Header update: media frontpage [completed]

r3naissanc3r

Honoured Citizen
Citizen
I have implemented the "media frontpage" idea suggested in this thread. You can now view a list of latest media headlines in the "News" drop-down menu of the header.

The list is currently updated once per day, and the displayed headlines are selected as follows:
1) Most recently created EBC article.
2) Five most recently created private-media articles.
Empasis on "created": it is the creation date that matters, not the latest post. You can hover your mouse over each headline, to see the date when the corresponding article was created.


For (2), I am considering the following options:
a. Set a threshold on the number of articles each newspaper can have on the frontpage, e.g., one per newspaper.
b. Remove articles that are older than some amount of time, e.g., a week.
c. Changing the total number of articles shown to something other than five.

It is also possible to increase the frequency at which the list is updated. I can make it twice per day, or even hourly.

Please let me know what you think. In particular, I am looking for feedback on the criteria for selecting the private-media articles.
 
I would say we should update this hourly, and limit to one article per paper, in addition to having the one week expiration date. Wonderful work, r3n, I love this.
 
Calvin Coolidge said:
I would say we should update this hourly, and limit to one article per paper, in addition to having the one week expiration date. Wonderful work, r3n, I love this.
Update hourly? I know Euro can move fast, but not that fast.
 
Cadmus said:
Calvin Coolidge said:
I would say we should update this hourly, and limit to one article per paper, in addition to having the one week expiration date. Wonderful work, r3n, I love this.
Update hourly? I know Euro can move fast, but not that fast.
Eh, it's not doing any harm. I'm fine with it updating daily, but if we can update hourly, might as well, in my opinion. Unless it's more work for r3n, in which case I retract my statement.
 
Changing the frequency of updates would take me about 2 seconds :p .

The other proposed changes, e.g. limiting the number of articles per newspaper to one or two, would take some coding; but again no more than half an hour's work total. So that shouldn't be an issue either.
 
r3naissanc3r said:
For (2), I am considering the following options:
a. Set a threshold on the number of articles each newspaper can have on the frontpage, e.g., one per newspaper.
b. Remove articles that are older than some amount of time, e.g., a week.
c. Changing the total number of articles shown to something other than five.

It is also possible to increase the frequency at which the list is updated. I can make it twice per day, or even hourly.
Bumping this.

Even if we don't make any of these changes, it may be worth considering when the daily update should happen.

Currently, the update takes place at around 5am ET.
 
I definitely think we need to limit the header to one article per newspaper, if nothing else. Some papers take up two every time they post, or they post very frequently, and crowd out other papers.
 
Calvin Coolidge said:
I definitely think we need to limit the header to one article per newspaper, if nothing else. Some papers take up two every time they post, or they post very frequently, and crowd out other papers.
Agreed. If you look at the current top 5, two are Aex's, two are Theo's (who posts two threads each time for some reason), and one's mine.
 
First of all, as I said on mixlr and other occasions, this new media frontpage is extremely neat. Thanks for your work so far, and thanks for asking for input on future changes. I don't want to get too involved in the private media discussion, but what I'd find useful for the EBC are hourly updates, as Calvin suggested earlier. Assuming there are three articles a week, daily updates can sometimes be a bit limiting to how long a new article is displayed, if the timing isn't done very well.


 
Changed the frequency of updates (all of them) to once every two hours.

Any more thoughts regarding limiting it to one per newspaper?
 
Calvin Coolidge said:
I still think limiting it to one per paper is a good idea. :p
So, can we do that? As I'm looking at it now, all 5 spots are being taken by two newspapers, they pretty much just split up one article each.
 
r3naissanc3r said:
For (2), I am considering the following options:
a. Set a threshold on the number of articles each newspaper can have on the frontpage, e.g., one per newspaper.
As discussed above, this has now been implemented.

Note that, as a result of this change, you should pay some attention to the order in which you create new threads in your newspaper. In particular, if you are making multiple threads at a time, you should create the one you want to appear on the header frontpage last.
 
I don't like this idea because there will definitely be periods of inactivity from all the newspapers in general and this is an incentive for newspapers to be less active than they are naturally. If less than 5 newspapers are active at a given period this means that their articles won't all be on the headers even if they are great and fantastic. This is especially relevant because individual newspaper activity tends to be uneven and in bursts. I get what this is aimed at and feel like I understand especially with the whole multiple threads for the same thing of a recent newspaper why it would wanted, but I think it incentives the wrong things.

On the other hand, this header thing is new so any new exposure is just that new. So it's really not a punishment. But on a third hand, as this does becomes more normal we are really encouraging newspapers to be less active.
 
I don't see how this encourages less activity. If you come out with a new article, then that's the one you should want people to see. If people are in your paper looking around already, they'll find your other new articles if they haven't already seen them, I would think, and then it should work itself out.
 
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