Threads Need a "Rising" and "Controversial" sort option.

GuiltyGecko·Aug 10, 2014·6 votes·1,764 views

After reading the Iron Stylus thread, I realized that a rising and controversial would be very useful for sorting. With the two current options, not much of the "best" content rises to the top in large threads. If you look at the thread, and then look at the posted date of the top comments, almost ALL of the best comments are from 4 days ago. There's also some from 3 days ago. (Thread was created 4 days ago.) This means that in order to get at the top of the list, you need to get in on the discussion early.

There needs to be a rising option, so people can see what content is starting to become popular and they can vote accordingly. There also needs to be a controversial tab. Riot now, the only comments that rise to the top are the up voted ones. Comments that are getting a lot of up votes and down votes need a tab because they are hot topics that are being debated. Because they are getting a lot of votes in both directions, they aren't going to get to the top as fast, or as much as comments that are just strictly up voted.

If these boards are a reddit style beta, then they should have these reddit style tabs because it helps people find the content they are looking for instead of just "I posted first, so my comment gets to rise."

Edit: Also, I am saying that post in threads should have these options, or an option similar to the "hot" sort option that the boards have for threads.

2 Comments

ploki122Aug 10, 20141 votes

I'm fairly confident that it actually wouldn't be much of a fix to the problem. As IronStylus said himself (at least I believe it's him who commented on that), that post was linked through social media (twitter/facebook) and 3rd party websites like S@20 and reignofgaming. This created a major amount on posts in a very short span of time.

So, what happened is that nearly no one really browsed by "recent", and those that did had a shitton of garbage posts to filter through. In the BBS style of things, it would've been even worse, since the first 10-30 posts would've been seen by most, no matter their quality, and every posts 30-2k would've probably be seen by very few people since only those that browsed from the end near the time that person posted would've gotten to the post.

Now, if we add Rising, in most threads Rising will be the same as Best. The Best posts will will be the same since the majority of people browse by Best (since it's default), and the Rising posts will only really differentiate when the thread is stale. In the case the thread becomes stale, the maount of views it gets sharply decreases, and so does the voting, meaning that unless you make the time factor account for a lot, Best and Rising will still stays relatively the same. If you make time account for a lot, it means that Rising loses a lot of its "quality" value, and replaces that by "novelty". So you'll basically be able to skim through the best half of the New, but still won't see the 2-3 days old good posts (which is the problem at hand).

As for Controvertial, I would guess you either mean ordered by total downvotes (so +1200 and -600 is +600, but still is more controvertial than a 1:5), or by filtering by "Downvote:Upvote ratio is as close to 1:1 as possible", which ends up floosing everythign with terrible new opinions (intial 1 upvote and 1 downvote being added to it). You can factor in time, but then you lose part of the controversy to make it only show older posts. The question at that point truly is "What does controversial adds?".

GuiltyGeckoAug 11, 20141 votes

I am not really concerned with the volume of post. What I am trying to get at, is that in ANY large thread (more and more will show up in the future as linking Rioter threads is a common occurrence), will function in a similar way to the iron stylus thread.

Also, not sure if you're familiar with how Reddit's "rising" tab works, but it doesn't show the things that are already popular. It shows things that are getting a lot of attention right now. So post/threads that get a lot of votes in a short amount of time, that AREN'T already popular would be on this page. For example, if a thread is already on the front page with 100+ votes, it won't be in rising even if it gets plus 10 votes in the next 5 minutes. However, if a NEW thread gets +10 votes in a similar amount of time, it gets to show on rising. People visiting the rising tab know that whatever post or threads are shown on it are new and interesting.

The controversial isn't about having a direct one to one ratio or anything like that. It just takes into account the "activity" of a post or thread instead of mostly upvotes. The system already does this to an extent, but it needs it's own separate tab so that people can find controversial topics more easily. As for your "what does it add" question, users are able to find threads on subjects that have divided parties arguing on a hot topic. Maybe the OP creates a thread about a new reworked champion and loves it, but half the community hates it and half doesn't. The thread may have +10, or even -10 votes, but the total vote count may be like 50. This is because people are voting, but it's a tug of war. A controversial tab shows threads/post that are being argued over allowing users to find places to voice opinions.