Why is the shopping trending list still showing unrelated threads?

[tnorfotkcab]

how is the shopping trending' list still not working years later?

honestly the random shit it pulls up.... right now 3/7 are nothing to do with shopping

I'm not meaning to be goady here but I am genuinely surprised that anyone bothers even looking at the Shopping trending list. I don't think I ever have. I certainly didn't realise there was a problem with it.

I just wish though that when I go to the MN site the home page wasn't one that consisted of Featured, Trending, and Shopping. Is there any way to have a different Home page?

I really dislike the way MN is trying to direct users to threads that are already popular. Surely directing users to new threads or unanswered threads would be a much more interesting gateway into the site. The current homepage makes me feel as though I am just regarded as a sheep.

Hi tnorfotkcab, and thanks for asking about this.

While some of the threads might seem a bit random, they're appearing in the shopping panel because MNers are discussing and sharing links to products.

The West End shows thread you've flagged contains posts where MNers have posted links to cheap ticket sites, so it seems reasonable for it to appear in the shopping panel.

In the case of the Jehovah's Witnesses thread, someone had posted a link to a 'no cold callers' sign available from Amazon.

We've excluded that thread from the shopping panel by now and we'll keep an eye out for any others that feel out of place.

Thanks again for raising this - and please report any threads that you'd like us to take a look at.