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This post is brought on by the sad leaving of Rama K.
Are some of the Forums aka message boards too popular ?
A portion of CP is community building, this can also be viewed as creating interpersonal relationships.
It is difficult to build these relationships when you have 300 people all sitting around a table trying to talk at once. And I am guessing that forums are the same.
many forums never reach critical mass and become live.
However I believe some of CP's forums have become so active it is difficult for them to grow further, as memebers are unable to remain actualized with what is occurring.
So what solutions are available ?
Should there be a weekly allotment of posting rights ?
Should forums fragment into smaller forums at a certain size?
You might well ask "why is this forum in suggestions? "
Well 1.) I'm askingf for your suggestions,
and 2.) So it won't be lost in an hour in the lounge 
Note: I don't think this is only a problem that afflicts some of CP's forums.
Regardz
Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
More about me
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Colin Davies wrote:
Should there be a weekly allotment of posting rights ?
People will get frustrated at not being able to post, and might not bother coming back. Or people will dig up old threads after a week, because they have something to say, and either will get no discussion, or will get a lot, but not many people will find it, causing confusion.
Colin Davies wrote:
Should forums fragment into smaller forums at a certain size?
More forums to feel lost in.
I think the forum software is to blame. Have a look at a vBulletin site (on of the most popular forum software packages around). Aside from not being threaded to the same degree as CP, the biggest difference is that as soon as someone posts in a thread, the thread is brought back up to the top.
This allows people to see which are the active threads all on one page, without having to go backwards and forwards for ages trying to keep up.
My 2c.
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I admit I added the allotment idea as a pure thought not because I thought it was any good.
If old threads were allowed to come to the top some threads would never go away. Such as the religion vs evolution battles.
I personally wanna see new posts and responses. But also to interact and shed thoughts with like minded folk.
Regardz
Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
More about me
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Colin Davies wrote:
If old threads were allowed to come to the top some threads would never go away. Such as the religion vs evolution battles.
True. Perhaps though, they could be moved to the SoapBox and be allowed to come to the top.
I think the problem is that the Lounge seems too fast moving. It might not be in reality though, since dealing with 5 new threads with 5 replies is not unmanagable for the human brain, yet it manages to push other threads off the first page. This gives a big impression of not being able to keep up.
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David Wengier wrote:
I think the problem is that the Lounge seems too fast moving.
Yes, that was exactly what I'm trying to say
Imagine if the lounge speed increased to an average of 10 posts per minute. It would be impossible to refresh for slow ISP's before a whole thread was shuffled to oblivion.
At some stage there is a maximum number of posts that a forum can handle.
Already I know of a regular CPian who doesn't post in the lounge because its too inhabited.
Regardz
Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
More about me
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good question!
but in my opnion,i will say let it be.
the lounge grows faster because we find interest
discussing in it,so do not intervene!
but i notice that other forums are so inactive,
many questions do not get answers.
that is the problem that i think the website administrators should be considering!
 
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Chris,
I was just wondering if the "Most Active" scetion should be renamed to "Overall Most Active" [or somethign similar] and then have another section called" Currently Most Active" which shows the most active posters over a week or two-week period [kind like Nish's Stats.. considering he's stopped them now  ]
 ![Rose | [Rose]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
"When a friend hurts us, we should write it down in the sand, where the winds of forgiveness get in charge of erasing it away, and when something great happens, we should engrave it in the stone of the memory of the heart, where no wind can erase it" Nish on life [methinks]
"It's The Soapbox; topics are optional" Shog 9
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Brian
I had specific reasons for stopping the stats show. I seriously think that they should not be restarted under the demographics page. At least not anytime soon.
And the load on the DB servers will be high too.
I think dave Wulff has something up his sleeve. No one remembers now, but it was Dave W who started the stats craze.
Nish
Author of the romantic comedy
Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win]
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Chris,
In a post recently you posted a link for the most viewed article list. Any chance you can add this link to the demographics page, and then allow viewing a following pages and not just the top 10 etc?
Roger Allen
Sonork 100.10016
If I had a quote, it would be a very good one.
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Look on the home page. Down a bit...down a bit...right a bit. There you go - just to the right of the latest updates.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
he was a VB programmer, but he got better - Christian Graus
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Is there any way to see previous questions of day?
Mazy
"If I go crazy then will you still
Call me Superman
If I’m alive and well, will you be
There holding my hand
I’ll keep you by my side with
My superhuman might
Kryptonite"Kryptonite-3 Doors Down
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I'd like that too. It wouold be a good idea
"When a friend hurts us, we should write it down in the sand, where the winds of forgiveness get in charge of erasing it away, and when something great happens, we should engrave it in the stone of the memory of the heart, where no wind can erase it" Nish on life [methinks]
"It's The Soapbox; topics are optional" Shog 9
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Nope - because until I get more questions the current ones are being recycled
cheers,
Chris Maunder
he was a VB programmer, but he got better - Christian Graus
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If you compare the "Top Viewed Articles" with the "Top Ranked Articles", you find that the most popular articles have a relatively low rating. This makes me think that the ranking is not a good parameter, especially for the new competitions
I suggest this formula: Energy = rating * log10(max(10,#votes));
In this way an article with "4/5" and 50 votes (energy=6.78) is better that an article with "5/5" and 7 votes only (energy=5)
The energy for the top viewed articles will be:
#votes rank energy
MFC Grid control 333 4.84 12.21
The Code Project Search Bar 63 4.05 7.29
A set of ADO Classes 82 4.80 9.19
Developing a Truly Scalable 87 4.25 8.24
CButtonST v3.5 137 4.64 9.91
Visual Studio .NET Menu 26 4.38 6.19
CXImage 74 4.68 8.75
CResizableDialog 53 4.53 7.81
Cool Owner Drawn Menus 95 4.82 9.53
Layout Manager for Dialogs 94 4.85 9.57
The energy for the top ranked articles will be:
#votes rank energy
Custom Tab Controls 12 5.00 5.40
Zoom+ 7 5.00 5.00
Get the real XP look 3 5.00 5.00
Drag and Drop Tab Control 2 5.00 5.00
A high performance TCP/IP 1 5.00 5.00
BUG: MFC 7.0's CByteArray 1 5.00 5.00
Drawing Barcodes in Windows 1 5.00 5.00
SIngleton Pattern 1 5.00 5.00
Undocumented Visual C++ 121 4.96 10.33
Achieving PostScript and Wmf 25 4.96 6.93
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I like it (at least for high ranked articles).
What about low ranking articles with lots of votes? (guess I could pull out the calculator myself but call me lazy )
(apologies for reformatting your post - I wanted others to see your idea more clearly)
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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The last Top Ranked Articles normally have few votes (<10), so the "energy" is low. Anyway a "3/5" article needs 50 votes to overcome a "5/5" article with 1 vote.
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I think the popularity ratings are biased. They tilts heavily toward MFC articles and toward "cool" subjects like grids. Meanwhile, other articles that are more specialized and receive less total views (and, consequently, less total votes) receive lower "popularity".
Frankly, I find it somewhat childish. It takes me back to grammar school days when we voted for the most popular boy and girl in class.
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The whole point of the ratigs and popularity is two-fold
a) to allow those who have never been to CodeProject before a chance to look over the articles that most people found useful.
b) to have something that will give good articles a chance to appear on the homepage longer than would normally be the case.
No, it's not perfect, and I'm always up for other ways of accomplishing these two tasks.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
Rub your belly and pat your head simultaneously. Sometimes that helps me make sense of things - Jon Sagara
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I agree that those two goals are important. You've got a tough job trying to please everybody.
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Just realised that you've written Energy = rating * log10(max(10,#votes)) but your calculations are using Energy = rating * log10(#votes). I was originally wondering why the votes would be clipped at 10.
Your formula doesn't handle the case of an article rated 3 with 100 votes vs. an article rated 5 with 10 votes.
#votes rating popularity
Article A 10 5.00 5.00
Article B 100 3.00 6.00
What about something like: pop = (rating-3) * Log<sub>10</sub>(#votes). Then
#votes rating popularity
100 4.50 3.00
20 5.00 2.60
10 5.00 2.00
20 4.50 1.95
5 5.00 1.40
100 3.50 1.00
3 4.50 0.72
5 4.00 0.70
2 5.00 0.60
1 5.00 0.00
100 3.00 0.00
10 2.50 -0.50
100 1.90 -2.65
Unfortunately this breaks down if you are close to 3 but have a large number of votes.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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I made a quick search, and the 99.9% of the articles rated 3 or less have less than 40 votes. There are only FEW exceptions, like your article "Visual Studio.NET screen shots" with 2.93/5 and 67 votes (normal popularity : 5.35), all the other are more or less in the mud.
I choose "log10(max(10,#votes))" to avoid a handicap for the new entries and because log10 is <1 for values <10.
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Seems like a good idea.
"When a friend hurts us, we should write it down in the sand, where the winds of forgiveness get in charge of erasing it away, and when something great happens, we should engrave it in the stone of the memory of the heart, where no wind can erase it" Nish on life [methinks]
"It's The Soapbox; topics are optional" Shog 9
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I think you have the right type of idea,
But it might need some tweaking.
Remember though these systems will always be controversial.
Regardz
Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
More about me
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the complete formula was:
rating * log10(max(10,#votes))*exp(-(#days since 1st post)/100))+100*(#clicked banners)+10*(#nish's threads);
but maybe it requires too much processing time for the server 
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