Are livestream posts discoverable?
May 18, 2021 12:37 PM - Subscribe
I was checking earlier if there was any Eurovision post on FanFare and didn't see one. So I figured there wasn't. Then I saw a link on the blue to this livestream post! Then I tried to see if I could find that post on my own.
It doesn't show up on the main FF page, the FF Talk page, or the Watercooler page. You can get to it indirectly through the Clubs page if you're looking specifically for a Eurovision club and click through. It's not on the archives page. It does show up on search if you look for it specifically. The only place it appears directly is on the Recent Comments page, since by now it's had a few comments. Which is good, except took me a few years to realize the Recents Comments page even existed (I mostly browse MF on mobile, and the mobile UI for accessing the different page views is also pretty undiscoverable, at least on firefox, which is a whole other issue).
Anyway, is there a way for people to easily come across these special event posts that I'm missing? This isn't the first time I've accidentally happened on a link to a post I'm interested in that I would never have found otherwise, or thought to look for.
It doesn't show up on the main FF page, the FF Talk page, or the Watercooler page. You can get to it indirectly through the Clubs page if you're looking specifically for a Eurovision club and click through. It's not on the archives page. It does show up on search if you look for it specifically. The only place it appears directly is on the Recent Comments page, since by now it's had a few comments. Which is good, except took me a few years to realize the Recents Comments page even existed (I mostly browse MF on mobile, and the mobile UI for accessing the different page views is also pretty undiscoverable, at least on firefox, which is a whole other issue).
Anyway, is there a way for people to easily come across these special event posts that I'm missing? This isn't the first time I've accidentally happened on a link to a post I'm interested in that I would never have found otherwise, or thought to look for.
This was a problem and one we made the wrong decision on. The Eurovision post was made early, it scrolled off the front page, it wasn't discoverable via search and we should have put a banner up announcing it instead of just putting it on the sidebar. We'll figure out why it wasn't findable via search and try to rectify this.
posted by jessamyn at 3:51 PM on May 24, 2021
posted by jessamyn at 3:51 PM on May 24, 2021
Thanks. I didn't want to make a MetaTalk post about it because I think it's pretty low-priority compared to some other things I expect are on frimble's queue. But for what it's worth, my vote is really for "no more second-class posts" - this has happened before with other events and for the life of me I don't see any benefit to not treating these like normal FF posts in every way. They don't get listed on the Archives page either, which - why not? It can be fun and fascinating to look through old event posts!
On re-read - the eurovision posts (there were ultimately 3 of them) didn't scroll off the front FF page, which currently goes back to May 12. They just never showed up there in the first place, because for some bizarre reason special events posts don't. Search did work - it just didn't work on a human psychology level, because it never occurred to me to use the search engine for a post that by the logic of every other part of metafilter should have been on the front page if it existed. Only later, after I randomly came across a comment linking to it, did I remember that special events posts are treated bizarrely and that this isn't the first time I've missed out on them.
posted by trig at 12:39 AM on May 25, 2021 [3 favorites]
On re-read - the eurovision posts (there were ultimately 3 of them) didn't scroll off the front FF page, which currently goes back to May 12. They just never showed up there in the first place, because for some bizarre reason special events posts don't. Search did work - it just didn't work on a human psychology level, because it never occurred to me to use the search engine for a post that by the logic of every other part of metafilter should have been on the front page if it existed. Only later, after I randomly came across a comment linking to it, did I remember that special events posts are treated bizarrely and that this isn't the first time I've missed out on them.
posted by trig at 12:39 AM on May 25, 2021 [3 favorites]
Following up here- the reason is that all the Eurovision posts were being made as Fanfare Club Talk posts attached to the Eurovision Club, which had some advantages (that is, it wasn't wrong for people to post this way) but had the downside that they didn't show up on the main Fanfare page and were hard to find for people not already in Eurovision Club.
Now frimble has changed them over to being Special Events so they should be more discoverable thru normal search.
(Longer term we are looking at a solution that will be better for things like this, but it won't be ready for some time.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:53 AM on June 3, 2021
Now frimble has changed them over to being Special Events so they should be more discoverable thru normal search.
(Longer term we are looking at a solution that will be better for things like this, but it won't be ready for some time.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:53 AM on June 3, 2021
Thanks, LM! I don't feel like there's any rush at all about this particular issue, and I hope it doesn't get dealt with before the more meaningful tech changes that are hopefully in the queue.
posted by trig at 5:05 PM on June 11, 2021
posted by trig at 5:05 PM on June 11, 2021
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posted by Urtylug at 10:05 AM on May 23, 2021