The foods on my plate canNOT touch one another. May 17, 2008 3:36 PM   Subscribe

MOST POPULAR PONY!! I want more functionality for sorting and filtering through the Popular Favorites. I'd like to have a box that allows me to choose: "Most Popular [posts, comments] on [Green, Blue, Black, Grey,...] in the past [n] days." (e.g. so that I could see all the popular AskMe posts side by side, over a longer timeframe, and without them being mixed in with the FPP's; or so that I could view the most listened to tracks on MeMu; or, or, or.)
posted by not_on_display to Feature Requests at 3:36 PM (20 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

* If the dreamed-of time-range functionality allowed filtering "between [date x] and [date y]," it could lead to some interesting results.

** Any other ways to filter through posts/comments aside from using number of favorites as the standard? Is there a "number of hits/click-throughs" type of statistic that can be tapped?

Thanks -- MeFi rocks as is, but you never git if you don't aks.
posted by not_on_display at 3:43 PM on May 17, 2008


The usual answer to this from the mods is, "we don't want to turn Metafilter into Digg. The 'favorites' mechanism isn't a way of voting."
posted by Class Goat at 5:33 PM on May 17, 2008 [1 favorite]


Class Goat: That doesn't really apply here. The Popular Favorites page already exists; all not_on_display is asking for is a more customizable, less scrolly-linky interface.

It is a good, sound idea and I hope it is implemented.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:19 PM on May 17, 2008


But you still have trouble with someone using a Star Wars gun with a GI Joe guy, right?
posted by Effigy2000 at 8:50 PM on May 17, 2008


It would be a nice way to sift through the favorites.
posted by pedmands at 9:26 PM on May 17, 2008


Slashdot is not a universal discussion model. MetaFilter is not-well served by it.
posted by secret about box at 10:01 PM on May 17, 2008


Just a way for end users to filter favorites across the site as they see fit for their viewing pleasure.

My opinion is that this type of implementation only reinforces the fact that favorites are some sort of voting system, instead of a personal bookmarking system, which would cause more and more people to view it as such. This has been said a million times before, but if something was so awesome that it should be called attention to, there should be a way without creating a public spectacle (the way the current system does now, by highlighting in bright gold the number of people who favorited).

Isn't there a page where people can view "fantastic comment" flagged comments? Note I said flagged, and not favorited.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 10:04 PM on May 17, 2008


It would be a nice way to sift through the favorites.

You can't be bothered to read all of a discussion here? Is this really a problem? This site's mortar is the discussion it generates; distilling it to what some people have flagged (regardless of reason--not everyone here uses the favourites system for "this is the best of the thread") does a disservice to those participating in the site. We don't have a problem with trolls and stupid posts like Slashdot and Digg, so why should we filter like they do?

Adding every feature of every other discussion site just makes the unique environment of MetaFilter less so.
posted by secret about box at 10:07 PM on May 17, 2008


Wait wait wait. This is about the favourites page.

Okay, just fucking ignore me. Mods, 86 my presence in this thread.
posted by secret about box at 10:09 PM on May 17, 2008


^SeizeTheDay: ...this type of implementation only reinforces the fact that favorites are some sort of voting system, instead of a personal bookmarking system...

Favoriting on this site seems to me (in my limited scope) to fall into two intersecting circles in the great Venn Diagram:
- those who favorite for future reference
- those who favorite as a pat on the back (or a "kick me" sign)

It struck me, while thinking of "voting," that I don't perceive favorites as MeFites casting a vote. Maybe because either
- that social aspect of MeFi goes under my radar because I don't use it quite like that; how can you choose amongst the vastness and the diversity, so much that you can wander around MeFiville for a long time and still not have seen it all, have clicked on all the posts' links, have read all of the comments...
- A vote for what? I don't get the idea that anyone's running for any sort of office or title (except maybe "High Arbiter For The Moment of All That Is Really Important or Good Entertainment").

And since it's fun to peek at what other individual users' favorites are, I'd like to see what single posts/comments large amounts of MeFites gave the most pats on the back or bookmarks to. Where MeFi's serendipitous qualities come in: a lot of the time the ones up on the Pop Favs list are the same posts I would normally skip over, and a lot of the time there's a reason it got so many favorites. I think the ability to choose to sort by these criteria and to mine a little would be a nice little add-on.

I'd favorite it!
posted by not_on_display at 11:03 PM on May 17, 2008 [1 favorite]


METAFILTER IS NOT A POPULARITY CONTEST anymore, because ThePinkSuperhero already won.
posted by [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] at 11:09 PM on May 17, 2008 [1 favorite]


I demand pivot tables.
posted by 31d1 at 12:11 AM on May 18, 2008


(1) Everything depends.
(2) Nothing is always.
(3) Everything is sometimes.

posted by dawson at 12:47 AM on May 18, 2008


Tangential, but my idea for a new statistic would be the number of favorites in an FPP - in other words, all of the favorites among all the comments on the FPP. Because I want a post that generates great discussion, not one that people think is "cool". Or both together, anyway.
posted by msalt at 1:28 AM on May 18, 2008


WELCOME TO THE SOCIAL!!!
posted by blue_beetle at 6:04 AM on May 18, 2008


I think I never thought about this because I usually check the popular pages on each of the individual sites -- well AskMe and MeFi -- which do have some basic date limiters. So for example

- AskMe popular (24 hrs)
- MeFi popular (24 hrs)
- Music popular
- Projects popular (top ten per month)

And then MeFi/AskMe are limitable by week, month or forever. Music is delimitable by week, month or "by my contacts" I think the main thing we didn't especially want ot do is pull out favorited comments any more than we already have but maybe having a popular page where you can limit by site and date is not a bad idea and could combine some of these pages under a set of tabs.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:06 AM on May 18, 2008


I'd favorite it!

Heh.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:03 AM on May 18, 2008


Effigy2000 : But you still have trouble with someone using a Star Wars gun with a GI Joe guy, right?

Hmm, this is a difficult question, I mean, based on the cartoon, both the GI Joe weapons and the Star Wars blasters fire some kind of directed energy, but while the GI Joe weapons are fully automatic, the Star Wars blasters seem to be slightly more accurate. So it wouldn't turn any battle too one sided to have the one introduced into the combat theater of the other.

Also, is this a parallel universe situation? I mean, I could pretty easily construct a scenario where a couple of GI Joe figures stumble on some ancient technology that allows them to open a rift to a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. This would be a plausible way for them to gain access to the Star Wars weaponry. Though in the interest of fairness, I'd make sure that the Joes only had access to the Empire's stockpiles. A Stormtrooper carbine would be a fairly equatable trade from a GI Joe gun. But no Jedi stuff. Seeing a Joe with a lightsaber? Ridiculous.
posted by quin at 8:31 AM on May 19, 2008


No, quin, it's just time-travel wormhole, obviously.

I've always suspected the Rebel Alliance were agents of Cobra. Ter'rists is ter'rists, after all.

But dig this: Cobra Commander = Darth Vader! That faceless bastard is running both sides of the war!
posted by Sys Rq at 6:21 AM on May 20, 2008


Afterthought: how about being able to sort by number of comments?
posted by not_on_display at 9:38 PM on May 20, 2008


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