User preference portal page?
 

While I am still around these few weeks I started thinking about how things can be different around here agian ;), and this idea came to my head. I want to see what folks think. (And no there is no need to say things are good enough theres no need to change it :p , I just want to have a little fun with new ideas. :D )

What do you think about making the portal page into something like Digg.com or Reddit.com where user interest/preference determines how high up the portal page a topic is?

Something like Reddit.com where you can vote up or down by clicking an arrow next to a topic. Then the popular, interesting thread are going to stay high up the list while some of the less interesting, more controversal threads might get voted down because people are tired of fighting in some of them.

Of course, we are going to risk some threads becoming high up the list because they are mindlessly fun ones. They may not be so interesting to some of us but are so popular among the students that lots of them end up get voted upward (like a lot of the rumor mill threads). I suppose I can deal with that if that's what the community likes :rolleyes:.

The real question we need to ask is how is that going to be be different by a portal page that shows the latest replies.

Thoughts? Ideas?

Re: User preference portal page?
 

I'm not sure about using it for the portal, but a This Thread Rules button would be an interesting thing to track on another page. It'd be great for digging (no pun intended) up some of those old great threads we seem to stumble across every now and again.

Re: User preference portal page?
 

I love this idea, but lets remember to be nice to our webmaster. Do you think such a feature would make More or Less work for the moderators though? And should it only apply to certain sub-forums, to be nice to people who have questions places like the technical forum should be off-limits to voting. Overall though, great concept.

ps - I'd vote for this thread if I could.

Re: User preference portal page?
 

Against what Ken has asked for, I like the way it works now. :p

It might be good to rate the threads with stars for fun (or dots, yea dots). The way it is now it makes it easy for me as a mod to see new posts and keep track of changes. Must be off season and Ken is bored. Ken build yourself a Vex bot. :D

Re: User preference portal page?
 

There's already a thread-rating system, you know. Look at the orange bar directly above the first post of a thread. There's the "Rate Thread" button. You can sort by rating in the forum list pages.

As for sorting the portal by popularity, no, I don't like it at all. I'd much rather know what's changed, than what's popular. Otherwise, the stupid count to 10¹⁰⁰ thread and the Rumor Mill threads about which water game we'll play next year will constantly be on top.

Re: User preference portal page?
 

I never was a fan of portals, but its OK the way it is. No reason to make the webmaster work more. For those who didnt know you can configure the recent threads stuff. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/recentposts.php?

Re: User preference portal page?
 

YOU go build yourself a Vex bot :p :rolleyes:. I am going to build myself a lego bot.


Ok, lets get back to the topic. Yes, it's going to be more work, yes, there are down side to it, but I have to admit, I've became quite a fan of reddit and it seems to work pretty well. The more important issues tends to surface toward the top, and every once in a while some of the silly ones come to the top too.

I suppose how you program it to balance between new threads and popular ones is how you would make it work. And I am not oppose to having the regular portal page. This would be another page just for fun.

In the realm where this idea is absolutely not actually going to get worked on, I support it 10,000% because, well I like something fun now and pages like reddit and digg are quite popular now a days without losing the important topics. (see two examples right now in the two posts above me)

In the realm where it might actually be considered, I don't think this will ever happen because too many people want different things and they will never agree.


So, let's just stick to the first realm and have some fun. Would you have one with up and down arrows like reddit, or more like digg.com... Or how else would you decide what the user preference is?