Updating the Hot Network Questions List - now with a bit more network and a little less "hotness"!

Question

Some of you may have noticed that we've been making some changes to the Hot Network Questions on the back end over the last week or so. I'm here announcing our first round of changes to how the HNQ works and give you some ideas of why we're starting here and where we're planning to go in the future.

Before I get to that, I want to thank all of you who have participated in this discussion either on Tim's request for input back in October or over the last few years here on MSE. I spent a lot of time working through the suggestions and they really did a lot to help me prioritize what we should work on changing. Also, a huge thanks to Adam Lear who did the actual work making this happen.

Here are the big changes:

There's now a history event created the first time a post appears in the HNQ list.

This allows us to see which questions have been featured and look at data of how being featured impacts the questions and their answers so that we can continue to improve on the HNQ in the future. You can find this information in either the question's timeline (/posts/[postid]/timeline) or the edit history (/posts/[postid]/revisions).

Right now we don't have an event for a post dropping off the list. The concern with this is that questions right on the edge of the list may pop on and off the list several times, as frequently as every fifteen minutes, thus cluttering up the history. We'll look into whether we can find a neat way of achieving this but for now there's another feature that will help with this:

Questions will age out of the list after being on it for 72 hours.

There's a sense of fatigue with some of the questions that live on the HNQ list for long periods of time. To combat that, we'll remove questions that have had their day in the sun (or three days, anyway) to make way for new questions. Three days after a question is added to the HNQ list, it becomes ineligible and will be removed. This won't create a history event for now but it's something that we'd like to add in the future.

Each site can only have a max of five questions on the HNQ list at any given time.

This is a big, much-requested change and we may reduce the number in the future even further. We're starting it higher than some might want (suggestions went as low as one per site) because sites that have had a lot of exposure through the HNQ may see a dramatic drop in visits, so we need to be careful to find the right number here and possibly do some testing at different levels.

This number is also configurable on a per-site basis, so if a site wants to reduce their HNQ footprint, we can lower it even more, even to zero if a site wishes to be excluded entirely. Sites will need to go through a meta discussion before requesting this change and it will be up to the site itself to request a change rather than having the limit imposed upon it (unless we lower the maximum for the entire network). So for example, Stack Overflow can't vote to kick Movies & TV off the list entirely because they don't want to see spoilers for the last season of Game of Thrones, but Movies & TV can ask that fewer of their questions be shown so that they can devote sufficient time to those that are.

User preference to remove HNQ sidebar section globally

Your user profile settings tab got a bit more crowded today. You now have the option to turn off the HNQ List widget in the right hand sidebar. If you don't want to see the HNQ list, you don't have to! So, if this is what you've been dreaming of for years, head over to the sidebar section of your preferences and change it! The HNQ list is viewable by default for all users.

There are a few reasons we're starting with this solution:

• It'll work on every site and every device you use.
• It's something we could implement relatively quickly and get a reliable result.

There are a few things it doesn't do:

1. Doesn't let you show or hide the HNQ list on different sites or devices.
2. Isn't an option for non-logged-in users.
3. Doesn't let you customize which sites you see by either a whitelist or blacklist.

While I'd like to solve 1 and 2 by making it possible to collapse the section in the sidebar on the page and saving that state as a cookie, that will take a bit more design work so we're putting it on hold for now. Solving #3 is likely very complicated to implement so we don't have plans for it for the time being.

Title blacklists will be configurable on a per-site basis.

Right now we rely on regex to blacklist words from all sites. This is troublesome when words have different meanings depending on context. So, we'll be able to adjust blacklists both across the network and on each site individually.

Moderators have the ability to remove questions from the HNQ List.

There are times when the hotness formula selects a question that a site would rather not have featured. Up until now, the only recourse that was available was to close the question (which may be appropriate anyway but isn't ideal when done purely to manage traffic), or to do nothing. We're putting the power in the hands of our moderators to remove questions that don't set a good example for their sites. I recommend each site have a meta discussion with guidance for moderators about when - if ever - a question should be removed.

Once a moderator excludes a question, it can't be selected again, so don't think of this as a temporary "hide this question" option. In general, we recommend that you exclude questions that attract negative attention to your sites, that is, questions that are controversial, start large amounts of debate or arguments or even edit wars. Removing a question should not be a substitute for fixing it! Remember that it may take several hours for a moderator to respond to a flag so do what you can, first:

• If the title seems click-baity or doesn't adequately describe the question, edit it!
• If the body is full of spelling or grammatical errors, fix them!
• If the body contains unnecessary detail or salacious content, see if it can be removed without impacting the question.
• If the question is unclear or broad, vote to close it. In most cases it will be better to close a question and wait for it to be improved rather than asking for it to be removed.

This tool is a big gun and should be used sparingly. Don't reach for it if you think the question can be fixed.

When moderators kick a post off the HNQ list there will be a delay of up to fifteen minutes or so as the list is cached but the question will be removed the next time it runs. In addition, an event will be logged in the post timeline and edit history that indicates when it was removed and by whom. This will help us understand what sort of posts are unwelcome in the HNQ list on different sites.

At this point in time, mods can only use this tool on a post currently in the HNQ list - they can't use it preemptively to prevent a question from being added to it.

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What we aren't doing, at least, not yet

There's a lot that we're not getting to in this round of changes or that we're hoping will become less of a problem with some smaller adjustments than some of the big asks we've gotten in the last few years. We know that there's still work to do but these changes will address the most immediate needs and give us the information we need to make changes in the future that are based on data rather than anecdotal evidence.

The data will help us see how effective changes to the formula are as we make them. You'll notice that we're not changing the formula itself for the time being and that's intentional. There have been some really great and interesting ideas floating around for a while, and we may try them out and see how they impact which questions are selected and how long those questions stick around.

We investigated having a review queue for this and, for now, this won't be possible. There are technical problems but also a concern that only sites with active reviewers will ever have posts approved to appear on the list. We'd like to see how much we can improve things by following the path we're currently investigating first. Some other adjustments, like setting a minimum question age so that users can have time to edit or close a question before it is eligible to appear on the list or preventing locked questions from appearing are other options we're considering for the near future.

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That's the bulk of it. There's absolutely ideas we're not implementing I haven't mentioned due to wanting to keep this post reasonably short. If you have any questions about something - whether it's a feature I've mentioned here or not - feel free to ask about it in an answer.

Yes, I've avoided mentioning IPS in this question. If you're interested in that site in relation to the HNQ, please see their meta. The TL;DR there is: if they want back in, they can get back in but it's up to them.

Answer 1

Is it possible to have a moderator inbox notification of questions making it to HNQ? If some mods feel that would be too much, allow them to opt out or expect them to be able to ignore it. If this is too noisy, maybe collect all HNQ events from the past 24 hours into a single inbox item or something. Perhaps we could just have a single "New items on HNQ" notification which contains a link to a list and is bumped whenever needed, never leaving more than one item in the inbox. Or maybe the HNQ entry event could trigger a flag. There are various implementation alternatives (like a chat feed as mentioned in the comments), but I would like some kind of a notification for the site mods.

As a mod, I'd be happy to be notified so I can check that the question in question is well moderated and generally presentable. The most heated discussions I remember seeing on the site I moderate have been initiated by newcomers, many of them brought in through HNQ. I can manage that amount of heat, but I would appreciate being forewarned. The questions that need most cleaning up are among the ones that have been in HNQ.

I imagine this would be easy to implement and would have an effect somewhat similar to an HNQ review queue. If this is too hard to implement, a mod-accessible (or why not generally accessible?) list of current and recent HNQ questions would be nice, although I would prefer active notification myself.

Answer 2

Thank you for this.

All of these changes are between positive and extremely positive, and they show the change of stance that we were asking for last year.

There's still much more to be done, as well as missing historical data that will make it harder for SE communities to evaluate the effects of the changes, but everything here is a step forward.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this feature evolves, and to the next round of engagement for further design iterations!

Answer 3

In practice, how does the "at most five from a given site" work?

I can think of two possibilities:

1. Once a site has five HNQs, no more can hit HNQ until one of those five drops off.
2. The "hottest" five questions at any time are able to go to HNQ.

I guess option 1 is much easier for you to code, but option 2 is much preferable. If your Q&A gets a lot of quick votes and would be HNQ eligible, it shouldn't have to wait 3 days just because some other questions got there first. So it would be nice to know which of these is what actually happens.

Answer 4

First of all, these changes sound great, so I just want to say thanks!

Having said that, could we also consider adding a feature, perhaps one that can be enabled on a per-site basis, that would temporarily increase the rep threshold to cast an upvote to the same as that required to cast a downvote while a question is on HNQ? Or, alternatively, not count the association bonus when computing the rep requirement for upvoting while the question is on HNQ?

Particularly on the sites that tend to cover a lot of controversial topics (Politics and Skeptics come to mind, for example,) there has been a longstanding problem of votes changing from meaning "This answer is useful, well-researched, and answers the question that was asked" to meaning "This answer agrees with my biases" when a question hits HNQ. The flood of users who have never contributed to the site and aren't familiar with how it operates can't cast downvotes, but they can (and do) cast upvotes because of their association bonus.

The upvotes coming in from 101 rep users who aren't familiar with the site can drown out the downvotes attracted from the site's users on a poor-quality answer, since the people coming in from HNQ off of massive sites like SO often vastly outnumber the regular users of the site who can downvote.

The reason that I suggest this being site-specific is that I don't think this is a major problem on the sites that don't get a lot of controversial content and, indeed, the extra upvotes might even be helpful on those sites. For example, a large portion of my SE usage has been on Aviation and I don't really see this as a problem there. But I've seen it again and again and again on sites that frequently cover more controversial topics.

Answer 5

bug status-completed

There is a race condition between

At this point in time, mods can only use this tool on a post currently in the HNQ list - they can't use it preemptively to prevent a question from being added to it.

and

questions right on the edge of the list may pop on and off the list several times, as frequently as every fifteen minutes

If a moderator discovers (via a flag or whatever) that a question is suffering from HNQ problems and should be excluded, but happens to examine the question during a fifteen-minute interval where the question has been bumped off of the HNQ list, then the "remove from HNQ" tool is not available. So the moderator goes to bed, the question works its way back onto HNQ, and the next day there is a mess on the question that could have been avoided.

It would be nicer if the "remove from HNQ" tool was available on all questions that (a) have an "added to HNQ" event in their history (b) which is younger than the 72-hour time cutoff.

Answer 6

If someone notices that a question's attracting "negative attention", they may well suspect that it's on the HNQ list: they shouldn't need to search that whole list to confirm that it is, prior to excluding it or suggesting its exclusion. (The edit history will only show whether a question once appeared on the HNQ list & whether it was excluded.)

If a question is currently on the HNQ list, it would be useful to have some visible indication of that on its main page.

Answer 7

Right now we don't have an event for a post dropping off the list. The concern with this is that questions right on the edge of the list may pop on and off the list several times, as frequently as every fifteen minutes, thus cluttering up the history.

Maybe make every question only have at most one "Achieved HNQ" event and one "Knocked Off HNQ" event?

So if a question has been on the HNQ list and then bumped off, it'll have both Achieved and Knocked Off events. If this same question somehow winds back up on the list, instead of creating a new event, why not remove the Knocked Off event? It'll make the history look cleaner and for all intents and purposes will be mostly correct (every post with an Achieved event will eventually have a matching Knocked Off event).

I think this is more informative than only having an Achieved event and not so crazy that it'll confuse everyone.

Answer 8

Cut down on the HNQ effect by reducing the number of answers that go into the hotness equation.

Right now between a laser-focused question with one good answer and a broader, more controversial question, the broader question will stay hotter longer because as more answers are added, the hotter the question gets up to a limit of 10 answers.

So a question will go hot and as people come in from HNQ and add more answers it creates a positive feedback loop that makes the question that much hotter.

Reducing the number of answers in the hotness equation would even the playing field between the narrow and the broader questions and I think would encourage better and more tightly focused questions and answers.

Answer 9

Have the "top dogs" concede part of their HNQ slots to one of the "much smaller dogs" once a week

Having 5 slots each is very nice as it allows for more candidates sites to reach it. Yet... I'm guessing that a lot of the much smaller beta sites won't be seen on it for some weeks/months.

I'm guessing that out of the 140+ sites, some four categories can be made:

• HNQ regulars (see the answer to Which sites appear most often in the Hot Network Questions list?), who probably don't have much to worry about;
• a couple of sites who aren't "top dogs", yet do appear rather regularly (Movies, Arqade come to mind);
• sites with the occasional HNQ (rather beta sites, let's say Chess and Literature for instance);
• and sites who never, ever go there (in one year of using SE, I'm not sure I've ever seen a Coffee question on HNQ).

As part of the goal is to give the whole network a chance, it would seem sporting that the "regulars" offer a chance to the fourth category to get some more attention, say with a workflow like the following:

1. At the end of each week, out of the 10 sites that had the most questions on HNQ during this week, 3 (let's call that parameter N) get selected. For the first 3 (charityDays) days of the following week, they'll have 4 slots max
2. An algorithm determines which 3 (N) sites haven't been on the HNQ for the longest
3. the "free" slots are given to, say, the current hottest question on the sites from point 2., they're being granted a minimum amount of time on HNQ (grantedTime)
4. when said minimum amount of time has expired, the question is given an "offset" amount of hotness points, and is now treated as a "normal" HNQ question. If it fades out, it fades out, it had its chance!
5. In the meantime, algo from 2. re-determines the lowest sites, puts them on the now free special slot, and repeat until charityDays has passed.

For the minimum repartition to be fair, I'm guessing charityDays has to be a multiple of grantedTime. Obviously, N, grantedTime, charityDays are open to suggestions, 3 days might be too long, the figures are just here for the example. (and if the wording of "charity" days offends anyone, feel free to change it)

Of course all the sites can still make their way to HNQ the "normal" way during that time, may they be of the scale of Stack Overflow or Augur.

The top dogs would probably not have much harm from this, as they're healthy sites; there's the "random" selection which partly ensures Worldbuilding doesn't have to concede a slot four weeks in a row; and they get their normal chance back after charityDays have passed.

It sounds like a win for the "little" sites, who are kind of ensured to be on the list at some point, and the "sites who haven't been on HNQ for the longest" should shuffle itself as having been on HNQ during week n means you don't get a "free spot" the following week.

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I do realize this is overseeing some of the "bad" effects of the HNQ, for instance, the touchy subjects IPS/The Workplace have to handle. This suggestion treats the HNQ as some "chance" which would help the target sites to get some needed traffic; as my guess is that they're more niche-y subjects with less dire real-life consequences. Obviously, that's partly a generalization.

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Possibly, some of the "top dog" communities won't like it, and feel it's unfair, that their righftul slots are theirs, etc, etc. I think it's only sporting to give the chance you have to someone who doesn't, and I'll quote this page of an absolutely great comic:

They didn't realize that their freedoms​ were astonishing luxuries that the rest of us could never dream of. Their baseline decency is an incredible paradise for most of us.

Answer 10

What about the other Stack Overflow sites, the ones not in English? As two recent questions have mentioned, these sites have started to show up in the Hot Network Questions. (This could also apply to the Russian in Russian site, although it's very unlikely to happen in practice.)

I heard that this is because of a change; instead of looking at the body and title to see if something is in English, only the title is looked at. Programming languages are mostly based on English as are the errors so it's all too easy for the title to be mostly English when nothing else in the post is.

Because nothing else in the post (or the site) is in English, it's a long shot that anyone coming from other sites would be interested in it. The HNQ list doesn't even show up on the non-English Stack Overflow sites! Are these sites supposed to be on the HNQ list? Or would they have to elect to remove themselves from it? Ideally I'd be hoping for something more customizable, so that people who speak these languages can see them (and maybe also limit them to people who are interested in programming too?).

Answer 11

Each site can only have a max of five questions on the HNQ list at any given time.

So wait, unless I'm missing something, home SFF currently has six questions on the list (warning, some may be Captain Marvel spoilers):

• Why was Goose renamed from Chewie for the Captain Marvel film?
• What is the cause of the Apocalypse in The Umbrella Academy?
• Was Luke Skywalker the leader of the Rebel forces on Hoth?
• Whose blood did Carol Danvers receive, Mar-vell's or Yon-Rogg's in the movie?
• What was the Kree's motivation in Captain Marvel?
• What was the implant device Captain Marvel was using?

I'd blame caching, but the way I always understood it, the list is refreshed every fifteen minutes, so I thought the hasRemainingSlotsOnHNQ() check is done at this time, but maybe it isn't? In any case, the "five max, any time, any place" doesn't seem to apply here.

To clarify, I'm just wondering if maybe a parameter wasn't set right, or, if it is indeed caching, shouldn't an additional check/reduce cache time/something be done, to make sure to respect the "at any given time" wording?

Answer 12

These are good changes. Thanks for making them!

One of the factors in determining whether a question is "hot" is the combined score of the answers. Questions without answers aren't eligible for HNQ.

With a history event indicating when a question went "hot," it becomes possible to consider the scores on pre-HNQ and post-HNQ answers separately. I propose that downvotes on answers added after a question has been promoted should be given some extra weight in determining whether a question remains "hot." A question which gets promoted because of an exceptionally good answer, but then attracts a bunch of negative-scoring or controversial answers, is a question that is perhaps not benefiting from the broader exposure.

An alternative version of this proposal would be to give all downvotes more weight than all upvotes when determining "hotness." That would give the local community more influence than newcomers and passersby in determining which questions remain hot, since newcomers will generally not have the downvote privilege, without necessarily requiring someone to manually cast and respond to a flag.

Answer 13

Right now we don't have an event for a post dropping off the list. The concern with this is that questions right on the edge of the list may pop on and off the list several times, as frequently as every fifteen minutes, thus cluttering up the history. We'll look into whether we can find a neat way of achieving this but for now there's another feature that will help with this:

Questions will age out of the list after being on it for 72 hours.

Adding history entries every time a question bounces on or off the list could be noisy, as you say. For the sake of SEDE, could you add an event once when a question becomes ineligible? You're already doing that for one of the two ways this can happen -- a moderator kicks it out. Can you add the other one, when the question ages out? Yes we can figure it out ourselves based on dates, but having an explicit "exited HNQ" entry for every "entered HNQ" entry means query-writers don't need to do conditional logic (if there's an exit event use that, else do date math). It might also help people scanning a post's history on the site (timeline or revision history).

Answer 14

Thank you for the changes! May I suggest also allowing the OP to remove their post from the HNQ?

Not all posts need to be under a spotlight as they may attract excessive or undesirable attention and sometimes the OP may be aware of that.

Answer 15

The one feature that I have always wanted is the ability for me as a user to block certain sites from showing up. I have no interest in voting Movies & TV off the hot list, but I personally never want to see it there for several reasons that are individual to me. I want to see the hot list for the various technology sites, though, so I'd rather not have to turn the feature off entirely.

Answer 16

feature-request Make it easier for moderators to find flags cast on HNQ.

Make a visual indication or some way to filter / prioritize for moderators flags that are cast on hot questions - or more precisely on questions having HNQ entry in history, being open and eligible by age. This would help moderators handle such flags in more timely manner. (This very request is sort of follow-up to discussion of a particular flag that was handled slower than desirable because it was buried under flags on regular posts.)

It would be unreasonable and unfair to expect flaggers and moderators to do cumbersome legwork of checking and communicating if the flag is on the hot question when all the needed information is already available in the system and can be obtained and communicated automatically.

Worth noting that 100+ upvotes to this answer suggest that there is generally high demand to improve mod tooling with regards to maintaining hot questions.

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^{I don't have strong opinion on whether to do this to flags on answers and comments or only on questions. That said, I am inclined to think that it would be better to have it for all kind flags because I regularly see reasonable questions (not worthy of any flags) polluted with troublesome answers and comments from HNQ passers-by.}

Answer 17

status-completed

Questions must now be at least eight hours old before they can be added to the HNQ list. ~Catija

feature-request Set a minimum age for posts before they're eligible for the HNQ list.

^{(this idea was already discussed elsewhere - posting it here because it looks like a very worthy addition to that "master list")}

First time I saw it proposed by SE CM (Shog9) in a discussion of particular hot question at TWP meta:

_{delay non-SO questions by some significant period of time - a day or more maybe - to give folks time to perform the sorts of cleanup and moderation that necessarily take longer here than on SO...}

Later I saw similar idea mentioned by another SE CM (Catija) at IPS meta and here at MSE:

_{This gives users on a site the chance to edit the post so that it's suitable for the potential network-wide consumption or close it if it's eligible for closure - and to even get it edited and reopened! It also gives the experts on site the chance to vote on - or even delete - answers. Essentially, more eyeballs will mean it's less likely that a problematic post will make it to the HNQ list. For your moderators, there's a reduced need for constant vigilance when you've got a, say, six-hour delay before a complicated question can start causing problems...}

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My own take on above suggestions is, while I agree with them in general, I think we could start experimenting with smaller delay, like 3-5 hours (and only increase it if it later turns out that it is indeed not enough). By design, questions get hot when they quickly start attracting more than average attention of site regulars so that we can reasonably expect that in the absence of "deafening" upvotes, answers and comments from sidebar passers-by this attention of active regulars can be also quickly focused on the needed cleanup actions.

Another thing I'm not comfortable with is strict focus on smaller sites. While I agree that waiting for a full day would make no sense for Stack Overflow (though I also can't see how it could be harmful), I think it still could benefit of some smaller delay like for a few hours. In particular, this would give dupehammer holders better chance to close duplicates which sometimes pop up in hot questions from SO (and kind of incentivise asking and answering obvious duplicates due to extra upvotes coming to HNQ).

Answer 18

Making the new ability to hide the HNQ list have a local setting for the computer/browser would be nice for people who like to hide it at work/school to limit distractions from questions that appear in the list but like to see it at home and other locations where the distractions are not as big of an issue.

Answer 19

Since other feature requests are being made here, I'll go ahead and add this here instead of making a new FR question.

feature-request Factor bounties into the hotness formula.

I know that bounties aren't directly a sign of hotness -- they're not votes or views or any of that other stuff that feeds into the formula. But bounties are requests for attention, just like hot questions in the hot list. Further, with bounties somebody has paid for publicity, which usually means that it's a harder or more specialized question. (Easy questions get good answers quickly and people can move on, after all.)

For example, this question of mine currently has a 500-point bounty and requires specialized tools knowledge that many users don't have. (If you say that it should have been asked elsewhere, that would just shift the problem.)

The HNQ list is all about drawing attention, just like bounties. Can they work together? I'm asking that the presence of a bounty feed into the hotness formula, not that a bounty is enough for the HNQ. (Bountying that -10 question won't help.)

It might be reasonable to set a minimum bounty amount; on my sites there aren't too many bounties at a time, but larger sites might be swimming in 50-point bounties. If so, you might want to only factor in bounties of 100 or 200 points or whatever value the data suggests is a natural breakpoint. I think we can find a way to let bounties influence the HNQ without having them take over.

Answer 20

I don't have ready access to the numbers and am uncertain if I can look it up, but I have observed a significant difference in apparent traffic on the site as a whole on weekends. As such, if possible, questions that spend most/all of their 72 hours over the weekend should get a minor extension to increase their exposure.

Answer 21

feature-request

Allow excluding specific sites from specific sites' Hot Network Questions list

(To be clear here, this isn't a user preference, but rather a site-wide preference. As stated in the question, the team is not currently planning to build a user preference for this purpose, so I'm not proposing that here, but a lesser version.)

After reading through some per-site meta posts on the Interpersonal Skills site, I came across an answer which says:

Many sites on the network are technical/professional sites, and some segments of their userbases don't want or need to see our questions.

According to a famous micro-study by ArtOfCode, many new or anonymous users may not know what "Hot Network Questions" is:

HNQ was one of the most confusing features mentioned. On a page full of questions about gardening, looking at the sidebar and seeing questions about Star Wars and Windows 10 next to each other confused my test group.

As far as I can tell, that was partly at play when provoking the original complaint that resulted in the site becoming ineligible to contribute questions there. Unfortunately, this resulted in a massive drop in answers and caused the site to remain much more stagnant than before. I feel that the previous configuration helped provide more diverse answers to questions, which is very helpful there, whereas currently, most of its answers aren't from as diverse perspectives as before.

In my opinion, it's important to try and strike a balance both ways: having that site listed on technical/professional sites may not be ideal, not only due to a lack of understanding as to what the list is among new users, but also because of irrelevant titles and other reasons mentioned there, but questions on the site should be featured on other sites where others may have an interest in answering (e.g. sites in the "life" category).

For these reasons, it should be possible for a site's HNQ questions to be included on specific sites or site categories, but excluded on others, i.e. for instance, not show HNQs from, say, Ask Ubuntu, on the list on Interpersonal Skills (just a random pick).

Answer 22

feature-request Just for the record and to avoid losing this nice idea:

As user Mathieu Guindon suggested in a comment (with 44 upvotes at the moment):

There's now a history event created the first time a post appears in the HNQ list. - I smell a hat trigger, maybe even a set of badges.

And I agree, it would be nice to get hats in the winter bash, or even badges - based

• on the number of one's questions that became hot
  • in total,
  • at the same time, or
• on their duration on the HNQ list, for example.

I think it would be a nice way to acknowledge the contribution of content that is/was interesting for many people.

Of course, this has to be applied carefully to make sure it doesn't backfire. Maybe only award questions that stayed the whole 72h in HNQ. That should give the community/mods enough time to remove unwanted questions and thus only award the 'hot but wanted' fraction.

Answer 23

feature-request Adjust hotness score to favor sites that didn't appear in hot list for too long.

Studying data provided by query referred here suggests that 20 sites didn't appear in the hot list for about 3 months. Not even once, go figure. For comparison, data for top site shows that about thousand of their questions have been in the list.

This doesn't look fair and I propose that we somehow account for cases like that.

For that, system could check when it was the last time that question from particular site entered hot list and if it's been longer than say, a week (or two weeks, or month etc) it would somehow boost the score for questions from this site. This would improve their chances of getting into the list.

_{(If it is technically not feasible to do suggested checks and adjustments in real time, this could be scheduled at some regular intervals, say once in a day or in a week etc.)}

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Related: New Resources for Our Stack Exchange Network

Help smaller communities get some exposure in the Hot Network Questions list...

Answer 24

Moderators can remove from the list questions:

that are controversial, start large amounts of debate or arguments or even edit wars.

or

don't set a good example for their sites

Some sites are full of controversial topics, for example, Skeptics. Large amounts of debate happen all the time on controversial topics.

But we are only human and so are moderators. So, how can you ensure that this powerful tool is never misused*? You request that it's used sparingly, but would it be enough?

Also, when a question is removed:

an event will be logged in the post timeline and edit history that indicates when it was removed and by whom

1. Why not ask moderators to explain the reasons why they used the tool and include it in the event? No canned messages.
2. Will you add any other measures to prevent misuse?

_{*Although somewhat uncommon, I've seen moderation tools being misused by users and moderators (for example, closing questions) when they dislike a topic. Said questions were not close-worthy and later on were re-opened without substantial edits.}