Beta: 'Trending' and 'New' tabs in active conversations

[JanineMumsnet]

Hello everyone

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed a new addition to Active Conversations, which is the ‘Trending’ and ‘New’ tabs. We’ve made these changes to (hopefully) to make it easier for you to find interesting and popular threads as you navigate your way around Talk.

The Trending tab will show you the most popular threads being viewed at this moment in time. You already get this from the Trending Talk widget in the sidebar on a desktop device, but this should hopefully give you a more extensive list to choose from.

The New tab will show users a selection of recently created threads - typically these will be threads with fewer than 3 posts. This is all part and parcel of our aim to make parents' lives easier and our hope here is that it will mean that fewer of your posts go unanswered or get lost amid the throng.

Both the Trending and the New tab will mirror your talk preferences for your active conversations feed which you can adjust here. For example, the number of posts shown will be the same as your active feed and if you have selected to hide any topics then threads from these topics should not appear in these tabs.

You'll notice a little 'beta' icon next to the tabs when you first view them, and this is because this is something we are testing, so we absolutely welcome your feedback and please do leave your comments below on this thread.

MNHQ

FancyRibbon has put it very well vis a vis rating threads and how they encourage trolls, also the drawing of attention to the threads most read; didn't Haruki Murakami say "If you only read the books that everyone else is reading you can only think what everyone else is thinking"?!

I have to admit that I don't use 'Unanswered Threads' etc very much. I do look at 'Trending' and 'Discussions of the day'.

BTW, atm the Trending box on my screen is blank.

New isn't as good as Active, but shows threads equally as they only show up there once, unlike Active where they will keep being bumped back up the list. It also means you have a chance of being in a discussion rather than "I can't RTFT because it's so long" (don't post then).

@magimedi and @Spinnaret thanks for flagging. A fix for this is being released shortly. I will let you know when it's released.

@BertieBotts Thanks for the general feedback on the trending tabs. It's good to know your thoughts. We removed DoD from the sidebar widget as we saw this wasn't used as much as trending. Since removing DoD and adding the ability to view more trending threads in the widget we have seen an overall increase in usage. We decided to add a trending tab to active conversations as there was such a huge appetite for these threads, and the trending widget isn't very visible to users on mobile. Overall, we want to give users a wider variety of threads to choose from. Trending won't ever replace 'active' - we just wanted to add more choice. Some people may prefer the trending threads, whereas others may prefer newer threads at the start of the discussion.

@FancyRibbon Trending is the most viewed threads at any given time. To clarify, this certainly isn't a way to weed out the FWR threads - we certainly haven't created an algorithm which would exclude these discussions, nor have we created an algorithm which upweights AIBU threads. As I say, the tab shows the most viewed threads at that moment and it mirrors the threads which appear in the trending widget on desktop devices. We have included an explanation at the top of each tab which explains what each list is.

The idea behind new is to show a mix of the most recent unanswered threads or threads with fewer than 2 replies. If a new (or existing) user posts a question and it goes unanswered, this would make for a poor experience, so we want to make it easier for users to be able to find these threads so they don't get lost amid the throng. We are aware we haven't got the 'new' tab quite right yet, and we are taking on board all the feedback here to improve it and we absolutely using this to make improvements.

Sometimes those tabs are there, but mostly they're not.

Where are they supposed to be? I think they were at the top of the 'Active Topics' page, but seem to be gone now....

Interesting idea, are these changes linked to why the site is glitching so much? Pages constantly loading/reloading for no reason; threads reloading to 'error problem loading' pages. It's happening all the time at the moment, and it's really irritating. It also means that hard to post as pages reload in the middle of typing up comments.

I can't find the tabs. I am looking in the 'what's hot' box?

On a laptop, not app.

Ignore me! You actually have to click Active Conversations

I'll try anything new but am a bit slow on the uptake so bare with me mn!!!
Good on you always innovating this site though.

If I'm going to get any sense out of the 'New' option and find threads I'm actually either interested in or want to read, I'm going to have to hide a heck of a lot more topics than I've got hidden at the moment.

I was getting a slightly different view of the mobile site earlier today with a bookmark icon (too close!) next to the usual 3 dots. However, it was giving me a pop up saying the thread had been added to my watchlist, not bookmarked & then wouldn’t close, so I had to close the window & open a new one. The ‘PM’ option was also in the space where bookmark usually is on the 3 dot menu, which caught me out a few times. Grrr. Down with that sort of thing. 😞

I am getting errors like this fairly regularly tonight. Various topics

Safari on ipad.

Duplicate threads are still showing up in the 'new' tab.

"What's Hot" as a heading for the Trending/Active/I'm on" box??? Seriously??? Can't we be a bit more grown-up?

@Acis we were just testing the wording for that, some audiences would see 'Trending Talk', 'What's hot', 'Trending now' or 'Popular now'. What's hot seems to universally be the worst performing option so we have removed this option now.

@Seeline we're working on a fix for that and I will update when this is released

@BrokenWing and @Dottierichardson these glitches are unrelated to these tests we are running. I promise.

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

But it's not used as much as trending because you made trending appear first, so it was an extra click to go to discussions of the day. And if we changed which one displayed it didn't stick, it just reset to trending the next time you loaded a talk page. So obviously people were going to use that one more. 🙄 That's like displaying one brand of a product on the shop floor and the other in the stock room and then saying people were more likely to buy the shop floor one.

I don't mind a trending tab but hand picked threads are always nice too.

Didn't realise new was only for unanswered. Perhaps worth splitting - recently started, and unanswered.

Hi @BertieBotts we did also think that could be the case, but actually usage overall including both trending and DoDs has increased. For example, if the widget as a whole (DoDs and trending combined) were generating 100,000 thread views per day - 20,000 of that might be to DoD links and 80,000 might be trending links. We are now seeing that by removing DoDs and and simply increasing the number of trending threads available the usage has increased to 120,000 thread views per day (those numbers are made up, but it's just to illustrate the sort of thing we are seeing). In addition, it used to be the case that DoDs would appear first, but this was swapped when we found that usage of the trending links was higher and use of the widget increased even further when we made that change.

We could add DoDs additionally and also add the ability to show more trending threads too, but that seemed a bit unwieldy, but we are always listening to feedback so we certainly aren't wedded to the widget always being this way.

Excellent news re "What's hot", thanks, Janine.

.... except I just scrolled up the page and it's still there

@Acis I know! I am also seeing it. But I am assured it has been removed, so I think there may simply be a delay or it could be caching issue. But rest assured eventually 'What's hot' will be no more. FYI 'Trending Now' was the most popular version.

I'm having a minor problem - having read a thread in Active, I'll press the back button to revert to the list I was working my way down, and the order has changed! For example, initially I'm seeing :

Thread 1
Thread 2
Thread 3
Thread 4 etc

I choose to look at Thread 3 and then click the back button. The page shows

Thread 4
Thread 5
Thread 1
Thread 6
Thread 2

Laptop, Windows 10, Chrome

It's always done that Optimist, I got round it by simply opening interesting looking threads in new tabs. The Active page is static until you reload it, then.

Yes @Optimist1, @Jux is right. Active conversations contains a list of the most recently updated threads so when you go back there may have been posts since you last looked. The thread titles should change colour once you've viewed them so you are able to keep track of what you have already look at.

It really hasn't always done that in my experience! I like to be able to go back to the list in the same order as when I first clicked on it, otherwise interesting looking stuff drops off the bottom - in fact I usually start at the bottom of the page and work up. Until recently the list has stayed in the same order.

It has done that at various times, but the usual behaviour has def been for it to revert on back, rather than refresh. I prefer reverting as well as it means I can read any which caught my eye and then when I've worked my way through the active convos from 5pm or whenever I first come on I can refresh it and get a new set. Having it change every time the page is viewed is disorientating.

Glad I'm not the only one to disagree with @JanineMumsnet, @Acis and @BertieBotts ! It's only a minor niggle, but I liked being able to return to the exact list I'd seen earlier. Definitely haven't been refreshing the page!