Tags vs. Forums -- The Showdown

OK, fox, I see, in trivia and games, 1 to 50 of 4,222 (or some similar number, I forget already, but page one was full, with opportunity for many more.)

I get almost that same view if I select "Week" under Trivia and Word Games.

On "All Time" I get 49 pages of "topic voted down (view)."

I didn't get the topic voted down stuff..
am in New Posts All Time

But wait, let me double check where I was.

Here's where I was - while checking tags on New Posts ----
http://able2know.org/tag/trivia_and_word_games/

it opened blank, and then gradually filled in. I scrolled up, (what? the scrolling seems to bring the print up) and found a page full of game threads, plus many more promised at pages below.

That was a semi-joke. I've voted down nearly all of the games on the first page of the "trivia and word games" tag.

Okay I solved my problem.....I thought "All time" selected on the home page new posts list would carry over to the individual tags....it didn't and once I manually reset those, I am now seeing all the tagged threads.

Still doesn't solve my problem in not being able to find a thread tagged differently than I would have tagged it, but I'll work something out for that too.

Thanks everybody.

OK, I think I know where the problem is.

The site remembers your last view for each tag.

If you are viewing Politics as All Time -> New Posts and you switch to Trivia and Word Games, the new view might be Week->Most Votes.

Edit: I see you figured it out already.

Yup. I feel positively brilliant!!!! Beams.

Thanks again everybody. May we hold the hope that I'm the dumbest student you will ever have.

That's close, but not quite. It remembers the view for each grid type. So the home page sort is not the same as the tag page sort, and the user page sort etc.

The reason is that they can actually have different options (e.g. home has no "most tagged" option) but there may need to be some preference grouping to make it more intuitive.

Oh I'm glad it's working for you now!

This is good -- helps those of us trying to do the explaining become better at the explaining part of things.

Yay Foxy!

Forums.

I found this cause it was on the front page.

T
K
O

Ive been mostly away while all this newfangled stuff was installed. Im still wondering about "tags" .I like to browe in subjects and I dont yet know how my need for browsing can be fed with having to post my preferences first. Ill try to catch up.

I do like the little things, like the slightly larger typefaces (or is it just the contrast afforded by the use of whiter boards?)

I'm gradually making peace with the new system though I think it is not conducive to a wide variety of opinion and/or commentary. Anybody with a view unpopular to the majority will likely be voted so far down the alternate opinion will quickly vanish. That tends to produce a single minded population with much less opportunity for rough and tumble debate and/or stretching one's horizons. But oh well. . . .

At this point I am wondering if there is any way to simply remove from our/my view only those topics we vote down so that we don't wind up with an entire front page of "removed from view" or whatever the line is that shows up when we vote down a topic of no interest to us? If you vote down a specific post within a thread, that disappears from view. It sort of defeats the purpose of voting them down if we can't get them out of the way though it does help not having to read through them to find a new thread that is of interest.

I would like the opportunity to retrieve any thread I voted down though because some I might decide to go back and revisit.

I still would very much like the opportunity to get a thread out of the way without having to vote it down though since many threads I am not interested in would certainly be of interest to many others and should reflect the numbers showing that.

Thats easy, never use the thumb signs. I rarely agree with you but Ill never vote you out, thats just crap.

I'm trying to understand what you need.

Currently, the way it works is, you vote a topic down and it collapses. It does not completely disappear because you may find later that you want to open it up again. A complete disappearance would prevent that. Hence I think the current system fulfills both of your needs: (1) the need to knock away things that don't interest you but also (2) make it possible to retrieve them in the event that you change your mind at some later date. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your observation.

As for the other comment, re forum single-mindedness, certainly that's your opinion but anyone who does not sort by "Most Votes" and/or who shows "All Time" will see every single topic on the site, although they may have to page in order to find things. But that's the way it was before -- it's impossible to keep every single topic on the site on the first page as the business and tiny print needed would make the site virtually unusable. Really, the main thing that voting does is allow for more customized sorting, rather than forcing the user to accept only one means of sorting. In fact, in the older version of the site, you were essentially beholden to whatever people foound interesting as those were the topics that were bumped. Other things were buried quickly if the site was very busy. Here, you can re-sort in a manner that differs from the majority.

It isn't that big a deal, Jes. Just an observation. When you collapse a thread the "voted down' line is still there and sometimes I log on and the entire first page is almost all voted down threads---especially if the game threads have been really active. And no way do you have time to identify what those 'voted down' threads are without opening them back up and who has time to do that?

So the thought was that if the 'voted down' threads would just disappear for me, nobody else, until I went someplace else to look for them, then when I logged into All Topics on A2K, there would be fresh popular or active threads I am interested in filling up the front page instead of mostly 'voted down' lines that I don't have clue what any of them are.

Again no big deal. Just an observation.

Ah okay now I understand.

I don't think that will happen (e. g. a page for just the voted down stuff) but there's no reason not to suggest it to Nick and Craven. It could turn out to be a better solution than what they have now, or it might spark a different idea in them.