I know some of you have been wondering why I put the 'Home' tab on the menu bar. When it first got up there, it had some problems, many of you couldn't see anything other than a 'you aren't allowed here' message. You gotta just learn to laugh when stupid stuff like that happens! There is a method to the madness, though, and it's about time I let you all in on it. Many of you will recall the "Thread of the Week" that we had going on up until it broke a few months back. With full intentions of fixing up that soon, here's the rest of it. The driving reason for the TotW, of course, is to give recognition to the great articles that people have posted on CoinTalk. There's so much information in there that it's a great shame to let it all drift down into the oblivion of the second, third, etcc. page of threads. So, first there was a Hall of Fame type page to show all the ones that got voted TotW. That wasn't enough, IMO. So, one of the great features with this new version of the forum software is the ability to take a post and make it into a feature article on the home page. Now, you can see where I'm going. The next step is to create a section on Home for all of these great articles. So, instead of slipping away as more and more new threads push the TotW quality ones down the list, we'll have a section at the Home where we can easily access to them anytime we wish. Naturally, where any new feature comes into play there's always wrinkles to iron out. I think I have most of them down now, but one. A few of you have seen this too. When there's an article on the Home section, it's confusing to know where the "comments" are. These TotW posts started out as discussion threads, and that won't go away. The problem is that by default the software creates the 'comments' which will be confusing because there's already a discussion thread. So, it's going to be harder to find where to actually post, and I need to make sure that all the replies to an article get to the same place, no split discussions. I'm working on it! So, there it is, in a nutshell. I'm thinking that everyone is going to like this.
Funny, I was just about to post "So this is the big addition you were talking about" Seems like a neat idea. How will a post reach article status, in other words, how will one vote it up and what is the number of votes it needs to be included, and will past TOTW threads be articles? Will all great threads from now on, be created into articles, or will it be a competition of votes, like the previous TOTW award, and whatever thread gets the most votes, is awarded the TOTW?
I think we'll have to have some editorial control too. I can't remember any real problems, but we know that votes can be manipulated and we want this section to show the best of CoinTalk in terms of the quality of the information. So, there could be posts that won the TotW but not put into the Home section, and there could be ones that make it to Home but didn't with TotW. That's all undecided though, just want to keep it flexible enough to make it work for everyone.
A great plan!! Thanks for the "overview" of what seems to be an appropriate manner for presenting those posts which may be of general interest to the relatively silent viewing public, rather than just posts which may possibly have been selected by a vocal clique. Your thoughtful consideration is appreciated, as are your efforts. :thumb:
