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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?
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:
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.)
I suggest we show questions in the list differently depending on their rating. Good questions are show as they are now. …
3y ago
How about having another tab (next to "Activity", "Age", "Score", "Random") in the category listing called "Positive", t …
3y ago
As a starting point for discussion, I suggest that the logged-out view not show any posts that are closed or have a scor …
3y ago
I agree that such a front page looks bad. I also agree with a comment that trying to simply hide poorly received post …
3y ago
Maybe the ordering of the default tab should be more sophisticated, both for logged-out and logged-in users, new or othe …
3y ago
Post
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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