Something wrong with the popular posts code?

December 18, 2009 9:02 AM

How did this post from September end up in popular posts for the past 7 days?
posted by empath to MetaFilter-Related at 9:02 AM (24 comments total)

This question linked to it yesterday.
posted by enn at 9:03 AM on December 18, 2009

Yup.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:04 AM on December 18, 2009

The most popular x for the last 7 days includes any content from anywhere on metafilter, but that was heavily favorited in the last 7 days. So sometimes 2 year old MetaTalk posts or comments show up on that page when someone finds it and everyone loves it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:08 AM on December 18, 2009

How does the counting work? If everyone had previously favourited it, then unfavourited it, then just found it again and favourited it, would it show up?

If I get a couple hundred people to favourite something over six months and then have them mass unfavourite it at the same time and re-favourite it, would it show up on popular favourites?

If I favourite and unfavourite something a few hundred times would it make it to popular favourites?

Asking here instead of trying it myself so I don't get in trouble.
posted by ODiV at 9:23 AM on December 18, 2009

How did this post from September 2007

It's that old, and that good.
posted by Deathalicious at 9:39 AM on December 18, 2009

If you look at the favorited page for any post, you can see that each "favorited" event has a date attached. If you unfavorite a post, your event will be deleted. If you re-favorite it, a new event with today's date will be created.

I assume (based on having implemented similar things) that the "popular favorites" list is based on a simple query from the same data shown on the favorited page. This means that 100 people un-favoriting and re-favoriting a post will make it show up in the list (because it now has 100 recent "events" in the favorited table), but one person repeatedly doing it 100 times will not (because it still ends up with just one recent "event" recorded).
posted by mbrubeck at 9:40 AM on December 18, 2009

Strange, I was sure I had favourited. That post cost me a lot of money, and I still haven't managed to read all the books.
posted by Elmore at 10:11 AM on December 18, 2009

*it*

I assume that must be the post with the highest number of favourites, are there any higher or many close?
posted by Elmore at 10:13 AM on December 18, 2009

Wait, this post was from 2007? I feel like it couldn't have been more than a year... what the hell MetaFilter, what did you do with all my time?
posted by Mister Cheese at 10:15 AM on December 18, 2009 [5 favorites]

Seems like an evergreen question.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:16 AM on December 18, 2009

that's a hell of a fav to post ratio right there.
posted by edgeways at 10:28 AM on December 18, 2009

posted by limon

Are we cool with people having such filthy language as a username? Honestly...
posted by ODiV at 10:31 AM on December 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

Metafilter Reserve: Fine Aged Posts.
posted by boo_radley at 10:33 AM on December 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter Reserve: The Gold
posted by ODiV at 10:36 AM on December 18, 2009

That reminds me, and I think this came up before, but I can't find it: is there a way to search for links to your posts/comments on site? Every now and then I'll see a few people favorite something of mine that's been dead content for months or even years, and I always wonder how they found it.
posted by middleclasstool at 11:44 AM on December 18, 2009

I search for the post number, and look at the results that say "keyword in HTML."
posted by ocherdraco at 11:51 AM on December 18, 2009

What she said. You can search directly for comment number too, but it seems like collateral favorites on comments from post being linked and people reading through it is a lot more common a situation than an individual comment being linked directly, at least for comments that aren't already somehow on the radar.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:26 PM on December 18, 2009

MetaFilter Grand Cru.
posted by fixedgear at 12:46 PM on December 18, 2009

Holy... over 1200 favorites! That has to be the top favorited post of all time on mefi. Not even the copyright-infringement-fest had that many.

On preview, I rediscovered these links. Interesting how thoroughly that question crushes all other contenders.

Do we have similar pages for comments? Probably not.
posted by synaesthetichaze at 3:39 PM on December 18, 2009

Can we reopen that thead?
posted by jabberjaw at 3:54 PM on December 18, 2009

Yeah, as the poster of the #3 most popular Ask Mefi thread, I look at that popular favorites page every once in a while out of curiosity. The "life-altering" thread came out in 2005, favorites didn't even exist. I sometimes wonder what the number would be if they had.
posted by jeremias at 7:26 PM on December 18, 2009

Hey jeremias, did you end up "applying", if that's the right word, any of the insight or perspective from that life-altering thread to the upbringing of your own child? Which IIRC was the motivation for it.....

In other words: UPDATE!!
posted by Rumple at 10:16 AM on December 19, 2009

Hey Rumple. I did end up applying insight, although perhaps not in an obvious or straight-forward way and perhaps not immediately. I didn't figure out a way to make life any less hectic, but for me the thread represented a celebration of both individuality and community. My family's life was in a major transition: new house, two new jobs, new school and friends for our child, and so I always tried to make sure the priorities felt right.

My son is doing great, he's in third grade, likes to read and his favorite sport is wrestling for some reason (that was not in my playbook as a kid!) My wife and I worked very hard to settle in a town where we felt we would stay for his formative years. I don't know how much the thread contributed to that directly, but every year I go back and read those comments from beginning to end and always come away with a renewed commitment to help my son become a independent thinker who can stand up for himself when he needs to.

That's how I would characterize (idealize?) the Mefi community in that thread.
posted by jeremias at 7:30 PM on December 19, 2009 [1 favorite]

middleclasstool: "Every now and then I'll see a few people favorite something of mine that's been dead content for months or even years, and I always wonder how they found it."

ocherdraco: "I search for the post number, and look at the results that say "keyword in HTML.""

I wrote a Greasemonkey script for this a while back that still works.
posted by Plutor at 7:36 AM on December 21, 2009