The pony prances through the meadow, sparkling July 29, 2013 7:09 AM   Subscribe

Would it be possible to stick a drop-down filter on the "Popular" page to filter posts by subsite?

Sometimes if I haven't read Mefi in a couple days, I like to check out the "popular" page to see if I've missed anything awesome. (I do most of my MeFi browsing on mobile.) A lot of the time, though, about half the page is hardy perennial AskMe posts of the Give Me 500 Different Recipes For Chickpeas or I Would Like To Read New Nifty Things type. Some of those can be fun and informative, and I like reading them, too, but they always seem to generate scads of bookmark-for-later faves. Which means there's a lot less room for "cool stuff on the web" posts to make it to the Popular page.

So I was wondering if there could be a drop down like we have on the "activity" page of profiles, that lets you filter by site. I feel like it'd be a lot easier to uncover cool stuff you'd missed over the past several days, whichever color one prefers reading.
posted by Diablevert to Feature Requests at 7:09 AM (14 comments total)

A filter isn't entirely necessary since we have front page view options to list by favorites. Start here and you can set it to 7 or 30 days to get an overview of good MeFi posts you might have missed.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:14 AM on July 29, 2013


How does one get to that page in mobile view, Matt? Now that you've linked to it I remember seeing it before, but I'm not sure where.
posted by Diablevert at 7:30 AM on July 29, 2013


We don't have a link to it in the mobile view, but you can bookmark the URL. The Mobile View is a stripped down version of the site—not a perfect mirror. But you can always switch to the Standard View by clicking the link at the bottom of every page.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:02 AM on July 29, 2013


oh, and the Standard View has this linked from the front page. Toward the top of the front page on the right is a series of tabs. These tabs show different filtered views of that subsite. This view is the "Popular Favorites" tab.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:16 AM on July 29, 2013


Well, I suppose everyone feels like this when they see their pony shot, and if I'm the only person who thinks it's a good idea then I guess you might as well send in the boys from the glue factory.

I will say, I can appreciate not wanting to clutter up the mobile view. But the feature as it exists on the activity page seems pretty unobtrusive to me. Like I said, most of the time I'm browsing the site I'm commuting or standing in line or something, so having to fiddle with the standard view is a pain. I'll try bookmarking it, but I have to confess I don't really use bookmarks for anything on my phone, so knowing myself I'll likely forget I've done that.
posted by Diablevert at 9:37 AM on July 29, 2013 [2 favorites]


Unfortunately we have to be fairly ruthless about what we include in the mobile view because space is so limited on small screens. If you want a constant reminder the page exists you could always add it to your phone's home screen since you don't use bookmarks.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:54 AM on July 29, 2013


Whenever someone asks for a pony, they spin a wheel that is 99% "no" and 1% "maybe".
posted by double block and bleed at 11:26 AM on July 29, 2013


That's true in real life though.
posted by cashman at 12:08 PM on July 29, 2013


That's why it's a pony request, n'est-ce pas?
posted by maryr at 12:49 PM on July 29, 2013


MetaTalk: The pony prances through the meadow, sparkling
posted by John Cohen at 4:52 PM on July 29, 2013


I have a pea under my smartphone.
posted by y2karl at 10:41 PM on July 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


How frequently?
posted by de at 11:04 PM on July 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


Let's not get deveptive (you heard it here first) or devingenuous. You don't have to clutter the entire mobile site to include the original request. It would improve the experience of that specific page for. mobile. users. But I understand, I just felt like I was witnessing something I've seen in too many meetings where "I want x" goes through all of these ringers and before you know it we're talking about usability negative workarounds.
posted by lordaych at 12:09 PM on July 30, 2013


I don't think that's a fair characterization. I wasn't being deceptive or disingenuous. There's a difference between looking at an isolated feature and looking at the entire spectrum of features that people want to have added. This isn't the only link people want to have added to the mobile site. So we have to find a balance.

We feel that we're currently at or over the line of a useful menu on the mobile site. We're discussing ways to have more links at people's fingertips without making them scroll and scroll. That will require a larger change that we haven't settled on yet. Once that happens, we can revisit a number of requests like this one, and perhaps this link will be included. But we don't want to add more links piecemeal. Especially when options within the phone such as bookmarks can work if someone really needs to get to that page quickly. And switching to the Standard view is also an option. I don't see it as usability-negative if you're familiar with the standard view and know where things are.
posted by pb (staff) at 1:16 PM on July 30, 2013


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