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A user on EL&U meta has told us we now have a page with questions that are our "Greatest Hits". (Here is the link)

The "Greatest Hits" page has the following info:

Questions that got a large amount of views or a large amount of feedback.

The current algorithm divides the number of page views with the total amount of question and answer feedback received (adding a bonus for high view counts), excluding questions with less views than the median :- 722.

Apparently, according to AI, the "greatest hit" (?) question of all time is the following

enter image description here

What is the best way to express interest in a job in a cover letter?

  • That's supposed to be EL&U greeting card to the world? Do we, the users, those who have contributed most, not have a say on this?
  • How do I find the Greatest Hits page without resorting to the link above?

I've been told that it is not a new feature. Here is the related post on MetaSE

What should we do about Greatest Hits?

Even knowing that the feature is not new and it has been discussed, I do not consider my question to be duplicate. But if you want to close it as such, so be it.

UPDATE 6 September 2020

Thanks to some unexpected activity, my attention was drawn back to this post. I am glad to say that the aforementioned "greatest hit" answer was closed by EL&U users soon after and no longer appears on the page. It has been replaced by What does the phrase “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish” mean? with 81 upvotes and over 600K views, a more admirable (and sensible) example of a "greatest hit" than its predecessor. Saying that, I still don't understand why highly-upvoted posts with >800,000 views are not better represented. I'll chalk it up as one of life's great mysteries.

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    It does seem to have a lot of views .... and it smells like there's two problems, I either didn't know, or totally forgot that page was a thing (so no one ever finds it) and the selection method for those who do seems, yes, kinda janky
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 6:23
  • After second reading the question, I don't know what you ask here exactly. Can you please clarify, what is your actual question? All you say is "there is no link" and "it's not a dupe of some other question".
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 6:42
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    I think its the lack of link, and the lack of relevance of the 'greatest hit' to what a new site user should find...
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 6:58
  • So this is a mix of two questions. The lack of a feature-request tag confused me. Anyway, you can't ask both for "Add a link to the page somewhere" and "Do we, the users, those who have contributed most, not have a say on this?". Each should be a separate question, one tagged as feature request and one as a discussion.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 6:58
  • All unlinked pages can be found here
    – rene Mod
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 6:59
  • I answered the main question. But if you want to request a link to be added, it should come as a separate feature request.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 7:05
  • @ShaWiz thanks for the answer but I will not be posting a separate question. What do I do? Copy and paste this and add only the first bullet point? It's not worth the hassle and I don't see why the community cannot discuss the issue once the first question has been resolved.
    – Mari-Lou A Слава Україні
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 7:08
  • @Mari-LouA that's the thing. Feature request is not a discussion. It should be a clear request to add/remove/change something. Anyway... all good, if someone will want, they can also post such a request any time.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 7:10

2 Answers 2

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Do we, the users, those who have contributed most, not have a say on this?

No, you don't have an say on this. That page belongs to the lurkers, to the anonymous crowd that also like to click on the voting buttons. You could use that page to learn what the internet values most totally based on content. If you, as a user, don't think a post should be there then you should write / curate the content better so those better posts collect views to replace the current ones on that page.

How do I find the Greatest Hits page without resorting to the link above?

It is unlinked so you can only reach it by constructing that url in the addressbar of your browser. Ironically the page is linked for Stack Overflow from List of unlinked pages on Stack Exchange sites. I have searched for a user script that might add this link for you but on Stack Apps.se no one seem to have taken on that task.

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  • If you, as a user, don't think a post should be there then you should write / curate the content better so those better posts collect views to replace the current ones on that page Judgmental much? The really interesting stuff is curated, but we (users) cannot dictate to visitors what question they will click on. Unless you know a trick or two, then please share :)
    – Mari-Lou A Слава Україні
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 7:31
  • Furthermore, you'll find that the first two pages are questions posted earlier than 2014. Older questions tend to accumulate more views, but please note that the greatest hit question only has 17 upvotes. What do you propose that users on EL&U do? Downvote a perfectly legitimate question? Edit it to make it less appealing? What about writing up a duplicate for #14 question to "Any other good way of saying “Happy Birthday”? and/or ask the community to delete it as being off-topic? Which today it would be, but it has its place in the archives, just not on the Greatest Hits page.
    – Mari-Lou A Слава Україні
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 7:43
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    @Mari-LouA if anything, that page will learn you what a click-bait title look like. As anonymous votes are the key factor on that page I can only advise ELU users to start an incognito session in their browser and feedback on posts that are not yet a greatest hit but deserve to be ... I'm glad you already noticed my answer and this comment is kind of ridiculous. The option with the least friction would be to make that page redirect to /404 ...
    – rene Mod
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 8:08
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    I do not consider that question to be a click bait title, (I can think of far better titles that could enter HNQ) I am certain that the user posted a genuine and motivated question and I am sure it has helped many visitors in the past and probably in the future too, but I cannot imagine why a question with >800,000 views and only 17 upvotes heads the league table. Yes, I understand it's anonymous votes but the criteria/algorithm used still doesn't make a lot of sense
    – Mari-Lou A Слава Україні
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 8:14
  • @Mari-LouA yep, we agree on that.
    – rene Mod
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 8:19
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There is no link to that page since it's sort of "ever going experiment", which started back in 2011, and Stack Exchange still doesn't know what exactly to do with it. They choose to keep it alive, but not "publish" it officially, guess because they're not sure the algorithm works well enough and won't put not-so-great questions in there.

There are many other such pages, e.g. useful page is the Annotated Posts per site, which also has no link anywhere.

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