there should be a way to sort posts in a thread by popularity

[1488]

top three popular posts are already being displayed so why not the rest

[BootmanLA]

On 3/18/2021 at 8:29 AM, 1488 said:

top three popular posts are already being displayed so why not the rest

The simplest reason I can think of: every new thread would automatically go to the bottom of the heap, and probably stay there, because many people won't go beyond the first page of threads. But something that got 300 responses ten years ago and then died out would stay as "popular" simply because a lot of people replied at one time.

Posting the threads in the order of the most recent posting shows which topics are more active; something that gets a couple of replies and then dies down will sink further and further down, which achieves some of the "sort by popularity" goal without actually torpedoing everything new.

[1488]

I meant sorting posts within a thread

[Guest takingdeepanal]

1 hour ago, 1488 said:

I meant sorting posts within a thread

Because it obliterates the continuity of a thread. 

[Guest takingdeepanal]

10 hours ago, 1488 said:

I meant sorting posts within a thread

 

8 hours ago, takingdeepanal said:

Because it obliterates the continuity of a thread. 

It also means a LOT more work for the technical staff - and the more lines of code that are written, the more susceptible a site is to crashing and/or hacking. 

[BootmanLA]

3 hours ago, takingdeepanal said:

It also means a LOT more work for the technical staff - and the more lines of code that are written, the more susceptible a site is to crashing and/or hacking. 

Speaking as a developer - allowing different sort orders is a relatively trivial thing, code-wise. But this site is built using a forum-management package that wasn't developed in-house by RawTop (he's mentioned before that he's working on his own site, but he's boxed in (to some degree) by the limits of this particular package.

I think your continuity point, however, is critical. If popular responses come before the less-popular comments that they're responding to, it won't make any sense.

What WOULD make sense is a more threaded system; that is, instead of there being a relatively flat design of a post followed by one or more comments, you could comment responding directly to a prior comment; kind of like the quote-responses here, but automatically threaded so that you can follow all the responses to any particular posting.

In theory, it would also make it easier to split off a thread of comments into its own topic, by moving the "comment that provoked a new thread" to the top level as a new topic itself. THAT would be a code challenge (do-able, certainly, but would be complex), but it would be much more functional.

[Guest takingdeepanal]

1 hour ago, BootmanLA said:

Speaking as a developer - allowing different sort orders is a relatively trivial thing, code-wise. But this site is built using a forum-management package that wasn't developed in-house by RawTop (he's mentioned before that he's working on his own site, but he's boxed in (to some degree) by the limits of this particular package.

I think your continuity point, however, is critical. If popular responses come before the less-popular comments that they're responding to, it won't make any sense.

What WOULD make sense is a more threaded system; that is, instead of there being a relatively flat design of a post followed by one or more comments, you could comment responding directly to a prior comment; kind of like the quote-responses here, but automatically threaded so that you can follow all the responses to any particular posting.

In theory, it would also make it easier to split off a thread of comments into its own topic, by moving the "comment that provoked a new thread" to the top level as a new topic itself. THAT would be a code challenge (do-able, certainly, but would be complex), but it would be much more functional.

Wouldn't the "Follow" button that we see on each thread already perform this function?

[BootmanLA]

Just now, takingdeepanal said:

Wouldn't the "Follow" button that we see on each thread already perform this function?

Not that I can see. "Follow" simply alerts you if ANYONE responds anywhere in the topic.

For instance: in this discussion, we're in a section of the site called "General", in the particular forum called "Tips, Tricks, Rules & Help", in a thread titled "there should be a way to sort posts in a thread by popularity". "Follow" would attach to that thread name, so *any* post in this thread, whether responding to you, or me, or some completely separate posting, would trigger notification if someone "follows" this thread.

What I'm envisioning is something more like this:

Person A creates a thread (the highest level "item" a member can create).
    Person B responds to the original posting by Person A.
        Person C responds to Person B.
            Person D responds to Person C.
        Person E also responds to Person B (notice that his response is linked under B's).
        Person F also responds to Person B.
    Person G also responds to the original posting by Person A.

The indents visually suggest who's responding to whom, and if done right you can collapse/hide any set of replies that go down a different "path" than what you're interested in - for instance, let's say I don't find B's response particularly helpful or enlightening, so collapsing it would hide (for me) C, D, E and F's responses to B. But not G's response, because he was replying directly to the original post.

Does that explain what I'm thinking a little better? I'm not saying this is easy to do - there are forums/comment sections that do this, but not all - and it seems to confuse people who aren't used to threaded responses, with people "replying" in the main thread even though they're addressing a point deep in the sub-threads. Or vice versa. But when people understand it, it's a lot easier to figure out the parts that are getting lots of attention and responses.