[DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

Summary:

Because you wouldn't give a floating device to an olympic swimmer.

[DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

OptimisticLucio 24 Aug 2022 09:06

iiiiii'm startin' with the man in the mirror

Following a staffchat discussion regarding how to assist/deal with low-performing articles, the topic of article features was brought up. Zyn mentioned having some personal guidelines on how to pick frontpage features, but from what we can tell there are no hard rules of any kind at the moment.

This discussion is for whether we should add rules to staff-chosen article features both on the frontpage and not, and if so what should they be?

The conversation started with a specific rule suggestion will be outlined as a response to this parent post.

Last edited on 24 Aug 2022 09:32 by OptimisticLucio Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

OptimisticLucio 24 Aug 2022 09:10

The first suggestion was to make a hard-cap on the rating an article can have at the time of the feature going up, that being a rating of 100+. (Anything below triple digits is free game.)

As 50% of the site's content is currently below 100, this wasn't seen as too extreme of a measure. Additionally, it was agreed that if such a hard-cap be made, it shouldn't change depending on the article type, since if some type of article typically has less of an audience, we shouldn't make it harder to find said audience.

This idea could help in the obvious form of making lesser-seen articles reach a wider audience, while avoiding the danger of featuring poor/mediocre articles due to the features being hand-picked. Additionally, featuring already well-performing articles can be seen as unnecessary, as you can naturally find said articles in many ways that are not necessarily staff-made - on subreddits, discord servers, twitter, or any other location where SCPs are discussed.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

Meserach 24 Aug 2022 09:29

I think there is a subtle danger here in not highlighting our very best content at least somewhat, in that for the lowest-information readers, especially those newest to the site, it is useful to be able to direct people to things that are very well rated in some way.

That said, arguably Top Rated Pages and its cousins already do this, although I think Top Rated Pages of All Time, in particular, could use a redesign.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

Ethagon 24 Aug 2022 12:24

Seconding these concerns, although I otherwise think it's a good idea.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

psychicprogrammer 25 Aug 2022 11:08

Agreed here, though having a good start here for new users on the front page would alleviate most of these concerns

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

Jerden 24 Aug 2022 09:35

Just noting that I pick features for the artist showcase (scroll down the mainpage), and usually try to have a mixture of styles, popularity and themes. Limiting it to artwork/artist pages rated below 100 would constrain my choices significantly, especially since a lot of art is posted to artist pages. That said, I do three each month so it's probably less important compared to the single slots for other types of article, just wanted to note that this is technically a front page feature and so any rules would need to either apply to or specifically exempt the artist showcase.

I will also note that sometimes contest winners or runners up get featured on the front page, I guess that would be another exception to be addressed since they tend to be quite highly rated.

That said, I am in favour of the frontpage features being used to promote less well-known authors and articles, I feel like a <100 threshold provides plenty of freedom but still encourages us to be a little more adventurous in our selections. It would be good to hear more from people who actually pick articles to see if they think this would feel constraining, or if they actually are in favour of specifically highlighting more obscure works.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

PlaguePJP 24 Aug 2022 15:19

A much more reasonable hard limit would be +200. Articles at that range are normally the ones within the top 1 to 3 of a normal month, most active people in the community would have read it and would have voted on it, and they stay consistently rising once the month ends.

Personally, there should be no limit on what can and can’t be featured. If I win a contest or do a flight and I want to put my favorite article in there I shouldn’t have to worry about an arbitrary ceiling. This is an artificial fix for the actual issue of content bloat that, in my opinion, will not serve to fix anything in the long run and only kneecap participation.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

OptimisticLucio 24 Aug 2022 15:31

I don't see how +200 is at all "more reasonable." Is this saying that modern articles between 100 and 200 still lack exposure?

If your goal with said compromise is to limit the effectiveness of the idea behind this, then sure it's reasonable, but I honestly do not see how this idea's goals are improved by this.

This won't fix content bloat on its own, certainly, but as I say every time says this - no singular fix will ever fix a large, systematic issue. This is one of many ideas to help change the site's mindset to one of reading and critiquing lesser known works. A mild annoyance that you can't pick an article everyone else on the site has already read and therefore didn't need your recommendation for will be severely outweighed by putting more eyes on articles that people didn't know of prior.

Last edited on 24 Aug 2022 15:31 by OptimisticLucio Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

PlaguePJP 24 Aug 2022 15:38

No, my point for my first comment was with the caveat that it’s becoming a hardline rule we have to abide by. In that case, +100 is too low.

+200 provides us a solid metric based on voting patterns. Like I said, a non-contest article that got to 200 is often one of the top 3 of their month, have solid growth trajectory, and are often voted on by the most of the active community. In may, we got 10 SCPs above +100 but only 1 of them was above +200. June: 11 above +100, 1 above +200. I don’t know about anyone else, but I have not read all of those +100s and I’d probably consider them underrated.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

OptimisticLucio 24 Aug 2022 16:17

I see where you're coming from, but I don't really agree with the mindset.

As you yourself said - very few SCPs pass your criteria (despite SCPs with +100 already having solid growth), which makes this limit extremely narrow in scope.

Additionally, let's look at the months you gave as examples: In may, we got ten SCPs that are currently over 100+, whereas we got 114 which are still on the site and still <100. In June, we got 142. There are so many other articles being posted at any given moment which desperately need the attention more than the articles which are at the top of "Highest Rated of the Month."

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

Uncle Nicolini 24 Aug 2022 16:25

I'm going to assume this is meant for when we don't have crit flights picking the features

why don't we take some recommendations from psychic programmer's potential u&u reboot to stack up the features? if we really wanted we could still have them manually approved by people reading them before them going up.

I also think that the crit flight people and spotlighted reviewers should still be able to put up whatever they want given that it's a thankless job that deserves at least some reward. If they want to feature 173 for some reason, they should be allowed to.

Last edited on 24 Aug 2022 20:40 by Uncle Nicolini Show more

On AI generated U&U

psychicprogrammer 25 Aug 2022 17:32

So, I do not think my AI (GoodBoy) would be much use here, it has some fairly large error bars with regard to this sort of thing.

It is mostly useful for producing large number of recommendations as opposed to just one or two, which is why it can do U&U to a good enough standard and do it constantly.

If we were really short on articles to feature then sure, but I suspect that is not a problem we have at the moment.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

Rounderhouse 24 Aug 2022 18:40

For the sake of data, how often are features now selected by reviewer's spotlights/crit flights stuff vs just staff choosing? And whatever rules decided on would only affect the latter, right?

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

Zyn 25 Aug 2022 06:06

The majority of features are chosen by reviewers' spotlight, crit flights, or contest winners; staff pick features when there are no crit flights running for the previous month (which happens maybe 3ish times a year? For start of summer vacation, start of academic year, and winter holidays).

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

OptimisticLucio 25 Aug 2022 06:46

I meant these rules to affect all features in staff-controlled spaces, so it would still include reviewers and crit flights, but if people are against that then sure.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

LORDXVNV 25 Aug 2022 17:11

As someone who did a crit flight, I'd like to state I'm strongly opposed to restricting what users choose for their flight rewards.

In my view, the intrinsic reward of "providing critique" in the idea and draft forums is incredibly small with regards to the effort. I don't think I'm alone in this opinion — we've actively implemented systems to reduce the amount of crit staff feel "obligated" to give via greenlights. I think taking away the extrinsic incentive of being able to choose whatever they want for their feature would be a mistake.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

OptimisticLucio 26 Aug 2022 07:47

If people's motivation to crit hinges so delicately on this one mechanism, that's seriously bad.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

LORDXVNV 26 Aug 2022 15:03

It is bad, but I unironically suggest you try a crit flight out before suggesting restricting the reviewer's choice/feature choice. I don't have any issues with constraining the staff choice but the work, by its nature, is thankless.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

Uncle Nicolini 26 Aug 2022 16:45

yeah, i agree with lord here. its a thankless job to crit, featuring is the least we could do to make it not as bad. and if youre sacrificing your time to do an otherwise thankless job, you should be able to feature whatever you want.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Rules for Featured Articles

torcsandantlers 28 Aug 2022 23:40

I agree that changing the rules of what can be put up for reviewer spotlight isn't the way to go. The spotlight as it exists is there to solve a problem already; we shouldn't try to make it solve multiple problems less effectively.

I'm personally in favor of having the "Lowest Rated Pages" on the sidebar. Of course, that only resolves bumping the absolute lowest up into the herd. My ideal solution would be a page that lists a random selection of pages between +0 and +100.