. I can deal.
 

reason wrote on July 23, 2006 4:12 PM

Based on the past couple of days, I'd say it needs some tempering with a date-based algorithm. If visitors see nothing new, they won't come back. I'd be inclined to go all-new all the time on most of the home page and keep a side panel for most popular with the last 30 days, with an obvious set of links to adjust the most popular time frame.
 

Simon wrote on July 24, 2006 9:24 AM

Post relevance sorting has been turned off, at least temporarily. As several people pointed out, the home page simply wasn't fresh enough, and lots of new content got buried. I attempted to increase the importance of date in the sorting algorithm, but this ultimately made a mishmash of things. As reason suggested, it might be best right now to have a panel displaying popular content. I'm adding this to a list of things to consider for future upgrades. I will also probably revisit post relevance sorting in the future--it might work better, for example, when the site is generating even more content.

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About Simon

I aim to understand, apply and develop science, technology and communications to achieve positive change. To this end, I am the owner and operator of Betterhumans, which I founded in 2002. I also work in interactive healthcare marketing, helping pharmaceutical and other healthcare organizations effectively use interactive technologies. Currently, I'm also working part-time on a masters degree at the University of Toronto in the history and philosophy of science and technology.

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