What do you think, should "last updated" time record be updated when a new comment is added to question or answer?
If that field is updated, then most recently commented questions (or questions whose answers were rencently commented) will appear on the top in the default question listing. Is this a good thing?
I will work on this,
Any thoughts?
That's fine, but there is a bug in the send_email_alerts management command, which will be sending alerts about changes in the comments, which you don't always want. Basically to make this feature - we need to rewrite the send_email_alerts management command, which is anyway very slow. It needs better algorighthm.
I would say so but I am wondering if the same questions would always hog the top list and push away unanswered questions
You can always select the "Unanswered" questions tab.
Yes, because some questions have high "activity". And if I resurrect an old thread by commenting, there has been "activity" and it will appear on the frontpage. I can't do that under the current system.
Most OSQA sites are low activity, so showing as much activity as possible is important. For high activity site, there should be a "sort by coolness" or "sort by freshness" but doing that right is trickier.
What do you think of adding new "Sort by" value called "comments" which would, when clicked on, sort questions by most (or least on second click) recently posted comments in them? This shouldn't change current behavior of sorting by activity.
It could also be mixed with solution @sagarun proposed, which would then serve as a mechanism for admins to choose whether sort by activity or comments would be site default. Option can be added in user profile too to change this setting on individual basis.
I contemplated with my team on this feature.
My view is —
The current version of askbot is cool! i.e Don't sort your site front-page by comments.
The front-page should be un-biased, as its a QnA site, so comments should be of little importance to any QnA site growth, otherwise it kills the basic essence of the site.
Hitting the front-page should purely be function of — value generated, so sort by trending activity — think upvotes and update by answers.
Note: Askbot is not a commenting site or any typical forum like phpBB, so giving comments a push to the site front-page, will kill the value of QnA sites.
So, the Homepage should NOT be sorted by recent-most comments at any cost. May be, lets have another filter, sort by recent-most comments?
Also in Askbot, if you have engaged in a thread, you would have followed that question to get notified! A user can also do @user to bring another user's attention.
Comments are largely single-dimensional — are targeted one-on-one or sometimes for self-clarifications(ie single dimensional). So getting the whole-community-attention for some random comment update is not Cool! Comments should NOT be broadcasted.
Comments are more like discussions, not multi-dimensional and kind of opinionated. So it becomes discussion site.
But, Answers = generates value!
And by just dropping a comment to hit front-page, will push anyone's question easily to hit front-page. Think old stale questions and non-trending topics hitting Front-page often.
One Possible Solution: Maybe we can have another filter like — sort by>> recent-comments.
But this filter should NOT be the default filter for sorting questions in the homepage.
Thanks.
PS: I'm not a big fan of comments for Askbot kind of QnA sites. :)
The OSQA ask site we formerly used and ran treated comments as activity, and essentially everyone I know who used the site liked and preferred that behavior over the current treatment of comments with our new Askbot site. In our view, comments are activity and do provide value. I understand after reading the answers and comments posted here that not everyone agrees with that. Fair enough. It would be really nice if we could be given the choice of whether to include comments as activity or not though, because many of us do desire that exact behavior. Please reconsider and add an option that would cause comments to be included in activity. Thanks for reading.
Comments
Are there still plans to implement this? It looks like posting a comment still does not count as "activity" on my hosted site.