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Comments on Should we modify the default (front) page for anonymous visitors?

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Should we modify the default (front) page for anonymous visitors?

+6
−1

A complaint we've heard a lot is that when a community's front page has many questions that are not well-received, it deters visitors. (It also deters some people who are already here, I know.) This is not a good look:

post list: 0/0, 0/-2, 2/-5, 0/-2, 0/-3, 0/-6, 1/-1, 0/-3

I'm trying not to embarrass any individuals (though you can go to the obvious community and look). These posts are from several different people, not one.

Should we filter the question list for people who are not logged in? If so, should we also filter it for new users (to be defined), so they don't get a shock right after signup?

I don't think we can (with good performance) do something like "no more than one post meeting these criteria"; I think if we're going to filter things out of the logged-out view, we need to be able to evaluate each post on its own.

(I'll make my proposal an answer, so it will be on equal footing with others' proposals.)

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2 comment threads

Sounds like treating the symptoms instead of the causes (2 comments)
Remove closed posts from view? (2 comments)
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+3
−2

I agree that such a front page looks bad.

I also agree with a comment that trying to simply hide poorly received posts is hiding the problem instead of solving it. It's sweeping the problem under the rug, which is just going to leave us with an odd-looking rug along with the problem we already had.

In my opinion, what we need is some way to improve the average quality of posts (in this case, specifically top-level posts such as questions), which was the motivation behind my proposal for implementing some kind of hobbling of users who consistently post low-quality content.

The downvotes themselves aren't the problem, but rather a symptom. Rather, the problem is that (a) people repeatedly encounter posts, especially questions, that appear to them to be downvote-worthy, and (b) a rather small number of users flood sites with low-quality questions and then also often do not respond to feedback aimed at improving those questions. The net result of those is a front page filled with low-quality, net downvoted, sometimes closed, questions.

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1 comment thread

Orthogonal issue (1 comment)
Orthogonal issue
Olin Lathrop‭ wrote almost 3 years ago

What you say may be a good suggestion, but it doesn't address the problem of what to do when you end up with a bunch of low quality posts, regardless of what mechanisms are in place to prevent that.