The "trending" sorting option

Recently, a new sorting option was introduced for comments, called trending. It works similarly to the Computer Programming section's hot list for projects. However, for some people, it's the default option. This should definitely be changed. Since comments almost never get as many votes as a program on the hot list, transferring it to comments doesn't work well, causing the trending tab to become similar to the recent tab. From my experience, the recent tabs typically have unhelpful questions. Meanwhile, the top voted questions are almost always the most helpful, but are now being hidden behind an option some people might not know exists.

I have three solutions for this:

1: Make trending not the default option for everyone. The simplest approach.
2: Change the algorithm a bit. Make it favor votes more and "recency" (is there a word for this?) less
3: Revamp the algorithm entirely. Make it so that comments that were voted recently are shown first, regardless of when they were created.

May 06, 2023 01:51

Agreed. I believe that, often times, the highest voted answers & questions are the good ones. Frankly, posts on Khan Academy don't really often get enough votes to even make a trending tab a good option. I just really have no actual clue why it was introduced.

Laurie @KA

May 08, 2023 17:32
Edited

Hi everyone, I wanted to let you know that the team had similar observations as you after launch, and did deploy a change last week to increase how we are weighting community interactions for the Trending sort.

That said, it's not retroactive and will only count for posts and interactions going forward, so it might take a bit for you to notice any changes. Please keep the feedback coming!

Electric Dolphin ⚡️🐬

May 11, 2023 16:54
Edited

I have been seeing more quality posts on the trending option, but I'm still seeing low-quality posts when scrolling down a bit. In addition, a lot of the questions are duplicates of questions which are already answered on the top voted list.

I've also seen a pretty helpful question that's already pretty far down the list, despite being posted only 8 days ago and having 5 votes, although it is possible that the change was rolled out later than it was posted.

The "trending" sorting option

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