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The UI update from a few minutes ago appears to have removed the hot questions tab of the StackExchange dropdown on the top menu bar from all pages except the Stack Exchange homepage. Instead all I have is "Explore our sites"; which is an apparent replacement for the all sites tab on the old interface. I maybe used all sites once a month looking for an appropriate site for something. Hot questions is my primary interface to Stack Exchange and which I normally visit by just reusing an existing SE tab; now appears to be consigned to a page that I find useless forcing me to keep a browser tab open for no reason other than to avoid the current UI regression.

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  • Related: Extend the new Hot Questions sidebar
    – Jeremy T
    Dec 4, 2013 at 19:49
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    @JeremyTunnell In addition to being a much shorter list that sidebar appears to only exist on pages I currently almost never visit. Dec 4, 2013 at 19:53
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    This change SUCKS. "Hot questions" was my go-to spot for intellectual stimulation and was a great way to encourage cross-stack interaction and exploration. If they must, OK, make it less prominent.. but so far I can't find it anywhere. This redesign is ill-thought-out, IMHO.
    – alex gray
    Dec 4, 2013 at 20:47
  • @alexgray That's why I used it/am upset with the change; however I linked to the one, IMO otherwise useless, page where it still exists in the question. I don't know if it was intentionally kept there for some reason; or if it was an oversight and will be removed during the next deployment. Dec 4, 2013 at 21:05
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    "... was a great way to encourage cross-stack interaction and exploration" +1. The drop-down was my first visit every morning. I don't want the drop-down back. I want the functionality/visibility back.
    – kaptan
    Dec 9, 2013 at 19:33

2 Answers 2

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As a workaround, you can always visit:

https://stackexchange.com/questions

And that will give you the equivalent hot question listing that you're missing.

They are sorted by "hotness points" in descending order (hottest first) and you can see exact score by hovering each question's title, e.g.

The list on each site's sidebar just takes the top 12 from this full list.

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    score is displayed when one hovers over the title, it was mentioned somewhere in other question or answer: i.stack.imgur.com/bQBc3.png
    – gnat
    Dec 5, 2013 at 18:19
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Dan, I'm going to status-decline this because we aren't moving the hot network questions back to the top bar.

However, we are planning many improvements and expansions to other pages in the next couple weeks.

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  • When SE first started the top bar beta, devs said they would put the hot questions list back. I am sorry to see it go.
    – user206222
    Dec 6, 2013 at 16:19
  • I love the hot questions stuff. We are planning to make it more prominent than it was in the top bar.
    – Jeremy T
    Dec 6, 2013 at 16:21
  • Ah, that makes sense, sorry. Looking forward to the changes, then!
    – user206222
    Dec 6, 2013 at 16:25
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    If that's the case, the high visibility replacement should've been implemented before removing the top bar list. Dec 6, 2013 at 20:17
  • I'm refraining from accepting until a satisfactory replacement is deployed. Dec 6, 2013 at 20:18
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    Having the hotlist on a separate website means you always have to keep a separate tab or window open to watch the hotlist. With the drop-down, you could inspect the hotlist from anywhere.
    – Kerrek SB
    Dec 8, 2013 at 14:48
  • @DanNeely I just wanted to return back here with an update. You should see hot questions on several sidebars, including the questions page, and we are seeing about a 300% increase in cross site engagement because of the new locations. Any thoughts on the current set up?
    – Jeremy T
    Jan 7, 2014 at 22:51
  • @JeremyTunnell even with 1600 vertical pixels the 5 hot questions on the side of the page are often off the bottom of the screen if scrolled up to where I can see my inbox in the topbar. On a more conventional display with only ~1000-1100px that's most of the time. With only 5 questions I rarely see anything that interests me any more. Not only is my engagement still a small fraction of what it was before the change, but I mostly no longer care. With a single major exception my involvement with the site has been on par with random programming forums found in Google searches. Jan 8, 2014 at 1:08
  • As for the 300% number, as an academic matter I'm curious if it comprises an increase from people who rarely/never used the hot questions dropdown (if they were even aware of it); or also includes at increase from people who were heavily cross site engaged before the change. From the lack of any meta.SE users, who I'd suspect are predominantly in the highly engaged group, saying the liked the change my suspicion is the former is correct; but you're the only ones with the data to answer. Jan 8, 2014 at 1:15
  • @JeremyTunnell Anyway, although it's not what I wanted to hear; thanks for following up. By explicitly confirming that your redesign for people with different use patterns than my own has clearly met your objectives; I know not to waste any of my time hoping that if I refresh the page again I'll discover that you've came to your senses and unbroke it (for me). Jan 8, 2014 at 2:01
  • @DanNeely I'll just add that if you click on the hot network questions title, it will send you to the hot network questions page in which you can browse all of them. If you bookmark this page, I think it might almost get you back to where you were. Still some tweaks left, though, that we hope will move the questions higher on the page.
    – Jeremy T
    Jan 8, 2014 at 16:41

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