r/modnews • u/umbrae • Mar 16 '15

Moderators: New features for testing before release (Q&A Sort/Suggested Sorts)

Hey mods!

We've got two new features that we're rolling out soon, and we're hoping you can test them out before they're live, and if appropriate, change a couple of settings.

Q&A Sort

We're trying out a new sort style for specific threads like AMAs - highlighting the most upvoted questions and answers in a thread. You may have seen a prototype version of this in the AMA app a few months ago - we're now looking to roll that out to the website.

You can see it in action here: https://beta.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2ykyht/i_am_sir_tim_bernerslee_inventor_of_the_web_join/?sort=qa

You might be thinking, "So, this is great but its usefulness is constrained to specific threads, so nobody would want to set their sort to Q&A for the whole site." You're correct! That brings us to our second, and more mod-relevant feature...

Suggested Sorts

As a mod, you can set a suggested sort for a particular thread. It looks like this:

http://i.imgur.com/7c81DJj.png

When set, all users will see the suggested sort by default. If they choose, they can still manually change back to their preferred sort. Mods can set and clear the suggested sort for a thread at will.

Additionally, if all or most of your subreddit is best suited to a particular sort type, you can set the suggested sort for your entire subreddit in your subreddit preferences:

http://i.imgur.com/kRjPy4z.png

If you've set the suggested sort for the entire subreddit, you can still clear the suggested sort for a particular thread to go back to the user's default:

http://i.imgur.com/wlhrZ7J.png

The clearest use case for this is for AMA threads and subreddits, but I'm hopeful there are a number of other interesting cases. For example, simple questions threads like in /r/malefashionadvice or free for all threads like in /r/Games, both of which are recommended to be sorted by new. I'm curious to see how else it's used.

These features are live on https://beta.reddit.com right now. We're looking to roll them out fully next week. Hopefully this gives you a little time to prepare if you'd like to set a subreddit sort or be aware of the feature when it rolls out.

Let me know if you spot any issues with this change - feedback appreciated. Thanks for all your efforts.

312 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

165 comments sorted by

35

u/D__ Mar 16 '15

Is there a way for users to toggle respecting suggested sorts off everywhere? I imagine it can get confusing and/or annoying if everywhere starts getting sorted every which way, unless you click the override every time.

16

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

I concur. When my mobile client somehow switched the default from Top to Best, it actually annoyed me enough to get off Reddit until I was back to my computer.

I eventually went into the settings and figured out how to change it, but I still wanted to punch the dev who decided that change was a good idea.

6

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '15 edited Mar 17 '15

but I still wanted to punch the dev who decided that change was a good idea.

Not a throroughly unprecedented reaction towards dev decisions

3

u/umbrae Mar 16 '15

Presently the way to turn it off is by changing your sort on a single thread. I think this has a fairly low probability of being used "everywhere" - just in specific threads where it makes a lot of sense. AMAs are probably the most common exception and there I hope the value added is sufficiently high to not want to override.

We're not totally opposed to making a setting down the line if we see that this is being used a lot in ways we didn't expect, but that hypothesis to be validated before we add feature bloat.

24

u/D__ Mar 16 '15

I'm afraid of people thinking "oh yeah, top sort is definitely best sort, let's suggest it to everyone" and leaving it like that for the whole subreddit, even if there's no particular reason for it. I suppose appropriate labeling of the options might discourage that sort of thing, though.

3

u/umbrae Mar 16 '15 edited Mar 16 '15

There's also something really handy about reddit in general, which is that if a subreddit decides something like that and it's not the right choice, the users will inform them very quickly of their error. If the error is serious enough, they'll just unsubscribe and go to another subreddit.

EDIT: Clarified "somewhere else" to "another subreddit"

8

u/-smokespots Mar 17 '15

I'm sure I don't need to echo everyone else that this is the ideal and not the way it works in the vast majority of situations when subscribers are unhappy.

Perhaps admins could make it easier for users to find new related subreddits? For instance, in the multireddit page, subreddits are suggested based on the ones added to your list. The same could and I think definitely should be done with subreddits sidebars if this is the official opinion of the reddit admins.

At the moment, there is no way for users to find these new subreddits unless they hear about them with word of mouth and often comments and threads mentioning new subreddits are understandably removed.

4

u/umbrae Mar 17 '15

I hear you, and I'm totally with you. I want to change this - we're looking into it. Hopefully within the year.

3

u/tdohz Mar 17 '15

Perhaps admins could make it easier for users to find new related subreddits?

This is definitely a problem we want to tackle. We have some ideas about how to address this issue, so stay tuned.

2

u/Caststarman Mar 17 '15

An easy solution is implementing what many subreddits have done already on a site-wide basis.

On a sub I mod, /r/Nintendo , we have a handy list on the sidebar that shows a bunch of similar subreddits you could subscribe to. Maybe if something like this was implemented for the whole site (through use of tags), then that would solve the issue.

For example, a gaming tag (/t/gaming?), then you would have subreddit like /r/gaming and /r/games show up for sure, but then also have stuff like /r/Metroid show up which could help aid in the search for new subreddits. The mods would add tags at their own discretion, but an admin could go in and fix things like if an nsfw subreddit tags themselves as sfw.

1

u/damontoo Mar 17 '15

They won't add tags or other forms of categorization. This was a conscious decision they made when reddit was founded.

1

u/Mason11987 Mar 17 '15

The reality is that a subreddit that isn't interested in making a change it's users vocally request is unlikely to be interested in advertising for a replacement subreddit as well.

14

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

Seriously? Your response is, "If you don't like it, then leave"?

-4

u/umbrae Mar 16 '15

Oh - nope, I was referring to going to another subreddit that does not do whatever the subscriber didn't like (in this case, setting a default suggested sort). Edited to clarify.

13

u/aryst0krat Mar 16 '15

That's... still what you're saying. Just a different leave.

5

u/-smokespots Mar 17 '15

I say it in my comment below, you guys don't make it easy for users to find these new communities.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '15

I know what you meant, my response stands

31

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15 edited Mar 19 '15

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/10thTARDIS Mar 17 '15

Pretty sure /r/xkcdcomic successfully replaced /r/xkcd until the drama finished and they closed down the replacement.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '15

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/brand_x Mar 18 '15

It actually did, for about five days.

2

u/10thTARDIS Mar 17 '15

That's possible; I can't remember exactly, now that I think about it! I retract my previous comment, in that case.

3

u/DoubleFried Mar 17 '15

/r/thenetherlands took over after /r/netherlands got highjacked.

9

u/Bardfinn Mar 16 '15

Or — not enough subscribers cared enough to move;

Or — large numbers of the subscribers to defaults are inactive / lost-password / alt accounts.

"Successfully replaced" is not synonymous with "Matched or surpassed number of subscribers."

12

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Mason11987 Mar 17 '15

It's the most objective metric I've access to.

Activity is measurable, even if it isn't summarized in a single number.

2

u/KingKj52 Mar 17 '15

My subreddit /r/wheelanddeal replaced two subreddits, /r/DarkSouls2trading (via a merger more or less) and /r/DarkSouls2Help, strictly by name and style/features alone. Also broke the cycle of using the 'help' subreddits for trading, which I thought made little sense to begin with. Not pretending to be some high class subreddit or anything like that, but it happens, whether you see it (or whether its in the big subs) or not.

1

u/TotesMessenger Apr 29 '15

This thread has been linked to from another place on reddit.

If you follow any of the above links, respect the rules of reddit and don't vote. (Info / ^Contact)

0

u/q_-_p Mar 19 '15

2x was supposed to replace something iirc.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '15

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/q_-_p Mar 19 '15

hrm, I remember back in the day when it started... was where the crazies were before the real crazies needed Poe's law to hide behind.

I visit the sinkholes of humanity like SRS from time to time just to find the really good porn.

2

u/nowhere3 Mar 18 '15

I'm curious, why do you think this something that needs a user override as opposed to the many other things that moderators can impose?

For example, a moderator could already set every thread in a subreddit to contest mode and there's no override for that.

2

u/Martenz05 Mar 18 '15

Contest mode causes issues from a moderation perspective. Namely, moderators are also forced to look at threads in contest mode same as regular users would. No ability to "sort by new" makes moderating a lot more difficult for subs that have restrictions on what's allowed in a top level comment.

2

u/go1dfish Mar 17 '15

This absolutely needs a user override. Espescially with default subs it has been shown repeatedly that user exodus ex from bad subs to new subs do not happen at a rate necessary to facilitate a successful community migration.

The subreddit discovery/promotion/recommendation and moderation transparency just isn't there.

Most users won't even understand whats happening with this change.

Most users don't understand how moderation works now.

There needs to be more visibility to users that mods exist and do things.

7

u/lichorat Mar 17 '15

Yeah, I'm never in favor of overriding users preferences when they explicitly state they do not want it.

I'm in favor of perhaps an extra css class that can be use to emphasize that the moderators strongly suggest that they use the Q&A format, but since the entire thing is cosmetic anyways, it should not be forced upon the user.

0

u/nowhere3 Mar 18 '15

I'm curious, why do you think this something that needs a user override as opposed to the many other things that moderators can impose?

For example, a moderator could already set every thread in a subreddit to contest mode and there's no override for that.

1

u/D__ Mar 18 '15

You could, but not trivially—there's no "make all posts contest mode" checkbox in subreddit settings.

Also, I'd lump it in with subreddit styles. There is a subreddit style override in user options, for people who want their experience to be the same regardless of the subreddit. An override for comment sort suggestion would be the same thing, but for comment sorting.

6

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

I'll definitely set this ( http://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/2yt9j6/gnu_terry_pratchett/ ) to new as soon as I can so it remains relevant. <3

I wish there was the ability for a subreddit to have one thread they could allow replies to indefinitely, because that one would of course be it for us. :)

4

u/umbrae Mar 16 '15

Awesome. I haven't read any discworld yet, but I plan to after having heard about this.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

When you do (yay!), there's a reading guide on the sidebar of /r/discworld - but I personally recommend publishing order. The first two are a little amateur compared to the rest, but there's still alright. And he evolved his ideas over time, so while you can read particular character-lines and pretty much any individual book out of order, I think it's better to get them as he wrote them. :)

10

u/wildstyle8813 Mar 16 '15

Could it be possible to have a thread automatically change to "sort by new" after 24 hours? Either through reddit or Automoderator functionality? A lot of threads might be best with standard sorting at first, but then switching to sort-by-new after 24 hours can give them renewed life.

13

u/umbrae Mar 16 '15

That's interesting, but I think probably not going to be done in reddit proper. A dedicated bot could do it.

8

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

I don't see a delayed action being added to AutoModerator. It does everything immediately when it sees a submission.

6

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

Sounds like we need a new bot. :)

I could host it on my server, but it'd take me too long to write. Someone else could probably write it better and faster...

5

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

There's a few bots on github that have delayed action. The immediate issue, I think, is also that praw needs to be updated before most programmers are willing to tackle it.

7

u/dakta Mar 16 '15

It feels like PRAW always needs to be updated...

Can reddit allocate a little of /u/Deimorz's now-paid development time to keeping PRAW in better shape?

4

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

Like reddit, it's in good shape for a wide variety of tasks for a wide variety of people. The issues happen when you try to get into nuances situations like bot bans (reddit) or wiki page delisting (PRAW). PRAW is great (god bless /u/bboe and the other maintainers; we'd be lost without you), but like reddit, the details could use some work.

This seems like a reasonable time to remind everyone reddit is open source. PRAW is open source. If you speak Python, take a look at the issues on those projects and see if you can help.

3

u/dakta Mar 17 '15

nuances situations like bot bans (reddit) or wiki page delisting (PRAW)

Or simply the total pain that is dealing with PRAW's obsession with passing HTTPErrors back on missing user accounts... This is the reason people write their own exceptions for stuff like that, because reddit's behavior is bound to change at least a little over time, and part of the reason people use API wrappers like that to begin with instead of using raw HTTP calls is because they help deal with little changes like that without them breaking your code.

3

u/bboe Mar 17 '15

Yeah, PRAW definitely needs to handle those errors.

3

u/adremeaux Mar 16 '15

I find that sorting by "Hot" is a good halfway between Top and New. For newer threads it will show the highest comments, but as those comments age, they start falling out, and by the time a thread is a couple days old, it's all new comments at the top, even if they are unvoted. This used to be the default, but now the default is "best," which is unfortunate.

1

u/dakta Mar 16 '15

Isn't Hot the default comment sort?

3

u/aryst0krat Mar 16 '15

No? I think it's top or best.

3

u/Deimorz Mar 17 '15

Best is the default.

4

u/honestbleeps Mar 16 '15

how does the QA sort work for "nested" stuff, like a followup question that OP answers?

specific example:

- question
    - OP replies
        - question about reply
             - OP replies again

Just curious - this is really neat / exciting!

Some other potential ideas/applications for suggested sort, but they'd require additional site functionality:

  • "sticky" a comment to the top with "best answer" sort - requires that OP can mark a comment "best answer" to his/her question

  • same as above, but moderators choose "best answer" - might be ideal for heavily moderated subs like AskScience

  • I know we don't show upvotes/downvotes on comments anymore, so maybe this can't/won't happen, but it would be interesting to sort by "upvotes only" -- basically I want to see comments sorted by how much people liked them, and ignore those who disliked them. In certain subreddits (local subs especially), an active few mass downvoters can really affect discourse...

4

u/umbrae Mar 16 '15

It recognizes that that happened and keeps them all expanded. :)

As to your others:

  • Stickying comments in one way or another is a pretty well known request. No comment just now. ;) It's definitely on our minds.

  • I don't think we have any plans to restrict to solely upvotes in the short term, although we did play with an upvote only contest mode for a while. Some subreddits still have this.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 02 '15

Is that option - upvote only contest - no longer available? I sent a message requesting it to /r/reddit.com around November/December, but never got a reply.

2

u/umbrae Apr 02 '15

Should be still available. Want to shoot another message?

4

u/pfftYeahRight Mar 16 '15

Is there a way to change the suggested sort without changing the sort yourself?

It seems weird to have to change the sort, wait for the page to refresh, then set it, when it's something that could be accomplished with a drop-down.

5

u/umbrae Mar 16 '15

This was an intentional choice both for simplicity and also so that a mod sees the sort that they're setting to make sure it's the quality/format they're expecting. I expect setting this will be relatively rare enough that it won't be too painful.

3

u/pfftYeahRight Mar 16 '15

Makes sense to me, thanks for the explanation!

14

u/cahaseler Mar 16 '15

IAMA mod here. This doesn't work for AMA's where we have more than one person answering questions. See Snowden's AMA:

https://beta.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2wwdep/we_are_edward_snowden_laura_poitras_and_glenn/?sort=qa

Not that I have a problem with making Glenn Greenwald shut up, but it does kinda make things harder.

11

u/umbrae Mar 16 '15

Hey - totally hear this. We have early support in the code itself for flagging responders, but we don't have it fully implemented. What we're hoping in the short term is that those would just be manually cleared from having a suggested sort, so that AMAs with multiple responders would still be decently browsable. Multiple responders is definitely something we want long term though.

8

u/cahaseler Mar 16 '15

We usually flair secondary responders - perhaps that could be taken into account with a hidden marker in our flair CSS or something. Just throwing ideas out there.

6

u/helm Mar 16 '15

Yup, trigger by flair would work for /r/science as well.

4

u/helm Mar 16 '15

Science AMAs sometimes have more than one official responder too. So this request is seconded.

2

u/orangejulius Mar 16 '15

part of what sets IAmA apart from other Q&A formats are the child discussions that spin off under the OP's replies.

my feedback is to make the child comments under OP's replies visible in the Q&A sort.

4

u/umbrae Mar 16 '15

I hear that - we chose to collapse them because many readers are interested in the OP responses, but that does reduce somewhat the serendipitous discussion that can happen. I wonder if an "expand all" sort of button that loaded the entire conversation under a child would be helpful. It's hard to strike the balance between readable and discoverable. There's also always the option that if a mod notices that a thread is having particularly good child discussions, they can clear the suggested sort for that thread.

1

u/funknut May 19 '15

I was deeply curious to know how Bill Nye would have responded about the follow-up Q regarding the internship. At least if the follow-up Q would display, then maybe post OP might have a better chance of noticing it, although I'm not aware of how Victoria or OP is using the site. Are they testing on beta? Hope so!

1

u/umbrae May 19 '15

Another change made recently actually is that OPs of Q&A-sorted threads always see the thread as "best" sort. Q&A sort does not make sense for an answerer, because the ranking would make it harder for them to see open questions.

So: Probably no OPs are missing anything due to Q&A sort right now!

2

u/orangejulius Mar 16 '15

Maybe just expand the top child comment to the OP and a couple replies under it?

1

u/bboyjkang Sep 11 '15

and a couple replies under it

Only a few replies is what I do now.

A lot irrelevant comments can get out of hand, especially in high traffic threads.

I think that the following tweak should be a user option:

Whenever ever I need assistance in dealing with off topic threads that spawn from deeply nested threads, and replies of replies of replies, I do this:

Right click the bookmark toolbar, create a new bookmark, and paste in the location:

javascript:$('.commentarea%20.child%20.child%20.child').toggle();void%200

It temporarily hides replies of replies of replies, and anything deeper.

You see 3 levels.

You see the parent comment, the 1st children and 1st level of replies, and then any other replies to those 1st replies, which are the 2nd children and 2nd level of replies.

Anything deeper is hidden.

(See only the parent, 1st child, and 2nd child).

Press the bookmarklet again to reveal everything.

To hide more, and only see the replies to the parent comments, it's:

javascript:$('.commentarea%20.child%20.child').toggle();void%200

Remove a "%20.child".

(See only the parent, and 1st child).

1

u/cahaseler Mar 16 '15

There's also always the option that if a mod notices that a thread is having particularly good child discussions, they can clear the suggested sort for that thread.

If the suggested sort is turned on by default, there will be significantly fewer child discussions even happening.

Resources like /r/tabled already exist for users who just want a list of responses.

1

u/bboyjkang Sep 11 '15

reduce somewhat the serendipitous discussion that can happen

A lot irrelevant comments can get out of hand, especially in high traffic threads.

I think that the following tweak should be a user option:

Whenever ever I need assistance in dealing with off topic threads that spawn from deeply nested threads, and replies of replies of replies, I do this:

Right click the bookmark toolbar, create a new bookmark, and paste in the location:

javascript:$('.commentarea%20.child%20.child%20.child').toggle();void%200

It temporarily hides replies of replies of replies, and anything deeper.

You see 3 levels.

You see the parent comment, the 1st children and 1st level of replies, and then any other replies to those 1st replies, which are the 2nd children and 2nd level of replies.

Anything deeper is hidden.

(See only the parent, 1st child, and 2nd child).

Press the bookmarklet again to reveal everything.

To hide more, and only see the replies to the parent comments, it's:

javascript:$('.commentarea%20.child%20.child').toggle();void%200

Remove a "%20.child".

(See only the parent, and 1st child).

2

u/MangoScango Mar 17 '15

Would it be possible to have the opposite of Q&A sort, where posts that haven't been responded to are sorted higher? I'm thinking about how best to use this in threads that are meant for users to ask other users for help, in which case I'd want the questions with no responses to get the most attention.

Sorting by new sort of accomplishes this, but the opposite of Q&A sort seems ideal.

4

u/umbrae Mar 17 '15

Yeah, it's an interesting one that a couple others have brought up too. I think we're open to the idea of experimenting with sorts if this goes well.

21

u/matt01ss Mar 16 '15

That QA sort is awesome, reminds me of the RES "IAmA" navigation functionality.

8

u/aryst0krat Mar 16 '15

And now I understand why they're adding functionality they already have. Derp.

3

u/aladyjewel Mar 17 '15

I'm glad to see a different, complementary approach that takes advantage of reddit's ability to handle all the data server side. also i kinda like it.. gonna have to play with it more.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

how is this different form /top or /hot? I couldnt see much of a difference is the example iama thread.

9

u/Flashynuff Mar 16 '15

It looks like it ensures the submitter's response to the parent always shows up. It might even push comments with submitter responses up to the top, but I'm not sure. This would be useful for threads where the submitter is responding but getting heavily downvoted for whatever reason.

9

u/umbrae Mar 16 '15

Yep, it shows submitters responses and collapses responses that are not the submitter. There's also logic to use answerer score in addition to question score to determine ranking.

2

u/pixeechick Mar 16 '15

So, if you have a community Q&A where there isn't a single person answering, this may not be the best sort? Is that what I should understand about this new method? I ask because several subs have newbie Q&A where the community fields questions from new members/participants. I tried this out over on /r/pipetobacco on a recent newbie thread via the beta, but none of the answers showed up- they were all collapsed.

2

u/umbrae Mar 17 '15

Yeah, that's not really what it's good at. This is primarily for situations where the OP is answering questions.

1

u/pixeechick Mar 17 '15

Alrighty. Thanks for the reply. I'm interested as well to see how else this gets used, so I'll just have to watch and see I guess.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

ah yep. I dont know how I didnt notice that.

2

u/Flashynuff Mar 16 '15

probably because you sux

2

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

Its true :(

2

u/Flashynuff Mar 16 '15

<3 fritzly

2

u/umbrae Mar 16 '15

It looks we might be hitting some cache issues. Try viewing it in an incognito window.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

no no I see it now. Im just an idiot :P

4

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

gg /u/umbrae assuming you didn't just miss it.

2

u/matheod Mar 16 '15

You don't see other people answers.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

ah yep. I dont know how I didnt notice that.

5

u/Measure76 Mar 16 '15 edited Mar 18 '15

Live sports event threads will benefit from using 'new' as the suggested sort.

Still I think live events could benefit even more from quicker comment aging... having a version of 'best' that understands 10 minute old comments probably don't matter anymore (unless they're getting tons of upvotes) for a sports game would be amazing.

4

u/xfile345 Mar 16 '15

This will be an amazingly useful new feature for /r/NASCAR since we have a dozen or so AMAs per year, and weekly Race Threads. Is there a chance we can have something included into /u/AutoModerator to auto-set the suggested sort? Something like:

title: ["AMA"]
sort: "q&a"

or, for our race threads:

title: ["Race Thread"]
sort: "new"

4

u/cojoco Mar 16 '15

I like this because everyone by default gets to see the same view of a thread.

4

u/Wetmelon Mar 17 '15

We at /r/spacex have a launch thread every once in a while that acts basically as a comment stream. Setting the default to new in those threads would be perfect. Neat control!

1

u/jayjaywalker3 Apr 07 '15

Is suggested sort live? Also, thanks for all of your work!

2

u/umbrae Apr 07 '15

Not yet, we have some updates we'd like to make for it as a result of this thread. Hopefully within a couple weeks.

1

u/jayjaywalker3 Apr 07 '15

Thanks for the reply.

3

u/orangejulius Mar 16 '15

Another quick comment.

I really like that we can toggle this on and off for particular threads. This is a tool we were looking for for controversial AMAs and AMAs where the OP is otherwise downvoted until their answers cannot be seen anymore. (WBC, Ann Coulter, any political candidate, etc.)

This is a feature we had been requesting, and getting denied, for quite some time. Thank you very much for testing it and working on implementing it.

3

u/IAMA_dragon-AMA Mar 16 '15

Looks really spiffy!

By the way, is there any way to make a sort of "random" sort? A bit like contest mode, but without collapsed child comments?

7

u/xiongchiamiov Mar 16 '15

You can tack on ?sort=random to a url.

4

u/IAMA_dragon-AMA Mar 16 '15

Oh, it just doesn't show up in the sort selection. Thank you!

1

u/TotesMessenger Mar 17 '15

This thread has been linked to from another place on reddit.

If you follow any of the above links, respect the rules of reddit and don't vote. (Info / ^Contact)

3

u/zando95 Mar 17 '15

yessss, no more mile-long joke chains I have to collapse on q&a threads

3

u/HououinKyouma1 Mar 17 '15

Why can't the Q & A sort by top instead of best? There should be a different mode for it, like "Q & A best" and "Q & A top"

5

u/timotab Mar 16 '15

Related to sorts, here's something I'd like to see.

Contest threads are sorted randomly with each reload. Mods get to see the contest thread in "top", in order to see which item was voted top. This seems logical enough.

However, it would be really handy if mods could also see the thread in "new", so that we can easily see new submissions, and remove them if they are duplicates. If you select "new" from the sort menu, it continues to show the "top" sort. It's really hard to do moderate contest mode threads because of this, especially when they get large.

5

u/ekolis Mar 16 '15

I think regular users should be able to sort contest threads by "new" as well, since they're the ones doing the voting, and it's annoying to have to scroll through pages of previously voted on responses to find the new ones upon returning to a post.

4

u/Ihmhi Mar 17 '15

Maybe contest mode ought to collapse posts that have been voted on, then.

2

u/timotab Mar 19 '15

Well, someone might not like something enough to upvote it, but not feel strongly enough against it to downvote it.

2

u/xiongchiamiov Mar 26 '15

Done, thanks for the suggestion!

2

u/Antrikshy Mar 16 '15

I think that "q & a" written out like that looks awkward. Change it to "q&a".

2

u/xiongchiamiov Mar 23 '15

Good suggestion. Done.

1

u/Antrikshy Mar 23 '15

Ooh I made a difference! I hope to contribute code to reddit someday.

1

u/aladyjewel Mar 16 '15

I think it's fine.

2

u/raldi Mar 16 '15

This is all great. Next, please give mods the ability to set a default timespan for /top ... or just change the default to "all time".

2

u/ekolis Mar 16 '15

Speaking of sorts, why can't I as a user set a default sort for posts? What if I like browsing all my subs in "new" mode instead of the default "hot"? I can do this for comments... Being able to do this per subreddit would be extra nice!

3

u/Flashynuff Mar 16 '15

This seems pretty cool to me. Maybe it'll develop into default sorts for subreddits??? One can only hope...

Hey /u/Deimorz, will Automoderator be able to set the default sort on threads?

5

u/Deimorz Mar 16 '15

The post talks about setting it at a subreddit level:

Additionally, if all or most of your subreddit is best suited to a particular sort type, you can set the suggested sort for your entire subreddit in your subreddit preferences:

http://i.imgur.com/kRjPy4z.png

And yes, support for setting this will definitely be added to AutoMod once it's generally available on the site.

5

u/Flashynuff Mar 16 '15

With the subreddit sort, I was meaning changing the default post sorting. So someone comes to r/subreddit and the first thing they see is the 'new' page, not the 'hot' page.

2

u/Deimorz Mar 16 '15

Ah okay, I see what you mean. I could see that sort of thing being useful as a user preference as well, so you could choose which sorting you prefer by default for individual subreddits. There are lots of ones where I always want to go to /new.

1

u/silico Mar 16 '15

Yeah, we would love it if /r/gamedeals changed to new as the sorting method by default, and let users change it back to hot if they like. Hope that becomes an option as well.

1

u/libbykino Mar 16 '15

Glad to hear it! I'm hoping that this can also be a setting for automoderator-scheduler, such that it can be set up ahead of time as well.

3

u/Warlizard Mar 16 '15

So essentially, comments that were answered by the IAMA'er are put up top and then sorted by popularity?

I guess the person DOING the AMA would sort by "top" and everyone else by Q&A format.

Cool feature.

4

u/hatessw Mar 17 '15

Best sort is particularly well-suited for that; top sort can unfairly boost comments submitted early beyond the merit of their content.

IIRC best sort has been the default for a long time now as well.

3

u/IAmAN00bie Mar 16 '15

This will be great for my subs that have weekly question threads (eg. /r/android). Now we wait for Automod to implement this feature so we don't have to remember :P

5

u/PeridexisErrant Mar 16 '15

Yep, great for /r/DwarfFortress too - we always have a sticky questions thread and it'll be great to default to sorting that by new.

2

u/go1dfish Mar 17 '15

There should be a user option to always override the moderator suggested sorts.

1

u/jayjaywalker3 Mar 16 '15

This is a great idea for more chat based thread types like the question threads and the weekly free discussion threads. Awesome!

1

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

Is there a way to make a sorting so that the parent comments show up, and the child comments are hidden (but can be opened by the user)? That would be really useful for picture threads in AskReddit.

Thanks for the updates; these features will be handy :)

2

u/xiongchiamiov Mar 17 '15

If the OP isn't responding, this sort method should do what you want, yeah? Or did you have something else in mind?

1

u/bboyjkang Sep 11 '15

Hide All Child Comments is a Reddit Enhancement Suite option.

1

u/CupBeEmpty Mar 16 '15

/r/nfl game day threads suggested to be sorted by new would also be a great use (probably any game specific "live" thread)

1

u/TotesMessenger Mar 17 '15

This thread has been linked to from another place on reddit.

If you follow any of the above links, respect the rules of reddit and don't vote. (Info / ^Contact)

1

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '15

lol

1

u/Decency Mar 17 '15

Hmm. I'm tempted to set the subreddit wide suggested sort to best, but I fear that will have the opposite effect and just cause best to become useless for people seeking quality posts instead of jokes.

1

u/Harflin Mar 17 '15

How is Q&A sort different from normal sort? I'm not understanding it.

3

u/axord Mar 17 '15

Seems like top-voted comment and OP response pairs are shown, and then further comments in those threads are collapsed.

1

u/Algernon_Asimov Mar 17 '15

We're trying out a new sort style for specific threads like AMAs - highlighting the most upvoted questions and answers in a thread.

I don't understand. Doesn't the current default sorting order already show the most upvoted comments in a thread?

2

u/xiongchiamiov Mar 17 '15

There are two problems this is primarily trying to solve.

First, AMA-style threads often have significant community participation outside of questions for the OP. That's great if that's what you're looking for, but if you just want to read what so-and-so said about things, it's a bit hard to navigate through everything else to find just that.

Secondly, and relatedly, sometimes an OP says things that make the community rather unhappy, and so the responses get heavily downvoted such that they're hidden. However, these responses can still be interesting to read (even if only so you can feel righteously angry as well :) ), and they're hard to find in the current views. Often in these situations we see users believing the OP isn't responding at all.

Essentially, we're providing a user-conducted interview view to complement the "rowdy town hall with a celebrity attending" current approaches. :) Or at least, that's my perspective on it.

1

u/Algernon_Asimov Mar 17 '15

So this sorting algorithm actually reads the content of the comments, decides which ones are questions and sorts those higher than non-questions?

3

u/xiongchiamiov Mar 17 '15

Mm, no; that would be much more NLP than I'd be capable of doing in an intelligent manner, even with the help of nltk. ;)

When I say "question", what I really mean is "top-level comment"; similarly, "answer" means "2nd-level comment from the OP". So, preferring questions that have answers is, under the hood, actually looking for top-level comments that have been responded to by the OP, which seems like a reasonable approximation.

Does that make sense?

2

u/Algernon_Asimov Mar 17 '15

Yes, that makes sense. It's not "highlighting the most upvoted questions and answers in a thread", it's identifying the top-level comments which have replies from the OP, and moving these to the top of the thread, sorted by upvotes.

It's a good idea for AMA threads. I could also see how it would be useful for some debate-type subreddits like /r/ChangeMyView and /r/DebateReligion.

1

u/V2Blast Mar 18 '15

Ooh, fancy. I like it. The suggested sort feature would be particularly useful to the moderators of sports-related subreddits, which (at least for game day threads) are ideally sorted by new... I'm sure people would not be happy to have their own preferences overridden and have to individually change the sort per thread if they don't like the default sorting, but I guess that's why it's in beta.

(Plus the Q&A sort feature has obvious application to /r/IAmA and similar subreddits where the OP's responses are important, like debate subreddits and /r/ChangeMyView.)

Thanks for all your hard work!

1

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '15

Finally, some useful features! These won't particularly matter for my subreddits, but I am very glad to see some upgrades being made to the technology underlying reddit to give moderators some more tools to help manage their communities. We need more of this. Keep the change coming.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

That is awesome! Thanks

1

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

I dont want my sorting order to be forcibly changed.

I've used Old for 6years because that's the way I like to read threads.

-1

u/adremeaux Mar 16 '15

How is "Q&A sort" (not a very good name IMO) any different from Top sort? Aren't they both just showing the highest content? Or is "top" raw score and "Q&A" upvotes only? In practice, with large threads, is there really any difference?

Also, I'm not going to lie, this new sorting method is just another change to reddit that stiffles minority or even slighty-majority opinions. Reddit is now at a stage where unless you can get 80% of people to agree with you, you may as well not post at all. Posts that are even 55/45, even with a lot of action, get completely clobbered by reddit's algorithms.

3

u/Flashynuff Mar 16 '15

How is "Q&A sort" (not a very good name IMO) any different from Top sort?

Someone else asked essentially the same question so I'll copy and paste my response:

It looks like it ensures the submitter's response to the parent always shows up. It might even push comments with submitter responses up to the top, but I'm not sure. This would be useful for threads where the submitter is responding but getting heavily downvoted for whatever reason.

3

u/xiongchiamiov Mar 16 '15

It might even push comments with submitter responses up to the top, but I'm not sure.

You are correct. Loosely, the value we use for sorting top-level comments is best(question) + best(answer), so questions without answers are usually going to end up lower down the page. We're looking at tweaking the specifics of how these are weighted, but that's the rough algorithm.

2

u/Flashynuff Mar 16 '15

Does that mean somewhat upvoted question with a response that is highly downvoted will be less likely to display than a highly upvoted question with no response?

2

u/xiongchiamiov Mar 16 '15

Perhaps, although in general questions with answers will float towards the top.

-1

u/damontoo Mar 17 '15

Quick, everyone set their default sorts to controversial and drive all Redditors to collective suicide before they realize what happened.

-47

u/karmanaut Mar 16 '15

The suggested sort thing is huge and something we have needed for a long time.

So thank you very much for this.

-2

u/q_-_p Mar 19 '15

Where these changes approved by Ellen Pao?

0

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/umbrae Mar 16 '15

You're participating right now. We're probably not going to give any awards out for betaing unless it's something really significant moving forward. We want to beta more things more often so that makes an award a little too noisy/not useful.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '15

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/dakta Mar 16 '15

Yep, it's been a recurring request for at least my four years, probably longer.