Additional "active" question pool for big sites

Question

For the first time, my question got buried instantly (8 views, 1 upvote).

At the time I really needed the help (now solved, unfortunately not via SE), the bounty option was two or three days away.

So after going through this post, editing, getting more views, another upvote and even an answer, I still wasn't happy. Not because OP deleted his answer, but because my question got buried repeatedly.

The combination of similarly affected users and the growth of the site itself results in a vicious circle.

On big sites - like Maths and SO - this could elegantly be taken care of by adding another "active" questions pool, to which the active posts would be distributed evenly (depending on time).

I believe that this would benefit both askers and answerers, as the overall hecticness would be reduced.

Answer 1

I don't think you realize the question volume of Stack Overflow. A 2nd active page would do nothing. With approximately 10,000 new questions per day, that comes out to an average of about 7 new questions per minute. Couple that with about 11,000 new "answers" per day (rough estimate based on the new answers, assuming a large number of deletions) and a virtually limitless number of edits that bump posts, a second active page would keep a post on the first active pages for just a few extra minutes.

This is why Stack Overflow's front page is not an "active" page. Instead, it is replaced by the "Interesting" page, which customized for you based on your preferences and habits on the site.

You can find the details in Stack Overflow Homepage Changes

Here’s how it works. Starting with a list of the last 3,000 active questions:

• drop questions containing any of your ignored tags

• drop closed questions if you lack the reputation required to vote for reopening

• drop questions scoring -4 or lower

Next, apply the following score formula to the remaining questions:

your interesting tags              +1,500 per interesting tag, up to +2,000 total

your top 40 scoring tags       maximum of +1,000 per tag (scaled), up to +2,000 total

question score                      +200 × score, up to +1,000 total

total answer score                 -200 × score, up to -1,000 total

number of answers               -200 × answers, up to -1,000 total

number of views                    -15 × views, up to -1,000 total

question last activity date       -1 × (seconds / 15)

Count it all up and take the top 90 by score.

The idea behind it is to present interesting questions to potential answerers, not give the more crap to read.

This is all being replaced with a new "recommended" tab, but that algorithm that populates it is still a work in progress. You can read more about it in Feedback requested: New "recommended" homepage, phase 3 - algorithm tweaks

Question quality plays a major role on Stack Overflow, so it is important to highlight the good questions to help separate them from the garbage. Questions that are not of good quality are quickly buried.

At the same time, the breadth of Stack Overflow's scope also results in a lot of active questions that are not important to me because I have no interest in the particular language, so it is important to also suppress those questions. Why waste valuable screen space on sometimes I don't care about.

and even this is not good enough at times, which is why Stack Exchange is working on a new recommended front page. You can read the details in Feedback requested: New "recommended" homepage, phase 3 - algorithm tweaks

If you have specific concerns about it, you can express concerns about that algoeithm there. Now if the Math is starting to move too quickly, on its Meta site, you can suggest they move to a different version of the front page as well to help highlight good questions that are interesting to you and people who would be able to answer your questions.

Answer 2

This may seem a bit tangential but I think We're working on a new stat to help convey the reach of your posts here has some valuable information worth reading.

I think you may be viewing the Stack Exchange network as a place designed simply to get your questions answered by having them seen on the/a front page and then responded to.

The bigger picture is building a library of answers that can be discovered and taken advantage of without needing to ask a new question. That enables the Q&As here to reach a much bigger audience.

I think good questions will be quickly found by potential answerers searching for them by strings and tags, and so for me focussing on question quality (body, title and tags) is much more important than trying to have it on a/the front page.